The Patient as Person Full Report
In May Donald Urquhart asked me to do a presentation on his behalf at a conference called ‘The Patient as Person’ hosted at the Albertus Institute in Edinburgh. They have just published the full report here.
Along side other presentations on the policy context and the philosophical issues I presented on the physical environment and how Donald Urquhart creates human spaces in healthcare contexts. Obviously Donald isn’t the only person/artist/designer working this way or tackling these challenges, but it was very useful to focus on one practice and the key issues that one process of research and development has highlighted. What is the expression? “Other artists are available”?
What art have I seen?
Saints Alive at the National Gallery
and
Memory Palace at the V&A
Saints Alive is as interesting a response to the contents of the National Gallery as I have seen in this long running series of Artist Associates (not that I’ve seen them all). The images, drawings and collages are worth spending a lot of time with, and the kinetic sculptures are as visceral as they needed to be – when Thomas’ finger pokes Christ’s chest it is scary.
The Memory Palace is better than I expected having seen the programme on last week, and I thought it would be good. I have to say that I think the curators could have pushed the idea of illustration harder. There are some exciting responses to the potential of the project, but there are also 3d realisations of what are recogniseable graphic novel tropes and there are parts that are simply graphic novel elements on walls, albeit beautifully done. Other parts, the printing (stereotype?) plates are stunning. It is interesting to see so many hands contributing to the telling of a story, and each brings its own subtle implications.
Collaborate Creatively at Firstsite
Very much looking forward to being at Firstsite in Colchester on Wednesday morning to talk about collaboration. We have two excellent presentations, one from Lyndall Phelps and the other done jointly by Lawrence Bradby and Jevan Watkins-Jones – there’s loads of links and info on the a-n website here: News | a-n.
Interview with Alec Finlay on Navigations
Alec Finlay was in residence at the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre, Glasgow. This is an Interview with Alec Finlay on Navigations.
A Graphic History of the Gezi Resistance – Bianet / English – Bianet
Remarkable image A Graphic History of the Gezi Resistance – Bianet / English – Bianet.
Afternow- the future of health
AFTERnow is a collaborative enquiry into the impact of modern culture on health involving Professor Phil Hanlon, Dr. Sandra Carlisle, Dr. David Reilly, Dr. Andrew Lyon and Dr. Margaret Hannah. Our work was funded for six years by the National Programme for Improving Mental Health and Well-being in Scotland and supported by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health.
As the era of seemingly endless growth comes to an end, we all need to find new ways to live our daily lives. How do we redefine ‘prosperity’ in this new world? How do we imagine and then create a future that is profoundly different from the way we live today? There is a growing realisation that we all have to learn how to live with less. So what’s the answer? How should we live?
I woz here
Susan T Grant asked me to do a bit of writing for one of the publications following her residency in Dalkeith and the associated exhibition at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop.
My text is on the I woz here project website here. I didn’t put footnotes in, but if you are interested in participatory practices and town artists, you might like to read David Harding’s piece on Town Artists here, and the Artworks Scotland programme here.
A Sense of Someplace
Lindsay Perth’s two year residency with NHS Forth Valley has resulted in a book of photomontages, A Sense of Someplace, made in collaboration with people using the mental health services. There is a launch event on the evening of 13 June at Streetlevel in Glasgow also featuring audio artist Mark Vernon.
Mr Seel’s Garden and other food research
Research projects on food
Concerns such as food miles, climate change and unhealthy lifestyles mean that local food-growing initiatives are becoming increasingly popular. But how do you make them work in a city? Memories of Mr Seel’s Garden, an AHRC-funded project funded through Connected Communities (webpage) [link], is delving into the history of local food production in Liverpool to find out.
‘If you want to learn about food sustainability, one way of getting ideas and being inspired is by researching your area to see how people used to get their food,’ explains project lead Dr Michelle Bastian of the University of Edinburgh. ‘Finding out about the past can help us think about different possibilities for the future.’
Mr Seel’s Garden – Arts & Humanities Research Council.
Also saw this through the Cultural History group
Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD working on food distribution networks between 1920 and 1975. This studentship is one of eight fully-funded awards made by the newly-established Collaborative Doctoral Partnership managed by the Science Museum Group. The project will be supervised by Colin Divall (University of York) and Ed Bartholomew (National Railway Museum, York). The studentship, which is funded for three years full-time equivalent, will begin in September 2013.
The Studentship
How and what we eat is high on public and political agenda. While the particulars are new, the underlying issues are long-standing. Industrialization of the UK’s food supply from the late-C18th enabled unprecedented levels of urbanization and population growth but destroyed local, regional and even national sources, encouraging consumption based more on price than nutritional value. Today’s globalized food-chains can deliver huge amounts of high-quality food: but they also allow unscrupulous suppliers to escape the scrutiny of national and even international regulators.
This project explores one critical shift in Britain’s food supply in the last century: the change over the roughly half-century from 1920 from a rail- to a road-based system of distribution within the UK: from port to market, from farm yard to manufacturer, town shop or supermarket. This change was perhaps not inevitable: while the railways’ inter-war battle with road hauliers reflected traditional concerns such as price, reliability and security, neither service provider was able to demonstrate a clear advantage. Hence there was considerable scope to persuade consignors; the railways’ interest in marketing passenger traffic had some purchase with regard to goods. How did the railway companies imagine, market and deliver the distribution of food between the world wars? Railway publicity suggests that the high profile given to food distribution was partly an attempt to win public and political opinion to the companies’ case for more regulatory freedom. And how did road hauliers (including own-account operators like the food retailer Sainsbury’s) respond to such initiatives before 1939? What did consumers think?
The Second World War is sometimes portrayed as a temporary period of reprieve for rail distribution before the ‘inevitable’ victory of road haulage. But this project might explore whether the war and the following decade of austerity prevented the railways acting soon enough on pre-war ideas about how to handle food. It will also complement existing studies of British Railways’ attempts to reform freight services from the 1950s by analysing the particularities of food distribution. While exogenous factors such as better lorries, state-funded improvements to roads (notably motorways) and wider changes in food retailing (especially processed foods and just-in-time deliveries to supermarkets) arguably increasingly favoured road distribution, BR continued to develop and market services targeted at food suppliers and retailers until around the mid-1970s. How did BR work with the food industry? Did Beeching-era ideas like Freightliner have any role in the motorway age? Could the railways have kept more of the bulk transport of imported foodstuffs? Did food manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers drive innovations in food distribution, or did they adapt to initiatives from the haulage industry? And how did the road and rail operators ‘sell’ their competing notions of modern food supplies to consumers and politicians?
This is chiefly a qualitative study that will draw out the connections between the imagining of food distribution systems, the politics of building food chains, and the practices of using them in the period ca 1920-75.
How to Apply
Applicants must have a good undergraduate degree in history or other relevant discipline, and should normally also hold a master’s (or equivalent) degree in an appropriate subject. A full statement of the AHRC’s criteria for academic and residency eligibility is available on the AHRC website www.ahrc.ac.uk.
Applicants should submit a short curriculum vitae and a brief letter outlining both their
qualifications for the studentship and their ideas about how the research might develop. This should be in the form of a single MS Word, Open Office or PDF file no more than three pages in total, using a typeface no smaller than 11 point. The names and contact details of two academic referees should also be supplied. Applications should be sent to Colin Divall at colin.divall@york.ac.uk to arrive no later than 12.00 Wednesday 12th June 2013. Applicants should not at this stage make a formal application to the University of York.
Interviews for short-listed candidate will be held at the National Railway Museum, York, in the morning of Friday 28th June 2013.
For further information, please contact either of the project supervisors: Colin Divall colin.divall@york.ac.uk or Ed Bartholomew ed.bartholomew@nrm.org.uk.
CHRIS FREMANTLE 
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