Panel Session at GSA Conference: Writing Practices in the Art School

In June 2023, VCRG members Jenny Rintoul, Rachael Miles and Rebecca Bell co-convened a panel session with Julia Lockheart and VCRG Research Fellow Jo Lee, at Glasgow School of Art’s Not Knowing: How Artists Teach conference. Their panel was entitled 'Writing Practices in the Art School'. All panel convenors are members of the Ways of Writing in Art & Design Research Network (WoW) within the Writing Practices strand of VCRG activity.

The panel session began with a series of provocations about the connections between writing practices, not knowing, and Art School pedagogies, presented by the session convenors. Delegates were then invited to participate in a collaborative writing activity. The aim was to explore questions like: what does it mean to have space to write? What is meant by ‘academic’ approaches to writing in Art Schools and how can Art School writing practices (and their assessments) be put in symbiosis with the ‘not knowing’ of making art? In what ways can written texts be starting points for experimentation? How can makers encounter writing in an embodied way? In what ways can artists’ pedagogies shape the way that writing is taught in the Art School?

Abstract:

Writing practices are no less complex or more ‘knowing’ than making practices, and yet there remains a mythologising of writing in the Art School as cerebral, formulaic and other to the embodied and tacit knowing of art making. In this vein, writing has been cultured into both artist-teacher training and artist training as a tool for assessment. The session aims to open dialogue between the ‘not knowing’ of creative practice and the practices and pedagogies of writing in the Art School.

For more information on Glasgow School of Art’s On Not Knowing: How Artists Teach conference, click here.

For more information about VCRG member Jenny Rintoul, click here.

For more information about VCRG member Rachael Miles, click here.

For more information about VCRG member Rebecca Bell, click here.