INFORMAL PEER LEARNING BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS IN BRISTOL AND SELECTED UK CITIES OUTSIDE LONDON How do contemporary artists learn from their peers outside of formal education and what motivates them to do so? MEGAN LOUISE WAKEFIELD A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University of the West of England, Bristol for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy This research programme was carried out in collaboration with Spike Island, Bristol Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education February 2013 1 ABSTRACT Informal Peer Learning between Contemporary Artists in Bristol and Selected UK Cities Outside London How do contemporary artists learn from their peers outside of formal education and what motivates them to do so? This research has been carried out as part of a collaborative doctoral award with partners Spike Island Art and Design Centre and University of the West of England. It employs a mixed methods approach, including participatory action research, reflexive practice and semi-structured interviews to explore artists’ peer learning in the context of literature from education theory, network theory, philosophy, art theory and sociology. It takes as research participants, artists from the Spike Associates Group, Spike Island, Bristol, and artists from self-organised groups and organisationally facilitated membership groups in several UK cities outside London. It found that peer interactions between artists are particularly significant in times of transition when peer learning pivots on mutual recognition, countering isolation, nurturing self-determination and accessing resources. The construction and reconstruction of practitioner subjectivities and practice identities is a significant peer learning process, often incorporating the initiation of spaces where practice identities can be temporarily suspended. Artists engage with artist-led groups in subtly different ways to organisationally facilitated membership groups. Participation in the former enables experimentation with roles and competencies in a fluid environment where a sense of shared purpose and ownership prevails. The latter are utilised less as ‘communities’ and more as resources to be exploited and graduated through. Informal conversation is a vital site of learning and a catalyst for practice and peer critique, although an important staging post against which to measure practice trajectories, is often problematic due to tensions arising from the need for challenge as well as support. Aspiration towards reciprocity, hospitality and generosity represents a common ethics of entanglement. However, this breaks down where there are conflicting beliefs about what constitutes exchanges of equivalent value. Visibility is a highly valued commodity amongst artists and they look to their peers for strategies to make practice visible to appropriate parties and to gain a clearer overview of regional and national artistic networks and communities. Much previous research on informal learning has been conducted in the fields of work-based learning or community education. This thesis provides a much-needed microanalysis of learning processes that occur in temporary communities that are at the same time social and professional spaces. It makes valuable tacit processes visible in these situations, and the research findings can be used to initiate, adapt and inform learning programmes in arts centres, self-organised groups and other informal settings. 2 CONTENTS ABSTRACT Page 7 CHAPTER ONE Introduction, Context and Methodology Page 7 Introduction and Context The Spike Associates and Related Membership Schemes Organisational Culture and Learning Artist-Led Culture and Learning Changes in Formal Art Education and the ‘Educational Turn’ in Contemporary Art Practice Knowledge(s) in Learning between Artists Learning Theories and Non-Formal Learning Between Artists Participation - Social Constructionism, Situated Learning in Communities of Practice Network Theories and Learning Experiential Learning and Art The Relevance of Theories of ‘Radical Pedagogy’ Philosophical Perspectives Work, Precarity and Artists’ Post-Formal Learning Political Context Page 50 Methodology Approach Entanglement as a Research Strategy Insider-Outsider Positioning Development of Research Questions: Selection of and Access to Participants Data Collection Methods Interviewing Participatory Action Research Data Analysis Coding Strategic Data Analysis Theoretical Sampling and Participatory Action Research Developing Higher Level Concepts and Thesis Structure Visual Elements Ethical Considerations Anonymity 3 Page 81 CHAPTER TWO Transitions: Artists’ Peer Learning After Graduation Introduction Self-Belief, Legitimation, Affirmation and Belonging Self-Determination, Motivation and Confidence: Turning Away from University and Informal Mentoring Access to Resources, Support and Opportunities: Transition and Artists’ Groups Remaining in a Regional City Page 120 CHAPTER THREE Identities: Learning Practice Identities and Artistic Subjectivities Introduction Learning Practice Identities Reflexively with Peers Negotiating Identities: Artist-Led Projects and Organisations Suspending Practice Identities Artistic Subjectivities: Group and Organisational Associations. Page 158 CHAPTER FOUR Entanglements and Encounters: The Social Structures and Relationships of Artists’ Peer Learning Introduction Conceptualising a Landscape of Encounters and Entanglements Page 161 Part 1: Participation with artist-led groups Gaining Access and Confidence: Friendship, Participation and the Social Space Discovering Competencies Collective Decision-Making Group Structure, Private Views and Events: Sustaining and Generating Energy Responsibility and Risk Artist-led Groups and Extended Communities Continuity of Learning in Groups 4 Page 194 Part 2: Participation with Organisationally Facilitated Membership Groups The Group and the Wider Organisation Membership Groups and the Influence of Artist-Led Activity Weak Ties, Flexibility and Transience The Membership Group as a Social Hub and Social Brokering Formal Structures, Clusters and Participation in Membership Groups Conflict and Change in Membership Groups Page 224 Part 3: Conversation as a Site of Peer Learning Conversation, Access and Participation Conversation and Reflexivity Conversation, the Pub and Group Cohesion Conversation, Collaboration and Stimulation Opening Up: Conversation and Connections Page 245 Part 4: Peer Critique Peer Critique and Disrupting the Status Quo Peer Critique and Meeting as Peers Peer Critique Punctuating Practice Page 265 Part 5: Ethics of Entanglement Hospitality, Generosity and Reciprocity between Artists Page 281 CHAPTER FIVE Viewing Points and Visibility in Peer Interactions Introduction Online Platforms: A Note on Recent Developments Recognition and Legitimation through Visible Affiliations Managing Visibility Managing an Online Profile Visibility through Peer Engagement and Making Knowledge Visible Inter- and Intra-Group Visibility Page 317 CONCLUSIONS Page 327 Appendix I Page 330 Appendix II Page 339 Appendix III Page 373 Appendix IV Page 359 Bibliography 5 LIST OF IMAGES Page: 22 Fig 1. … Page: 23 Fig 2. … Page: 97 Fig 3. Lombard Method Studios Page: 111 Fig 4. Bristol Drawing Club, 2010. Page: 111 Fig 5. Art & Education Reading Group, Islington Mill, Salford. Page: 138 Fig. 6: Pure Flow, 2009, Digital Installation, Katy Connor. Page: 187 Fig 7. Cornuto, Central Reservation, Bristol, 2010. Page: 202 Fig 8. Spike Island Associate Space, 2010. Page: 202 Fig 9. Pleasure Island, Heather and Ivan Morrison, 2008, Eastside Projects, Birmingham 6 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION, CONTEXT AND METHODOLOGY Introduction My principal aim in this thesis is to analyse how contemporary artists learn from their peers outside of formal education and to uncover what motivates them to do so. The research offers an assessment of how meaning is co-constructed in specific situations and what kind of peer-led structures, relationships, practices and forms of knowledge artists value. I aim to provide a foundation for future work by asking the question: ‘how can informal peer learning best be supported?’ I take a mixed-methods approach and my core respondents are members of the Spike Associates programme at Spike Island Art and Design Centre in Bristol. I also reference other Bristol- based artist-led initiatives and art organisations with which members of the Spike Associates engage, or have engaged. Additional respondents are members of artist-led groups or organisationally facilitated membership groups (in the mode of the Spike Associates) in UK cities outside London. Research questions that are contingent upon my aim are: How do artists construct and maintain situations of interaction around art practice? How do these situations affirm and progress both the development of artists’ practice identity and their sense of an artistic subjectivity? 7 What are the recurrent features of these interactions: cognitive, emotional and physical? Can these situations be conceptualised as learning and if they can, how? My objective is to develop a convincing and appropriate voice with which to animate manifold participant accounts (as well as my own), without reducing them to narratives of simple knowledge transaction. Rather than looking at these spaces and processes in terms of the acquisition of skills alone, I would like to identify descriptors for a complex landscape of experience that fosters the conditions for exploratory, speculative, as well as goal-orientated