Beyond evidence: theorising arts and health
ESRC Seminar 24 April 2014
Glasgow University
In a deliberately provocative intervention to the emerging health-and-arts field, this day seminar engages social theoretical resources in order to help elaborate how researchers and practitioners might experiment epistemologically in ways that encourage a movement ‘beyond scientism’ and recycled debates about evidence. 4 speakers will use their work to speculate around the following thematics which traverse the day:
- ‘Rights to experiment’: understanding arts impacts through ideas of justice rather than collection of evidence
- ‘Working at boundaries of evidence’: the role of phenomenologies of artistic practice and sensings of the arts
- ‘Epistemologies and artistic cultures’: questioning what happens as ways of thinking merge with artistic practice
We intend the presentations to prompt discussions about how different kinds of art, artists, researchers, bodies and capacities are enlivened through new relationships which the arts-in-health field might hold potential for. The emphasis of the day will be on critical reflection of the arts-and-health field.
Speakers include: Dr Hester Parr and Professor Sarah Atkinson: Introducing ‘beyond evidence’; Professor Alison Phipps (Glasgow) Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies (Creativity Culture and Faith) and published poet on: ‘Certainty and Doubt: Knowing arts and health from the edge of language’; Dr Gary Ansdell (Director of Education, Nordoff Robbins Institute) on transformative music: ‘Practicing Goethe’s ‘delicate empiricism’ in music therapy research: Finding value and saving the phenomenon’ Dr Bethan Evans (Liverpool) and Dr Charlotte Cooper on ‘Queering arts and health: engaging with fat activism’; Professor Christine Borland (Newcastle) on ‘Circles of Focus’: A collaborative visual art project (with Brody Condon) on body donation for creative and artistic research. Discussants: Tia De Nora (Exeter) and Hayden Lorimer (Glasgow)
The full programme, venue and registration details are available here.