In the doing: Practice-engaged research in art galleries, museums and heritage

Join us for this event hosted by the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage, where Dr Helen Graham will be in conversation with Dr Robert Knifton.

This critical conversation will begin by drawing out the current conceptual and political stakes in art gallery, museum and heritage studies. This includes long standing debates concerning definitions; what is understood to constitute heritage, voice and power; inclusion, exclusion and processes of political control; and how heritage is managed, displayed and governed.

While these are persistent and familiar issues for art gallery, museum and heritage studies, the critical conversation will focus on new insights into these processes and dynamics that emerge through practice-engaged approaches.

Rob will discuss recent projects including the implications of archiving art school practices, broader issues for creative industries around archiving and theorising the digital within music heritage.

In dialogue with Rob, Helen will explore the action and participatory inquiry methodologies she is currently using both in her work on York, where she is identifying and enacting the capacities of heritage and democracy in local change making, and in the Inclusive Archive project, a collaborative project with self-advocates with learning disabilities to develop an archive that works in ways which calibrate and enable pathways between the personal and the public.

The conversation will be structured to involve all present from the beginning and throughout, seeking to model and test the very ideas the session will seek to illuminate.

The venue is Room 2.09 in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University Road, University of Leeds. See here for a campus map.

The event is free and all are welcome.

This event is organised by the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies.

Images from top:
PhD student exhibition at Knights Park Campus, Kingston University in 2015 co-curated by Rob Knifton with Ben Angwin. Image: Ezzidin Alwan, Kingston University.
Helen Storey and Tony Ryan, ‘Herself’ dress from Catalytic Clothing. Credit: Life on the Outskirts. Helen Storey Foundation/Kingston University. Photography: Ezzidin Alwan.