Introduction

Welcome to the very first residency hosted by PopeCullen at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts focused on research-creation and practice-led approaches to graduate research. PopeCullen consists of artists Simon Pope & Sarah Cullen, and sometimes other members of their family members. Sarah has run the MOTHRA artist-parent residency programme here for the past six years, and we both host a walking & art residency during the summer. This new residency is speculative, responding to conversations that we have had over the years concerning the different approaches to creative and artistic graduate study at various universities across different territories.

We have both been involved in these institutions at points when both the ‘creative turn’ in research and the implementation of doctoral degrees in creative practice began to take hold. We have both been graduate students within these institutions, and Simon was a tenured research-track professor in Fine Art in the UK, supervising and examining practice-led doctoral candidates and mentoring colleagues as they navigated the demands of research audits. He currently supervises for the joint Transart Institute (USA)/Liverpool John Moores University (UK) Creative Practice PhD. Sarah studied at masters level in Cultural Geography at the University of London (2008-9) at the point of the ‘creative turn’.

Simon will lead this residency and be your main point-of-contact, drawing on his experience of graduate programmes to support your work. He Returned to doctoral study at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford (2012-15), and has first hand experience with dealing with supervisors, negotiating the line between academic and professional practice, working out how artistic practice engages research processes, experimenting with how textual and other practical research outputs operate in support of a thesis, participating in research communities, defining research validity, “contribution to knowledge,” examination, and so on.

Aims

The aim for this residency to attend to these things, and more – the practical things, and their articulation in theory, that we deal with during a process of graduate study undertaken in creative, artistic ways.

So, to borrow from cultural geographer Harriet Hawkins, rather than focus wholly on the many ‘substantive concerns’ of specific disciplines and individual projects (e.g. concepts of space, place, participation, community, etc.), we’ll begin by attending to the ‘doings’ that sit at the heart of the creative turn’ within our disciplines (Hawkins, 2019).

In particular, together we’ll attend to how this ‘creative turn’ affects how we do graduate research. While this will inevitably touch on more general discussion of how creative work counts or qualifies as research, we will always focus on graduate degrees and their processes. Primarily, this is done as a way to head-off the inevitable (and persistent) barrage of sceptical questions that artistic researchers often get faced with, and the constant self-justification that they get lumbered with. As a manoeuvre around this, we begin by acknowledging that practice-led research is already underway within many arts, humanities, and social science disciplines, and already firmly established within specific higher education/post-secondary institutions – the institutions that we are currently enrolled in, supervise for, or are employed by.

But we will also acknowledge that the graduate degree is fundamentally a process of learning and discovery. Following from what we understand of learning cycles and development trajectories (e.g. Belenky et al, 1986; Baxter Magnolia, 1992; Ambrose, 2010), we want to attend to how this creates opportunities for transformation of ourselves as researchers, as well as our disciplines, and our institutions.

The aim is to enable participants in this residency to concentrate on their own projects while also opening-up their work to others for discussion. In the spirit of co-learning that PopeCullen adhere to, we want to create opportunities for exchange between participants that will lead to self-reflexion and mutual transformation. We’ll steer clear of working according to the ‘banking model’ of teaching (Freire, 2005) where nuggets of knowledge are imparted from on high. Rather, this is a residency entirely focused on co-learning among peers; we all have our experience of graduate research-creation or practice-led research, and new knowledge and understanding will emerge from our conversations and exchanges during the week.

Process

You will be provided with a process by which we can make these exchanges. Throughout the week, in our morning meetings, Simon will give a prompt to you for discussion and reflection as you go about your individual work, group discussion and exchange. These prompts will be themed around the ‘doings’ of graduate work – the various aspects of a degree process that we engage with in practical ways –drawing on the body of theoretical references that have grown up around practice-led graduate degrees.

Initially Simon will provide these, but we will also work towards compiling a useful set of resources together – including a bibliography – that we can take with us and make use of beyond the residency. Further, together we will aim to produce a “toolkit” of sorts, that will be both useful for other graduate research-creation/practice-led researchers, and which will be a response to a similar, recent publication by research-creation/practice-led PhD supervisors (Borgen et al, 2024).

Schedule

The schedule for the week reflects this emphasis on self-directed and self-reflexive work, supported by group and individual meetings:

Tuesday – after arrival, and once we have settled in, Simon will give an introductory presentation in the Fireplace Room from 6pm-7pm.

Wednesday-Saturday – 10am-11am | daily group meetings, with introductions to themes to prompt self-reflexion.

Wednesday-Saturday – 4:30pm-6:00pm | three slots of 15 minutes each, for you to opt-in to present your research project, followed by discussion.
Note: these presentations should be shaped by responses to the following questions:

This is to break with the conventional “show & tell” formats, and to promote a move away from presenting conclusions or argumentation/defence.

Wed-Saturday – throughout the day | optional individual hour-long meetings with Simon. Look out for the sign-up sheet in the kitchen area.

On Sunday we’ll have a looser-schedule, to be agreed among ourselves during the week.

On Monday 24th Transart Institute have kindly funded a walking tour by Andrew Lochhead, a Toronto-based curator. This will take place in the downtown PATH system, reading the city’s history from the development of this underground network of pedestrian paths and tunnels. Andrew is renowned for the work he has done in leading the campaign to change the name of Dundas Street in Toronto, and gives decolonial walking tours of public artworks in the city. This is the subject of his own PhD project at Toronto Metropolitan University. After the walk there’ll be opportunity to talk to Andrew about the walking tour as a research method and output, and his current experiences of undertaking research through practice.
The tour runs from 11am-1pm, which hopefully works for those of you heading home on that, or the following day. The tour starts close to the Ferry docks, and we will make a stop at a luggage-drop service for those who want to store their bags. After lunch, I will accompany anyone who needs to get back to Union Station for trains to the airport.