The Creative Act Revisited: New ways of working - New challenges

The Creative Act Revisited: New ways of working - New challenges * are creative practitioners 'above the law'? * can they do anything they like in the name of art? * how do you persuade legislators and bureaucrats to allow the extraordinary? * to what extent can an artist appropriate another person's image? * is it acceptable for an artist to rework social history? * how can you make a living out of non-conventional creative work? * can the conventional art market be changed/subverted? Professor Henry Lydiate has over 35 years experience of working with creative artists of all disciplines, helping them to address the business aspects of carrying out their work. He established the UK's only dedicated service to address the special legal needs of artists, Artlaw Services, and was instrumental in setting up the related operation in Australia, Arts Law Services. He lectures internationally and writes regularly about art and the law; his work can be viewed at www.artquest.org, where there is a free access archive of his regular articles for the UK publication, Art Monthly. As a result of his ongoing engagement with artists, Henry has become a passionate supporter of Marcel Duchamp's proposition that a work of art only achieves its final completion through the engagement of the viewer. His professorial platform lecture pays homage to Duchamp and reworks his original 1957 US lecture title, The Creative Act, in order to look at the working situation of creative practitioners today. Henry Lydiate observes that as art practice changes and diversifies, artists are engaging with an ever widening range of different media and working practices. This brings new challenges and requirements - for example, managing creative processes, organising working relationships, understanding ownership of rights, and even establishing what is and is not acceptable in terms of public display and censorship. Using examples drawn from his wide-ranging experience of helping creative practitioners, Henry Lydiate will explain why he believes that the working practice of a contemporary artist is now more diverse and challenging than in previous times and requires a broader skill base. Those attending the lecture will learn from an engaging range of case study examples and also have the opportunity to ask questions

Legal Education and Clinical Legal Education in Poland

The aim of this paper is to present the existing legal education system and development of clinical legal education in Poland. The first part briefly introduces the general Polish higher education system including the implications of the Bologna Process and other challenges for the law faculties as higher education institutions. It then focuses on the five different apprenticeships necessary to obtain license to practice law in Poland. The second part deals with the study program and teaching methods used at Polish law faculties. It argues that the present system does not meet the requirements of the contemporary legal job market as students are not, as a rule, exposed to practical aspects of legal problems and leave law school without training in the necessary skills. The third and most extensive part is dedicated to the legal clinics operating in Poland. Some statistical data is presented on legal clinics (i.e. numbers of students, teachers, cases etc.). This part also discusses basic clinical methodology instruments used in Polish clinics. Finally it describes the establishment of the Polish Legal Clinics Foundation (Foundation), its goals, tasks, challenges andachievements

Rethinking music performance in european higher education music institutions: Portugal case

Portuguese higher music education is still influenced by the traditional conservatory model. Such influence has glossed over the importance of fostering creativity, critical thinking and a culture of enquiry from the earliest stages of learning. The lack of attention to these issues has impeded other career paths in musical performance for students and teachers. In this article we present a national perspective concerning new directions for music performance education based on the identification of the requirements for an artistic career. A selection of 17 Stakeholders were interviewed: music producers and studio directors (2); teachers of related educational programmes (2); students of music performance (3); alumni (4); course directors (3); and Professional performers (2). The questions addressed the key challenges facing the contemporary music industry: training preparations; curriculum evaluation; aspects of instrumental guidance; demands of music performance career; and requirements of a sustainable artistic proposal. From a thematic analysis, two main themes emerged: individual requirements and institutional requirements. The first consists of a set of demands students should face in order to develop a career path as an artist. The second is related to a set of possible improvements in Portuguese HEIs. Results suggest Portuguese institutions should offer a flexible curriculum, creating balanced connections between theory and practice in order to support students' transitions. Other demands include: mentoring; psychophysiological wellbeing, artistic creation, diversified education, project based learning, guidance on technological issues and collaborative music making. In addition, the results also suggest that students should develop technological literacy, knowledge of music industries, entrepreneurship and self-promotion, networking, management skills, a diverse and flexible profile, a contemporary and artistic approach, critical thinking and self-reflection and a deep connection with music production. The results obtained may inform the current discussion on the role of music higher education institutions in Portugal and their possible improvements.publishe

Dynamic Investigative Practice at the International Criminal Court

The Direct Weight Optimization (DWO) approach is a nonparametric estimation approach that has appeared in recent years within the field of nonlinear system identification. In previous work, all function classes for which DWO has been studied have included only continuous functions. However, in many applications it would be desirable also to be able to handle discontinuous functions. Inspired by the bilateral filter method from image processing, such an extension of the DWO framework is proposed for the smoothing problem. Examples show that the properties of the new approach regarding the handling of discontinuities are similar to the bilateral filter, while at the same time DWO offers a greater flexibility with respect to different function classes handled

Rethinking professional practice: the logic of competition and the crisis of identity in housing practice

The relationship between professionalism, education and housing practice has become increasingly strained following the introduction of austerity measures and welfare reforms across a range of countries. Focusing on the development of UK housing practice, this article considers how notions of professionalism are being reshaped within the context of welfare retrenchment and how emerging tensions have both affected the identity of housing professionals and impacted on the delivery of training and education programmes. The article analyses the changing knowledge and skills valued in contemporary housing practice and considers how the sector has responded to the challenges of austerity. The central argument is that a dominant logic of competition has culminated in a crisis of identity for the sector. Although the focus of the article is on UK housing practice, the processes identified have a wider relevance for the analysis of housing and welfare delivery in developed economies

Au fait law placements:an emerged reality or a popular trend in contemporary education?

PurposeEnhancing student employability and bridging the gap between theory and practice in law education requires a more multifaceted approach than the traditional mix of lectures, tutorials and simulations. Law placements also provide an opportunity to reinforce the importance of the professional practice standards and requirements laid down by the Law Society of Scotland. The design and implementation of law placements is analysed from the point of initiation to becoming a regular practice. The emphasis is on placements embedded in the programme of study offered to Stage 3 students to facilitate their career choices prior to specialisation in the final year.Design/methodology/approachThis study utilises a longitudinal multi-method approach, allowing the analysis of various aspects the development and practical implementation of law related placements. The views of students, academic staff and representatives of local employers are gathered by in-depth interviews. A reflective workbook method is also used to analyse the ‘integration’ of learning and to support the ‘demonstration’ and assessment of personal and professional capabilities which are difficult to assess by other means.FindingsThe paper presents the challenge faced by a higher education institution in organising meaningful placements and looks at the other avenues explored, particularly in the Third Sector. There are differences in the expectations of law placement providers (law firms and Third Sector organisations) in respect of students’ skill and knowledge base. The students were explicit about the need to demystify the profession and are appreciative of experience with atypical law placement providers which expands their perceptions of the choices within a law career. Students have also indicated a positive alteration in their attitude to the role of reflective practice, which stimulated changes in their behaviour with respect to professional development.Practical implicationsThe outcomes of the initial stage of this study have implications for law departments in higher education in the context of organising law placements, evaluating their effectiveness and their impact on student employability.Originality/valueTeaching law has its specifics and already employs a number of methods: simulations, negotiation exercises, moots and debates. This paper explores ways of providing a more meaningful practical experience for undergraduate students by placing an emphasis on such elements of professional practice as drafting legal documents and preparing professional opinions, while introducing the complexity of the law profession. Solutions to the challenges faced by the institution in organising those placements are analysed. The study provides an analytical view on the effectiveness of law placements in relation to other widely used approaches to bridging the gap between the theory and practice of law

Engaging Opportunities: Connecting young people with contemporary research and researchers

This is the final report for ‘Engaging Opportunities’, an RCUK-funded School-University Partnership between the Open University and the Denbigh Teaching School Alliance. Informed by action research, this four-year project was designed to create structured, strategic, sustainable and equitable mechanisms for effective school-university engagement with research. The report describes an evidence-based strategy designed to embed school-university engagement with research within the University’s strategic planning for research and the operational practices of researchers. Through the early stages of our partnership we noted a lack of suitable planning tools that work for researchers, teachers and students. We therefore introduced a flexible and adaptable framework of four types of activity—open lectures, open dialogues, open inquiry and open creativity—combined with an upstream approach to planning based on a set of six principles. A sub-set of these activities were evaluated through a combination of surveys, interviews and interventions. In conclusion, we argue that institutional and professional cultures can be resistant to the prospect of fully embedding school-university engagement with research in a structured, strategic and sustainable manner, and offer suggestions for how this context could and should be changed

Status Quo and Problems of Requirements Engineering for Machine Learning: Results from an International Survey

Systems that use Machine Learning (ML) have become commonplace for companies that want to improve their products and processes. Literature suggests that Requirements Engineering (RE) can help address many problems when engineering ML-enabled systems. However, the state of empirical evidence on how RE is applied in practice in the context of ML-enabled systems is mainly dominated by isolated case studies with limited generalizability. We conducted an international survey to gather practitioner insights into the status quo and problems of RE in ML-enabled systems. We gathered 188 complete responses from 25 countries. We conducted quantitative statistical analyses on contemporary practices using bootstrapping with confidence intervals and qualitative analyses on the reported problems involving open and axial coding procedures. We found significant differences in RE practices within ML projects. For instance, (i) RE-related activities are mostly conducted by project leaders and data scientists, (ii) the prevalent requirements documentation format concerns interactive Notebooks, (iii) the main focus of non-functional requirements includes data quality, model reliability, and model explainability, and (iv) main challenges include managing customer expectations and aligning requirements with data. The qualitative analyses revealed that practitioners face problems related to lack of business domain understanding, unclear goals and requirements, low customer engagement, and communication issues. These results help to provide a better understanding of the adopted practices and of which problems exist in practical environments. We put forward the need to adapt further and disseminate RE-related practices for engineering ML-enabled systems.Comment: Accepted for Publication at PROFES 202