64 research outputs found

    Recalibrating the White Cube as a hub for social action

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    A new form of practice is developing in which cultural organisations are transformed from white cubes to hubs for social action and learning. Focus extends from the showing of art to its creation, and the empowerment and agency of communities through enactive learning. In this model the arts organisation acts as a catalyst for collaborative action and enquiry involving academia and a wider ecosystem of communities and stakeholders including the public, artists, digital creative industry, maker spaces and local government. The new model entails embedding of research, innovation and arts practice within the arts organisation itself. We illustrate the approach with examples of projects spanning mental health, physical disability, young people, veterans, children and parents, which have had a real impact on health and well-being of our communities

    Recalibrating the White Cube as a hub for social action

    Get PDF
    A new form of practice is developing in which cultural organisations are transformed from white cubes to hubs for social action and learning. Focus extends from the showing of art to its creation, and the empowerment and agency of communities through enactive learning. In this model the arts organisation acts as a catalyst for collaborative action and enquiry involving academia and a wider ecosystem of communities and stakeholders including the public, artists, digital creative industry, maker spaces and local government. The new model entails embedding of research, innovation and arts practice within the arts organisation itself. We illustrate the approach with examples of projects spanning mental health, physical disability, young people, veterans, children and parents, which have had a real impact on health and well-being of our communities

    The Shaping of a Policy Framework for the Wider Europe. CEPS Policy Brief No. 39, September 2003

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    [From the Introduction]. With the enlargement of the EU from 15 to 25, the new Wider Europe debate – interpreted in the broad sense as in this paper – rises high up on the EU agenda, complementing the draft Constitution prepared by the European Convention. Together they are defining what the EU is to be. The Convention is defining the EU from the inside. The Wider Europe debate is seeking to define it by reference to its outer edges and wider neighbourhood. Already in March 2003, the European Commission published a first policy communication on the subject. This has been followed by the document on European security strategy submitted to the European Council in June 2003 by Javier Solana, the optique of which is different, but whose content overlaps with the Wider Europe. These two documents may be viewed as ‘white’ or ‘green’ papers of the EU institutions. They are important references, yet highly preliminary and incomplete. The present document sketches a more structured policy framework, and makes proposals for how this might be further developed

    The “other” creatives : design and culture in Western Sydney

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    Western Sydney is an in-between place that is neither unified nor uniform and with constantly shifting borders; somewhere that is constantly in a state of transformation and becoming. Yet despite its vast and diverse geography, media representations tend to focus on the region's suburban aesthetic, and studies have shown that the area is recurrently portrayed as a cultural wasteland, the ugly “Other” Sydney characterised by social problems and neglect, where people are too focused on surviving to be “cultural” and referred to in shorthand as “Westies”. This stereotype has effectively operated as a brand that positioned Western Sydney as subservient to the rest of Sydney, affecting the social and economic interactions of people from the West. In recent times, some Western Sydney local councils have undertaken rebranding processes to make themselves more competitive, usually through celebrating demographic diversity, natural, sporting and recreation assets, and more recently, proximity to the new international airport. However, the region’s cultural assets—past, present, and emerging—have been overlooked, potentially hindering efforts to carve a more unique and authentic identity for the region, and limiting opportunities for locals and locales in the West. Following Melbourne and Sydney, Western Sydney is now Australia’s third-largest economy and is a key growth area, with new houses, jobs, and major projects in progress. Yet despite recent investigations into patterns of development and infrastructure growth, there have been few that explore Western Sydney-based creative industries in keeping with the studies conducted in areas surrounding other Australian cities. Instead, recurring discussions about Sydney’s creative scene tend to reinforce a stereotype, conceptualising creativity as a bohemian, inner city phenomenon with limited consideration given to creative industries situated in the apparently uncool outer suburbs, repeating a pattern of representation that situates the people of Western Sydney as outsiders. From the inside position of designer and Westie, this thesis explores how visual representations have helped to shape and sustain Western Sydney’s reputation as Other to Sydney and proposes how it could be repositioned through harnessing the cultural power of branding. Drawing from cultural studies, creative industries discourse, and branding practice, this thesis illuminates the connections between design and cultural agency in the West. In doing so, it contributes to the reconceptualization of Western Sydney’s identity during a time of unprecedented change and development

    Creative Production Synergies in Penrith and the Blue Mountains

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    Regional leadership in arts and cultural production is evident in Penrith and the Blue Mountains through the different yet complementary approaches of the City Councils. This research project began in August 2019, the interview phase was completed in early December 2019, and this report was completed in June 2020. Therefore, the research spanned a very challenging period of drought and severe bushfires over the summer across New South Wales, followed almost immediately by the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses in arts and recreation services were among the first and most severely affected by the need to enforce Government social distancing restrictions, with 94 per cent of the sector reporting an adverse impact of the Government restrictions in the March Business COVID-19 survey (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2020). This report has shown the need for investment in creative production capacity building – a need which has now significantly increased

    The document/book as a form of curatorial creativity

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    This thesis discusses the document/book as an act of recording that can serve as a form for curatorial creativity. Firstly, it explores the document as a space in a hybrid analog and digital era. Then, it introduces concrete examples of how curating the gallery and the book has changed in the 20th and 21st centuries. It follows a critical analysis of society as one big accumulation of documents. It proposes the invention of writing as the base of our current digital spaces and the space of the book as architecture. In respect to the curatorial discourse, it focuses on Springer's proposition of engaging with the library in order to develop new ways of organizing, collecting, and reassembling information. The first chapter introduces Benjamin Bratton's diagram of "The Stack", which serves to explore the physical spaces of information, describing how the infrastructure of books has come to expand significantly from clay to paper, and now to the Cloud. It proposes the codex-book, a stack of paper sheets as an analogy of the stack through the example of artist Irfan Hendrian "Some Other Matter" exhibition. It also proposes the page—a place of inventory and invention— as the first virtual space of humanity. The second chapter discusses the library's primary functions of storage and retrievability —proposing the Library of Alexandria as the first information organization. Then comes back to an example of how the old model of the library can be used for creating a new display for the gallery as well as giving value to its collection through physical activation. Finally, it explores some of the invisible systems (covers, algorithms, tags) that are now building our digital libraries. The third chapter focuses on copy and print as essential tools for recording, preservation, and building collections. It introduces the history of mass digitization and the changes it has brought to analog documents. It also explores the space of digital and print through Kenneth Goldsmith's curatorial project that called out to print out all the internet. This example leads us to discuss the history of the A4-size paper sheet as the first completely standardize product. The fourth chapter presents the "neutral" containers —starting from the concept of the "gallery-book" proposed by Bernard Teyssendier as a place of movement, pleasure, and learning. It also explores architecture and design as curatorial infrastructure for exhibitions happening both in a gallery space and on a blank document. Finally, it creates a parallel between the white paper page and the white gallery wall as places of artistic intervention, which far from being invisible follow specific predefined structures. The fifth chapter focuses on presenting projects that propose new curated writing and reading contexts between the print and digital. Here, Brian O'Doherty's issue for "Aspen" magazine is proposed as proto-hypertext or as a premonition of the website. Then, the website-as-gallery concept is explored through the example of Kadist's "One Sentence Exhibition" project. This example leads to exploring the fragility and impermanence of the hyperlink, in contrast to its printed counterparts. The final chapter presents three projects that use the infrastructure of the book and the library as a curatorial agency —proposing new methods for curating information through collection, organization, and research. "Intercalations", a paginated exhibition series by Anna-Sophie Springer and Etienne Turpin; "MAP", a folded encyclopedia by the David A. Garcia architecture studio; and "Carte(s) MĂ©moire(s)" by ExposerPublier that proposes the exhibition as a moment of activation

    Learning space design and the negotiation of power

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    Although a growing body of research directly relates learning space design to student experience, it is insufficiently taken forward in practice, particularly with respect to the negotiation of power. This thesis argues for interweaving the practical design benefits of Alexander’s (1977) pattern language theory with a sociomaterial approach, specifically addressing how the material and social co-construct space. At the centre of my research is the Media Hub project, the creation and ongoing transformation of an ICT classroom in an international secondary school over a three-year period. My research questions investigate, first, the negotiation of power in the context of transforming a learning space, and, second, how spatial configuration can influence students’ experience of learning and perceptions of place. I adopt a participatory action research approach, focusing on interviews with both students and teachers, classroom observations, as well as visual ethnographic data collection that captures the everyday things of education, from chairs and tables to posters and books. In the context of international schools as spaces of privilege, I first explore wider issues of space and power, drawing on Sklair’s (2005) criticism of the relationship between iconic architecture and the transnational capitalist class (TCC). I then investigate how users of the Media Hub negotiated power and competed for space throughout its development. I also examine how spatial configuration and the materiality of space influenced both pedagogy and student experience, recognizing that the intended design of a learning space can be at odds with its actual use. I conclude by considering the value of small-scale projects like the Media Hub as a counterpoint to the increasing sameness of international school design. The findings of this thesis could have implications for educators seeking to implement, and critically examine, learning space design and transformation projects

    Belonging and Unbelonging: Indigenous forms of Curation as Expressions of Sovereignty

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    Indigenous art has been one of the most important vehicles for promoting intercultural understanding in Australia. It visualises Indigenous ways of seeing, knowing and experiencing the world. Indigenous forms of curation have been instrumental in creating these profound moments of intercultural connection, contributing to new theorisations of Indigenous art. This research project seeks to identify an Indigenous critical framework with which to apprehend the complexity of Indigenous art exhibitions. Through detailed case-studies of six exhibitionary projects by Indigenous curators, running from the Aboriginal Memorial of 1988 to barrangal dyara (skin and bones) in 2016, I demonstrate that Indigenous curation is not only an important political act of recognition and visibility, it is also deeply indebted to Indigenous cultural practices and philosophies. The projects chosen are situated within sites of high national and international value and through these case studies I chart a curatorial manoeuvre that I describe as ‘unbelonging’. Unbelonging is not a position of statelessness, but a deliberative model of both subversively unsettling and detaching from the imposition of statehood. In many instances, it uses the resources of leading institutions, but agitates to create self-determined spaces within them. Through a process of unbelonging to the state, to the institution, to disciplines and to history, Indigenous curators are rewriting their own ways of belonging. I understand Indigenous curation as not politically reactive to colonisation as is often presumed, but emerging from Indigenous political formations of governance and sovereignty, value and heritage, consensus and relation. By creating new and broadening complacent formulations of art and social history, identity, and museological practice and temporality, Indigenous curators have reshaped institutional and disciplinary cultures and have contributed to the strengthening of Indigenous art and culture
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