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Editorial the Ethical Purpose of Writing in Creative Practice JWCP_1.1_01_edt_Julia.qxd 12/10/07 5:12 PM Page 5 Journal of Writing in Creative Practice Volume 1 Number 1 © 2007 Intellect Ltd Editorial. English language. doi: 10.1386/jwcp.1.1.5/2 Editorial – The ethical purpose of writing in creative practice Julia Lockheart and John Wood In place of educational bureaucracy, we envision a more joined-up, student-centred, collaborative, ethical, and ecological approach to learning, making and doing. At the institutional and economic level this would entail a closer integration of research, practice, and teaching. In effect, this suggests a unified field that acknowl- edges writing as a catalyst to a variety of practices such as ideation, visualisation, thought, speech, action, drawing, making or research. A more integrated learning environment will foster new practices of writing, which could become a common ground for staff from many disciplines. Students would also benefit from this process. We wish to develop and share this vision. We believe that, if it is imagin- able and shareable it is also viable. (From the Writing-PAD Mission Statement, 2007) Initially, it seemed logical to call this ‘The Writing-PAD Journal’, because it embodies the vision and efforts of the Writing-PAD network. However, when Masoud Yazdani, the Chairman of Intellect Books, invited us to think beyond our known borders we decided to call it the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice. Thanks to Writing-PAD (and to Masoud) we can welcome you to a new and unique journal. For its first four years the Writing-PAD network was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Fund for the Development of Learning and Teaching (FDTL), and was one of their phase 4 projects. This support enabled the project to create an arena within which Art and Design (A&D) institutions could dis- cuss, review and share practices that take the writing process seriously. The acronym Writing-PAD stands for Writing Purposefully in Art and Design. This emphasis on purpose is important. It reminds us that the real value of writing is seldom predictable, because this derives from the needs of its authors, readers and their shared context. Our agenda is therefore refresh- ingly open and inclusive. In the five short years since it was launched, Writing-PAD has grown from 3 member institutions in the United Kingdom to more than 41 member institutions across Europe. Its success has led to the current period of self-funding, thanks to the contributions from many of our founding institutions. (Our founder members are listed overleaf). We are proud of the range, breadth and depth of articles in this first issue. Although the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice had its roots in the learning and teaching (L&T) community, it is also interested in studio practice and the research that informs it. The complexity of this mixture became obvious from many discussions at our conferences, e-forum and workshops. They reflect a historical predicament that emerged over hun- dreds of years. Erik Borg’s article ‘Putting writing in fine art and design JWCP 1 (1) pp. 5–11 © Intellect Ltd 2007 5 JWCP_1.1_01_edt_Julia.qxd 12/10/07 5:12 PM Page 6 education into context’ illustrates this very well (Pp 83–99). Strangely, then, writing for, through, or within A&D practice has remained a surpris- ingly under-theorized practice within colleges and universities. That there was always a mystery about its true purpose is not especially remarkable. When the UK government compelled art schools to add writing to their syllabus via the Coldstream reports of 1960 and 1970 it did not actually insist on a specific genre. However, what emerged leaned heavily on a humanities model of writing. With hindsight, it is easy to say that this model was a poor fit to the deeper needs of studio practitioners. What is more surprising is that it has taken thirty or forty years for a creative grassroots response to emerge. This is not to say that all educators meekly accepted the status quo. But what we have found is that isolated individu- als had been quietly developing alternative models, often without financial support or official recognition. The Writing-PAD project has fostered a supportive network that not only brings together tutors from across the disciplines, but also from across the roles of studio tutors, theory staff, learning development and support, and learning and teaching coordinators. We expect this momen- tum to continue, augmented by the growing interest and involvement of research students. In one of its initial tasks, Writing-PAD collected and analysed different case studies to see, amongst other things, how writing methods reconcile studio practice and theory. The idea of the ‘reflective practitioner’ (Schön 1983) has become well-enough accepted to enable meaningful discussion across many professional boundaries. We hope that the Journal will appeal to more professionals from within the ‘creative industries’, although we may seem somewhat sheltered from the day-to- day imperatives of the commercial world. There may be certain advan- tages to this position. For one thing, it is easier to frame radical questions, take a long-term view or challenge received ideas. Why, for example, do we continue to use the term ‘academic rigour’ when we inhabit such as fast- changing world (cf. Wood 2000)? And why must we see dyslexia only as a learning disability, rather than as a positive condition that could inspire a saner education policy (cf. Weaver 2003; Graves 2003)? Our members have explored the role of writing within studio practice (Lydiat 2003), the integration of studio, theory and educational support (Key 2005), the role and nature of assessment (Lockheart 2002) and the centrality of reflective practice (Raein 2003). We have looked at alternative forms of writing (Edwards 2002; Marks 2003; Francis 2004), asked how writing studies might become better integrated (Roth 2004) and shown better ways for writing to be embedded within study practices (Garratt 2004). Some of our members have explored the parallels between design and writing (Julier & Mayfield 2005; Orr and Blythman 2005), how visuals can be used in the teaching of writing (Lockheart and Barnett, 2003), or looked at aspects of the writing process (Lofting 2003; Kill 2005) and the uses of IT (Cunliffe-Charlesworth 2004). All of these papers can be accessed through our website: http://www.writing-pad.ac.uk. Although it shows much of our history and some current activities a website cannot do what a paper journal can do. For one thing, it is not a collectible resource for the bookshelf. We aim to make the Journal a useful archive for new ideas and helpful information. We plan, for example, to focus on key topics, such as 6 Julia Lockheart and John Wood JWCP_1.1_01_edt_Julia.qxd 12/10/07 5:12 PM Page 7 co-authorship, writing in performance, writing within interactive systems (e.g. Web 2), image-based relational writing, visual spatial ability and its relationship to the thorny question of dyslexia. For many of these we will invite guest editors to devote a whole Journal issue to a specialist topic. For example, we have commissioned Nancy Roth to manage a whole issue on the work of Vilém Flusser. Other likely themes include a review of writers who somehow make art or design using text, rather than drawing. (See Harriet Edward’s review of John Chris Jones’s book The Internet and Everyone, Pp 103–105). We will also devote special issues to events that are especially relevant, such as ‘Writing Encounters: The Space Between Words’: a conference that will take place at York St John University in September 2008. This issue will focus on writing practices with/in perfor- mance and will be edited by Claire Hind and Susan Orr. Another edition will explore issues concerning the JOE (Journal or Equivalent) Group at Manchester Metropolitan, to be edited by Tim Dunbar. Although the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice is not Writing-PAD’s first publication, it looks likely to become our main focus – augmented by some web development – over the next few years. It will continue to repre- sent its founder members and their institutions, but we are also determined to increase its circulation and attract serious critical respect. We believe this can be achieved by keeping in touch with the best thinkers, and by ensur- ing that the Journal’s first task is to inspire and support everyone in A&D who finds writing frustrating, elusive, arcane or inhospitable. It is for his- torical reasons that writing to/for/within creative practice has failed to attract mainstream interest, even though it is a perennial necessity for all of us. In the past, we expected students to write about context – even though the purpose of this word was never discussed. Perhaps their tutors believed that the act of writing like a social scientist would, magically, purify the soul or transform humble practitioners into wiser citizens. These issues remain complex and controversial. However, they should no longer be discounted as a parochial debate for worthy educators. In the age of global warming, they are important to all of us. A few years ago the architect Frank Gehry was quoted as saying, ‘I don’t do context.’ Whilst this may have been an ironic quip, it may remind us that the Enlightenment, and the Romantic movement led, among many other things, to a peculiar kind of western arrogance that came to seem normal, even captivating. This may help to explain why the word ‘creative’ (in the Journal’s title) is now a buzzword. In today’s A&D schools, the idea of creative licence is still sometimes offered as a legitimate way to avoid social, political or ecological responsibility.
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