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Reynolds, E, 2025. Alternative to what? Exploring alternative art schools through spatiality, participation and performative tools. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.
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Abstract
Situated within the intersections of art pedagogies, art school histories, speculative education, and spatial theories, this practice research PhD investigates the characteristics of alternative art schools to establish the edges of the Alternative Art School and identify what makes the alternative in art pedagogy. The research enters, connects and encounters alternative art school spaces through an embodied investigation of spatiality and participation. An overarching interest has framed this study: What and where are the spaces of alternative art schools? Can the alternative art school be situated outside of the normative pattern that currently determines the present and potential future forms of the art institution?
Alternative art schools are currently under-researched, with existing studies primarily focused on peer learning, self-organised art education, and socially engaged projects within the context of radical pedagogy and institutional critique. Offered here is a distinctive longitudinal study presented within a Research Catalogue, written exegesis, and analogue archival boxes that allow for the voices within the alternative art schools and their spatialities to be at the fore. This study presents a novel form of extensive multi-layered social, historical, and graphical narrative.
The research employs a bricolage methodology, following Brad Haseman's advocacy for a performative paradigm that initiates transformative change. In this context, the investigation takes as a focus the systems and spaces of the alternative art school, moving beyond representation to mobilise research as practice. Drawing upon theories that include Black studies, performance studies, institutional critique, and non-linguistic approaches, this research approach is vii directed by Chantal Mouffe's notion of the agonistic and Michel Serres’s concept of the parasite to introduce an interventionist and embodied form of investigation within an alternative art school. As a practice-research PhD, the work integrates drawing, moving image, sound, field recordings, and text as tools for both creating and presenting knowledge sharing, through processes of mapping.
The written exegesis is defined in two parts. Part 1 contributes a deep mapping and establishes the alternative art school context, histories, timeframes, geographical locations, and manifestations. In doing so, the study applies modes of listing and diagramming, presenting a new reading of the alternative art school. Part 2 introduces a distinctive research methodology and framework designed to intervene, disrupt, and consider the necessary and possible approaches to examine participation and spatiality within alternative art school spaces. This methodology informed a more embodied research mode, bringing together the polyfocal perspectives of three protagonist roles within a primary case study of The Other Master of Art (TOMA), a UK-based alternative art school.
The overall PhD claims three contributions that can be used to define the edges of the alternative art school: firstly, a deep mapping of alternative art schools, secondly a case study of TOMA and participatory voices; and finally, a Diagonal Practices Toolkit for individuals interested in establishing alternative art schools or those conducting research in the field of art education.
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Description: | Abridged version |
| Creators: | Reynolds, E. |
| Contributors: | Name Role NTU ID ORCID |
| Date: | February 2025 |
| Rights: | The copyright in this work is held by the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the author. |
| Divisions: | Schools > School of Art and Design |
| Record created by: | Jeremy Silvester |
| Date Added: | 27 Jun 2025 14:44 |
| Last Modified: | 27 Jun 2025 14:44 |
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53841 |
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1738-2001Actions (login required)
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