Last week I visited the UK and had some wonderful conversations about creativity and practice-based research.
On 1 May 2025, I met up with Matt Gooderson, the amazing music producer and all-purpose thinker and doing-things person who is now Program Director for MA Music Management at City St George’s, University of London.
We also walked to the Barbican Centre where the Barbican Music Library is currently showing ‘Black Sound London‘, an exhibition celebrating the DIY spirit of British Black music, with some great photographs, posters, bits of old DIY tech, and memories. And great to see my Westminster colleague Shirley Thompson on the wall of heroes! (Photos on Instagram here).
Then on 7 May, I went to Winchester School of Art, where I had a very enjoyable time talking about practice-based research with their PhD students. Very interesting thoughtful people doing a range of different things! (Some photos of Instagram here including a comment from Katherine Marland about tangling and epiphany).
I found it interesting and heartening that even in the UK, in 2025, where practice-based research has been established for rather a long time, there’s still a big appetite for talking about practice-based research as an idea, an experience, a set of complicated feelings, and a concept which is still emerging and developing.
And the next day, my practice-based UK tour took me to Bath Spa University’s amazing Locksbrook Campus – a really inspiring creative environment! They have converted an old furniture factory (well, an incredible furniture factory building designed by Nicholas Grimshaw in the 1970s) into such a nice space with many kinds of creative workshop. A great vibe and really nice people. (My Instagram photos show the poster from their practice-based research conference in April with so many things going on – wonderful!).
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