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Decolonising the curriculum – a ‘serious need’? thumb

Decolonising the curriculum – a ‘serious need’?

Dr. Andrea Stultiens replied that to her decolonising meant adding perspective, not changing from one perspective to another: ‘I’m making my gaze relative by placing other gazes next to it’.

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Breaking into the boys’ club thumb

Breaking into the boys’ club

For centuries, women have fought against adversity to pursue artistic careers in what was (and arguably still is) a man’s world.  They have suffered the humiliation of having their works passed off under someone else’s name, of being barred access to training, of struggling to do what men have taken for granted (simply represent themselves on canvas or celluloid) and of having their pieces relegated to dark corners of museum and gallery storerooms.  

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Study event review: OCA South West – Global perspectives thumb

Study event review: OCA South West – Global perspectives

With such a large multidisciplinary group, I wanted to start the day with a lecture on ‘Global Perspectives in Contemporary Creative Arts’. I’m aware that teaching and learning around a historical context for the arts can have a Western bias that feels out of touch with the much broader globalised discourse that is happening today.

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Women’s History Month: Aemilia Lanyer thumb

Women’s History Month: Aemilia Lanyer

Since March is Women’s History Month it seems like a good time to celebrate the work of women writers from an earlier age. Fortuitously, as joint editor of NAWE’s Higher Education Journal, Writing in Practice No 5, I read an article by Sally O’Reilly analysing her approach to writing a historical novel, Dark Aemelia,  (Myriad Editions, 2015) about Shakespeare and his relationship with Aemilia Lanyer, a contemporary poet, and a possible identity for the Dark Lady of his sonnets.

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Transitioning thumb

Transitioning

My old school. Well they’ve still got the 11+ but never mind, I’ll  go along all the same, do a talk and maybe a workshop. They still sing the Harrow School Song as their school song: the tramp of the 22 men  in a single sex girls’ school. Well maybe they are transitioning. After all this is LGBT history month.

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LGBT artists thumb

LGBT artists

February is LGBT History Month – a national initiative focused on recognising lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, their lives and experiences, and promoting equality. Marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and the birth of the modern Pride movement, this year a number of galleries and museums, from London to Liverpool and Birmingham to Brighton, are running talks, exhibitions, film screenings and workshops to highlight previously hidden or unknown LGBT histories in their collections.

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