Integrating Knowledge - A King's Cultural Institute and Central St Martin's Collaboration

As a firm believer in the importance of public engagement for academia, I jumped at the chance to be involved in the Integrating Knowledge exhibition, even if only counting visitors and handing out information packs!

  

Integrating Knowledge is a collaboration between King's Cultural Institute and Central St Martin's to present research to the public in innovative and exciting ways. The project, curated by Caroline Sipos, paired students of MA Communication Design with academics and PhD students in Geography, Anatomy, English and Law to find ways to express academic research through videos, installations and interactive presentations. 

The exhibition covers topics as diverse as the Argentine Dirty War to neuroscience, while the theme of place/space runs through the exhibition in pieces about gentrification, regeneration, and the difference between public and private.

One of my favourite pieces is Taco-trification by Eunjung Ahn, Michelle  Dwyer, Ferdinand Freiler and Wenquing Yu, based on the work of Juliet Kahne from the Department of Geography. Through a short stop-motion film, they illustrate the gentrification of Downtown Los Angeles through tacos, which have gone from a cheap staple for local people to an overpriced trend that only the yuppies can afford.

I also loved Handwritten Waves by Mariane Assous-Plunian, Mairead Gillespie, Julia Stubenboeck and Dusan Tomic, inspired by Kate Symondson's deconstruction of Virginia Woolf's The Waves. They covered a whole wall of the gallery with extracts from Woolf's text, each handwritten by a different person, and created six books, collecting the handwritten pieces that represent the subjective experiences of each of the six main characters. Absolutely stunning.

Certainly the most ambitious piece of the whole exhibition is Howbrain by Shesley Crustna, Hoc Ling Duong, Timothy Klofski and Apolline Saillard, presenting research by neuroscientist Prof. Jon Clarke into the functioning of brain cells. Visitors can interact with the piece by stepping on pads on the floor which control the projection, choosing between research on the sub-cellular level, the cellular level and aspirations of future research. 

Overall, the exhibition achieves exactly what is hoped from a collaboration between artists and academics, engaging audiences on both an aesthetic and an intellectual level. In the three days I spent working there, visitors frequently expressed how much they'd learnt from the show, while others just enjoyed the beauty of the installations and videos. I hope to see more collaborations like this soon, as its great to see research inspiring people beyond classrooms and academic journals.

Integrating Knowledge runs until 28 April at Inigo Rooms in the East Wing of Somerset House, and is absolutely free. 

Performance In Place of War

This is going to be one of the pointing out interesting things blogs today, rather than any real analysis.

Today, as part of the Beacon For Wales project (www.engagingwales.org, itself part of a larger plan for increasing academic public engagement, www.publicengagement.ac.uk), Professor James Thompson from the University of Manchester came to Cardiff University to talk about his work on the role of theatre In Place of War.

The project has been going on for over 10 years now, working with theatre artists living and working in warzones. Prof Thompson's idea of public engagement is a novel one, and one that really ought to be adopted by more academics. Instead of researching, thinking and then imparting wisdom in the traditional academic way, Thomson sees public engagement at the very heart of his work. Over the years, Thompson and his team have studied the importance of theatre in the very places where it is all too easy to assume that theatre would not exist, countries like Kosovo, Sri Lanka and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Two central questions fuel this research:
     - Why is there theatre in the war zone?
     - Why do academics assume there isn't?
Over the years, Thompson and his team have tried to answer these questions by following and documenting the work of over 300 theatre companies in almost every major warzone. You can find details of most of these on the In Place of War website www.inplaceofwar.net - it's well worth spending some time on this site as the wealth of different programmes and what they achieve is fascinating. The project has also lead to a book:

However, it's not all about documenting and analysing the performances and theatre groups, but rather facilitating them and fostering communication between the disparate groups. Thomson reports that what the groups he works with find most useful is always the chance to interact with groups from other warzones around the world, to compare experiences and share good practice. Unsurprisingly, artists and performers in warzones can feel very isolated.

What was most interesting to me was the distinction between functional and diversionary theatre. That is, academics are traditionally interested in theatre that serves some purposes, facilitating public debates about contentious issues, educating or working through trauma. However, at the heart of the conflict, and especially when working with children, what is really necessary is theatre which distracts from the violence, allowing victims to relax and enjoy themselves. Rather than creating a false serious/escapist dialectic, Thompson insists that popular, escapist work should be valued and recognised as a valid response to the moment.

Professor Thompson's talk will soon be uploaded to the Beacon for Wales site. I recommend you watch it and explore the In Place of War website.