Web training with Tom Keating and Ben Spencer, updating Folly Wood website
Telephone conversation with MAx Comfort re. Weave Advisory Group Meeting
Updating this website
PhD Archive
Welcome to the Phd Blog
Keeping the blog was an important thread in weaving the research, the drawing practice and community facilitation. The degree of Doctor of Philosophy was awarded by the University of Wales Trinity St. David in 2018.
Abstract
The research considers why aesthetics, the subjective ways in which we
experience and value places, and nature’s agency are not readily included in
decision-making processes. This action research adopts a hopeful, participatory
and auto-ethnographic inquiry into the potential for developing and applying a
relational and environmental walking-art practice to overcome this disconnect; an
approach which attempts to reconnect art and life, cultural and natural systems.
Metaphor is used as a method to reflect upon an emergent art practice. The
research considers Felix Guattari’s ideas of transversality, developing an ethicoaesthetic paradigm as a critical framework, taking into account the work of relevant
practitioners and specifically Grant Kester’s arguments concerning reciprocal
creative labour. The framework is developed through a weaving metaphor and
applied to three community-led land-use change case studies; a canal restoration
project, caring for a community woodland and Landscape Character Assessment.
The weaving metaphor becomes both a process and an art work capable of
revealing and helping to incorporate subjectivity into traditionally objective
decision-making processes. As well as facilitating community-wide dialogue, the
research has, in some cases, lead to action being taken alongside nature’s
agency.
The research evaluates the transformation of the art practice and its impact, which
suggests the positive agency of art as a practical aesthetic in a social and
environmental context.
The thesis can be read here:
https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/1311/13/Keating%20R%20Landscape%20final.pdf#:~:text=As%20a%20part%20of%20post,with%20people%20in%20the%20Stroud
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Walking the Land First Friday Walk
Walk from Stroud through Hawkwood and Folly Wood and back with Kel Portman,
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Walking to Derby ideas development
skype with Dr. Sue Porter exploring common ground around some of the themes coming from the Gainsborough Study Day in the context of “Affective Landscapes”
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The Weave
Attendence at meeting on the Localism Bill and in particular on Neighbourhood Development Plans as the production of such a plan is likely to be a response to the AoU visit.
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Walking the Land, The Old Passage
Presentation of cheque to Severn Area Rescue Association. Funds raised in lieu of commission to The Old Passage on sales from recent Waterways exhibition, curated by Walking the Land, on the initiative and effort of Kel Portman and Sally Pearce. Photo by Kel Portman.
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Academic Writing on Flooding and Resilience.
Following earlier work on the River Severn and involvement from Kel in an earlier conference, WtL were invited to join a group of academics and artists in writing for the Journal of Arts & Communities. We planned a walk with Dr. Iain Robertson for 6th January in a flooded place to look at Resilience, Representation and Embodiment.
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The Weave, Folly Wood, Thesis
meeting with Ben Spencer to discuss next stages of Folly Wood, implementing links between the Canal and Museum and our PhD theses. Commonality over working with people and existentialism.
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Landscape Led architecture design team meeting
delivery of event. Walking, talking and photography with workshops to site building etc. and develop design principles.
