LAUIL601 - RESEARCH PROPOSAL, FEEDBACK & REFLECTION

W/C 8th Oct GROUP TUTORIAL FEEDBACK & PROJECT PROPOSAL

RESEARCH QUESTION
-Industrial heritage and community identity: The place of craft in working class Britain

METHODOLOGY
-Industry/ Craft/ Folk art/ Heritage
-Textiles, illustrative fabrics
-Printed matter/ letterpress
-Fibre arts & weaving
-Analogue/ mechanical processes in contemporary context
-Promotion of community pride

PRACTICAL DIRECTION
-Mining banners as central inspiration (George Tutill)
-Contemporary weaving
-Typography and sign painting
-Printmaking & analogue processes
-Exhibition/ Creative workshops promoting pride and celebration of heritage

ASPECTS NEEDING DEFINITION
-How industrial heritage is linked with physical practical methodologies
-Craftivism & social identity
-Community and the politics of craft

ASPECTS THAT NEED EXPANDING
-Relationship between the main industries of study; textiles, mining, printing
-Relationship between community, craft and heritage
-Poetry and application of language/ text
-Link between practice and work; ritual vs. industry; mining galas vs. textiles factories


PRESENTATION & FEEDBACK REFLECTION (500 words)
As a first session, this group tutorial worked well to deconstruct my ideas outside of my own research and gather external viewpoints on the different avenues I have started to explore, and consider how I can establish a strong synthesis between my theoretical concerns and practical goals.

I felt from the feedback I got that I have a fairly solid contextual grounding, my research question has appropriate and substantiated opportunities for theoretical investigation and thorough practical exploration too. From the feedback, I can now see that I may have been trying to juggle too many aspects of industry when in fact I can focus primarily on mining and link industries such as print and textiles in my practical work rather than over complicating the theories and case studies with multiple industries. This certainly seems to offer greater clarity within the research as the issues of community identity seem much more pertinent and cemented in the mining communities than in any others. 


Areas to develop are the clarity of the relationship between craft and community, as it is perhaps easy to assume that the audience know as much about the topic as I do, when I really need to approach the topic from the perspective of it being new to the reader; how can I be explicit yet substantiated with the connection between communities and the crafts they practice, and the relationship this has with their industry. Moving forward with the project, I will focus on this relationship in terms of a discussion between social ritual and industry.

In the critique, I took the opportunity to gather opinions from my peers on my wider intent for practice. I felt as though my initial proposals for this research project were pushing me away from a conventional illustration practice. My practice has been becoming increasingly concerned with text and theory and I was concerned that the topic I was pursuing would push me even further away from conventional drawing. On reflection, the crit actually aided my visions for the practical strand of the project as I unpicked some areas of study into the following practical avenues; mechanical printing and the use of type for community gain, and textiles art and the use of textiles in social rituals. 

Moving forward, something that will be pertinent to both the development of the project and my emerging practice, is the flexibility to push the boundaries of an illustration practice. From talking through my research and ideas with peers, I have been able to see that text and process is pertinent to the project over drawing or conventional image-making. As the research continues to grow, I will be informed by multi-disciplinary case studies and the body of work will be built around meaning making and identity rather than evolving a direct illustration practice. To drive this, I will begin to focus on colloquial language and dialect as the means by which analogue outcomes achieve narrative.