School of Health in Social Science

Creative-relational research in progress monthly sessions

The monthly sessions

How to create a communal space for experimenting, discussing or creatively engaging with research materials in process, still unformed and bubbling, offering several potential avenues for development, and requiring difficult decisions? How to offer each other creative feedback in a supportive environment that encourages us to push boundaries? How to try things out, dare, attempt, and risk? or even hesitate and share our hesitation? How to build a space for us to imagine and visualise unorthodox ideas, maybe full of conflicts, dilemmas, impossibilities and risks, or seemingly easy, obvious and unproductive but somehow intriguing to the researcher?

One of the methods we use in art education is “studio critiques” or “crits”. These are group sessions designed to support the student understand the potential and limitations of a project still in process which they share with their peers and teachers. How can we use the method of "studio critique" in creative-relational research more generally, and also expand it to include methods which are perhaps more participatory and hands-on for the entire group?

The session are scheduled for 2pm - 3.30pm in the afternoon of the first Friday of each month. Please contact Sophia Lycouris (s.lycouris@ed.ac.uk) to book a date in May or June in which you would like the group to focus on your project and let us know if you would like to use the entire session of 90 minutes for a presentation or a shorter period of time. Participants can attend the whole series, or just sessions that interest them or they can make.

Previous Sessions

April: Friday 5th April was our inaugural meeting and will be used as a warm-up to run a "research jam"! Just bring your ideas and processes (no matter how unformed or resolved they might be at this stage) to put them in dialogue with those of others in the group. Let’s see what happens through talking and perhaps working practically with materials. Do not hesitate to bring paper, pens and pencils, creative texts, sounds, images, videos, objects, structures, words, food, anything that seems creatively and relationally appropriate.

Jun 07 2019 -

Creative-relational research in progress monthly sessions

This will be a monthly session for staff and research students in the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry and guests from across the University beyond, to use in any way that suits them to support their projects. The session can be used for very “traditional” presentations, followed by questions and feedback, but it can also be as experimental and/or participatory as necessary, including workshops, tests, focused groups, performative lectures, or occasionally visits to relevant locations. A single session could be devoted to one project, or divided into parts to focus on different projects.

Teaching Room 02 (1st Floor), Room number: 1.266, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH8 9YL