ELIA Leadership Symposium 2023 Agenda

Explore Manchester’s rich art scene with a tour of key galleries, from the traditional to the contemporary. You will be guided by Manchester School of Art’s Gavin MacDonald – expert in art theory and practice.

Based in the new School of Digital Arts, this tour will let you explore a range of cutting-edge technical facilities that only recently opened. The Technical Team will guide you round specialist facilities that include a digital innovation and UX lab, film studios, green screens, edit suites, sound, music and production studios, a screening room, and a gallery.

The Special Collections Museum Tour provides access to a range of historic and contemporary collections and archives relating to art and design. The collections have been used to support teaching since the establishment of the Manchester School of Design in 1838. Today, the collections are still at the heart of teaching, learning and research at the university, and are also enjoyed by the wider community.

Manchester Poetry Library is the North West’s first public poetry library and the only one in the UK to be supported by a university. Based in the UNESCO City of Literature, the Library’s mission is to imagine, make and grow a leading collection of contemporary poetry with our members and partners. The library aims to create an exceptional poetry research centre, a space where poetry belongs to everyone, and can be enjoyed and celebrated as part of a fulfilling life. Working locally, national and internationally with the widest range of people to create a place where language is celebrated in all its diversity, and where the next generation of writers and readers are made.

A ‘hard hat’ tour taking you around the site of the Grosvenor West refurbishment programme giving you an insight into University’s capital programme. Grosvenor West, originally opened in 1881, and a Grade II listed building is the second oldest Art School in the United Kingdom. The building is currently undergoing a refurbishment programme to bring the building back to its former glory and significantly improve accessibility. (note this tour is of a current building site, so PPE will be provided)
(Please note there is no lift access in the building so is currently not fully accessible)

Manchester Fashion Institute is one of the uk’s largest fashion schools, creating a culture of collaboration, creativity and entrepreneurship at Manchester Metropolitan University. The tour will introduce you to MFI's approach to sustainability, newly funded Robotics Live Lab and our Innovation Zone.

Today in the UK somebody from privilege is 4 times more likely to be working in the creative and cultural industries and twice as likely to attend a top University. Griffiths set up Arts Emergency to create privilege for people without privilege to better their chances of contributing to the culture they live in. With a background in activism and social justice, he asks how we and society as a whole, can contribute fully to culture to ensure a good and just future for our species and planet. This should be a core function, a mission statement for University Arts and Humanities departments, along with art, music and drama schools. But it’s not! Why?

This workshop will engage participants in a thought-provoking exploration of reality, transformation, and the role of access to arts and culture. Drawing inspiration from "The Matrix" (film), Plato's Cave (philosophical allegory), and Kafka's "Metamorphosis" (literature), participants will embark on a journey of critical thinking, envisioning a new structure, and reimagining access as both a monster and a hero.

Inclusivity in Higher Arts Education demands a proactive approach to addressing systemic biases existing across all aspects of the sector. Authentic inclusivity entails not only increasing representation but also fostering an environment where underrepresented voices are heard and valued. Is Higher Arts Education a transformative force in this space, empowering students to challenge norms, enriching artistic discourse, and reflecting the multifaceted world they will contribute to as artists? If not, why?

Generative AI Art is here to stay. What is creativity in a post AI world? Surely the goal of AI tools should be to enhance human creativity rather than attempt to supplant it. This workshop will focus on what is creativity in a post AI world with a discussion on what are the current challenges and opportunities. Participants will then be asked to further speculate on how Generative AI Art will change practice. Will there be a bottom level of creative work produced that uses AI technology and a top level of creative practice whereby human creativity is utilised and valued?

In this session Walker considers the value of creative methods to society and what this might mean for the future of design education and research, especially at a time when many people, and especially young people, are becoming increasingly distressed about a future threatened by global heating and unprecedented levels of biodiversity loss. Over the last 30 years or more, the issues associated with sustainable futures have become increasingly acute. In many ways, these issues result from a worldview that prioritizes rationalism, innovation and growth. With this in mind, Walker ponders on the way the world will end?

Artisan-led and grassroots creative movements allow pockets of agency and resistance for women makers at the margin and for the development of a new leadership praxis that highlights arbitrary tensions between modern and heritage contexts. These leadership patterns are contained in craft, memory, lore and traditional practice and reflected in the challenges that women makers face when dealing with forces larger and more powerful than themselves. What if the answer lay in redressing structural and power imbalances between dichotomies like urban-rural, male-female and modern-traditional?

The arts and Higher Arts Education are impacted by new technologies like AI, digitalisation, and online platforms. Generative AI has caused an uproar in the world of higher education recently, while many practising artists have experimented with this technology for years. Bridging the gap between artistic experimentation and technology-centred solutions is crucial, as current public policy and innovation management prioritise the latter. What is the role of artists in this burgeoning field characterised by so many rapid and unforeseen developments—in a sphere of activity marked by so much promise and so much fear?

Inclusivity in Higher Arts Education demands a proactive approach to addressing systemic biases existing across all aspects of the sector. This means honouring the cultural groundedness of students, faculty, and staff while creating safe spaces for expression inside and outside the curriculum and learning from diverse communities how to embed issues of access into everything we do. bélidor asks several provocative questions including - “How can the art school remain actual even under the weight of their legacy?”

This workshop explores a series of questions in two parts through discussion and group work. McNulty asks participants to ‘Reflect’ on: What does future art school leadership look like? What does leadership feel like? Then with ‘Action’ in mind participants will discuss: What knowledge would you pass onto future leaders? What needs to change in our curriculums? The session will be facilitated by Shelley McNulty along with young lecturers from the department for Design who are 1-2years into their academic career. They are our future Art School leaders.

Time to think back from imagined futures where creative agency reclaims its role as driver of change, inspired by the freedoms of arts-and-technology experimentation. Join this hands-on session with the "Creative Agency Circle", a learning model and toolkit designed to facilitate the playful exploration of where we are and might want to go in the conversation on future skills.

This session will consider the value of criticism in arts education, and particularly design criticism. Unlike art criticism, design criticism is virtually unknown. Consequently, design carries on as usual creating short-lived products and endless novelty and promoting consumerism. This, despite the fact that global heating is threatening our way of life. Walker believes design criticism could be an important element of design education. It could ask if design can contribute to depth, meaning and responsibility, spiritual needs, moderation, beauty and virtue, and if so, how.

The political dilemmas in the contemporary world demand us to engage in four key practices as summed up by Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos: democratise, decolonise, decommodify, and depatriarchalise. At the core of these practices, is a call on us to unlearn, to unhabit, to re-associate, to rewire and re-order our lived realities, imaginations – indeed to unestablish ourselves. In this series of games and stories, Ogutu explores the call to unestablish – as individuals, as a collective, as institutions, as a society. What are the processes involved, where are the points of resistance, doubt, discontent, and disconnection?

Join artist and architect, Simone Ridyard for an urban sketching workshop at Mayfield Depot and Freight Island, rounding off Dan Dubowitz's Wednesday walk and tour of this massive regeneration area. Simone is an architect and senior lecturer in Interior Design at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has an international profile as an architectural illustrator through her work with Urban Sketchers: UrbanSketchers.org Simone set up Urban Sketchers Manchester in 2012 and her research centres on architectural reportage and in-situ drawing. Her workshops specialise in understanding perspective drawing.
Simone’s workshop begins with an introduction to Urban Sketchers followed by time to sketch in this post-industrial wonderland on the edge of the city. She’ll be on hand to give tips and offer advice. The session will finish with a throw down in the spirit of Urban Sketchers, where we share our drawings. We can provide drawing materials, but feel free to bring your own, and please dress for the Manchester weather.

This tour takes in spectacular and significant buildings, plays music and explores Manchester's role in social, cultural, political and scientific development. We will start on the Manchester Met campus, at the splendid Manchester School of Art Benzie building then visit Grosvenor East where the Pan-African Congress took place in October 1945, a landmark on the path to independence for African nations. We'll then walk into the city passing sites associated with Emmeline Pankhurst, Friedrich Engels, John Dalton, Ernest Rutherford, The Smiths, Joy Division and many others. There will also be stories of less well-known Mancunians and adopted Mancunians. The tour guarantees to be informative and entertaining.

Explore Manchester’s rich art scene with a tour of key galleries, from the traditional to the contemporary. You will be guided by Manchester School of Art’s Gavin MacDonald – expert in art theory and practice.