Welcome to the Arts Faculty Research blog, a showcase of ongoing research and practice by the staff and faculty clusters of Hull School of Art and Design, Hull School of Performance Arts and Harrogate School of Art and Design.

Here you will find outlines and case studies of various projects created and developed across the Faculty of Arts, ongoing research projects investigated by staff, as well as staff and course profiles enabling you to see not only see and to give an insight into the methodologies and staff experience that drive our students projects.

For further information:
email – info@artdesignhull.ac.uk
tel – 01482 480970

Art & Design students’ responses to NSS

Art & Design in a seismically active landscape: responding to the NSS

29 Jan 2014

Chelsea College of Art and Design University of the Arts London
a HEA GLAD (Group for Learning in Art and Design) conference

 

The conference presented updated findings from research by Professor Mantz Yorke (Visiting Professor, Lancaster University) Professor Bernadatte Blair (Emeritus Professor, Art and Design Pedagogy, Kingston University) and Professor David Vaughan (Principal, Cumbria Institute of Arts)

Is Art and Design disadvantaged by NSS? – Professor Mantz YorkeThis is a new section of research which adds to an ongoing research project. The project has already established that there are issues with NSS scoring for Art and Design regarding certain questions, particularly in relation to feedback and course organisation and management.

This research compares a number of courses in post-’92 institutions:  Performing Arts, Nursing, Imaginative Writing, Biology, Law, Business, History.  It seeks to establish:

• What proportion of results is attributable to the nature of Art and Design?
• What part might part-time staffing play?

39 institutions were included in the survey.

• Compared with the other subject areas above, Design and Creative Arts has the highest percentage of all part-time staff (66%)
• Business is closest of the above subjects to Design and Creative Arts in number of part-time staff employed and the effects on results.
• Medical and nursing students also have problems with the question regarding course management and organisation

The big picture conclusion is that the higher the number of part-time staff, the lower the NSS scores BUT 1) the effect is small 2) there is wide variation at institutional level

Deal or no deal? Expectations and experiences of first year Art and Design students (HEA research) – Professor David Vaughan

2009 GLAD NSS Research Project:  I can’t believe it’s not better:  the paradox of NSS scores for Art and Design.

• Art and Design (including Media and Performing Arts) makes a substantial contribution to the national economy
• It is a national success story

BUT

• When viewed through the lens of NSS, it does not come out well in comparison with other subject areas
• Is NSS fit for purpose
• Are the questions appropriate to these subjects?

Pedagogy of Art and Design:

• Do we take it for granted?
• Do we explain it?
• Do we understand it?
• Do we do enough to prepare our students for HE A&D study?

We need to ask these questions, but not in the way they are framed in the NSS.

The scenario above led to a research project with 1^st year students.  Responses were based on a Survey Monkey online survey of 20 institutions in June 2012.  778 valid responses were received.

The respondents:

• Mostly young white British
• 1^st time HE students
• The majority had taken a Foundation Studies Art & Design year or similar
• Less than 50% were in part-time employment
• Ratio 4:1 Female:Male
• 4 in 5 had enrolled at 1^st choice HEI
• 4 in 5 had visited the institution before enrolling

Most potent influences on choice:

• HEI location – London favourite!
• Visit
• Portfolio interview
• Prospectus
• Possible future career and lifestyle
• The majority were satisfied with information provided, apparently
• Pre-enrolment info helped to understand 1^st year of study
• 70% understood what the deal was with the HEI
• 2 in 3 students had attended induction
• Some felt they had a lot of info
• Some felt they had very little info

Positives:

‘every tutor has experienced life in the design industry’

‘the majority of tutors are visiting designers’

‘You can see tutors any time you want’

 

There were equally negative comments about tutor availability.

Assessment

 A high proportion of students agreed that assessment methods were as expected

Re feedback, there were positive statements about crits – students felt these were useful experience for life.

Mostly the learning environment met expectations

More than 4 in 5 students had access to practical equipment when they needed it

 

Shared studio space, paying for equipment and use of facilties produced a negative response. There were many comments about this cost in addition to course fees. THE PURPOSE OF STUDIO FEES AND WHAT THEY ARE USED FOR MUST BE MADE CLEAR.

Day to day organisation received average results, but were considered moderate to negative.
Students don’t seem to fully understand what course organisation means. 

 

Summary

For successful first year experience the following are key elements:

• Students understand the deal with HEIs – expectations on both sides
• Prior engagement with institution produces positive experience
• Minorities get parity of attention
• Good study accommodation
• Good resources readily available
• Good technical support (some students said they learnt more from technicians than from teachers – role of technicians very important in art colleges)
• Effective and efficient organisation

 

For successful transition to HE students need to be:

• Clear about every aspect of the course
• Clear about the different forms of assessment, criteria and reasons for choice of these
  Understand what to expect from crits and PODS (by watching videos of sessions?)

NOTE:  There is a much higher proportion of students with dyslexia on Art and Design courses than many other courses (often about 66%).  This may also apply to specialist Art and Design staff.  Should take into account the effect of this on organisational issues.

The nature of part-time employment makes a difference to staff involvement in management and organisation of the course.  The role of part-time tutors who are industry professionals is crucial, but this needs to be balanced by stability in organisation and management.

 

Effective staff show commitment through:

• quality of teaching
• One-on-one tutoring
• Consideration for students
• Prompt and informative feedback and feed forward – what they might improve
• Thoughtful and efficient course organisation

Does NSS have any influence on application or recruitment?

Has it changed the way we do things?

Does NSS stifle innovation because institutions become risk-averse?

2013 Student Academic Experience Survey (HEPI + WHICH?) – higher contact hours, smaller group sizes, students who have p/t jobs often do less well, many students in new universities would have made other choices…

Think more deeply about what’s behind the question responses – have a dialogue with students to define the issues

How do Art & Design students understand and interpret questions in NSS? – Professor Bernadette Blair

 

2 x post-92 universities of similar size. Sample across variety of Art and Design courses.  12 students interviewed.

Are skills of professional designers transferable to educators?

Q1:  Staff are good at explaining things

–       Positive about technical support and studio base staff

Q2:  Course is intellectually stimulating

–       Visiting tutors are important in providing intellectual stimulation

–       Very high quality outside professionals crucial for development of students

Students interpreted ‘intellectually’ in diverse ways:  ‘what relates to the real world’;  ‘more academic’; ‘intellectually is a funny word to use for a design course…’

Q3:  Is feedback prompt?

–       Ongoing ipsative feedback is implicit in A&D but not always understood by students as such:  ‘that’s teaching, not feedback’ (when defined as crits etc).

–       Feedback sometimes recognised as just written, formalised feedback

Design education is situated around conversations and dialogue – don’t always know whether something is good until you try it.

Q4:  Course organisation

Ambiguity and uncertainty is part of the nature of the discipline.  It contrasts with academic courses because there are ‘a lot of things going on at the same time for the tutor.’One interpretation of good course organisation is that studio practice runs smoothly.

Students found this question ambiguous.

Q5:  Quality of course

Students considered this a very generic question, which scored low.  ‘it seems a bit silly to have one little box to tick on behalf of everything.’

The NSS questions will be interpreted in the students’ own context. The pedagogy of Art & Design is dialogic rather than monologic.  The questionnaire is monologic in nature.

In considering NSS responses, need to be aware of:

–       the fast-changing context, especially in relation to technology

–       of the epistemological and pedagogical differences between disciplines

Conclusions:

Many institutions recognise the lack of validity of NSS and organise their own reviews.

NSSe – piloting a process that concentrates on student experience rather than student satisfaction. No guarantee that this will be any more satisfactory if it follows the same model of questioning.

Searching for words

You just can’t get away from it.  Even at a weekend.  In London.  At the Royal Society of Medicine.  Up on the screen are four topics for an exercise on Subject-Angle-Execution or finding original angles on stories. One of the topics is ‘Hull has won the title of City of Culture 2017’.  Most people choose ‘Christmas’ and suggest all sorts of entertaining ways of approaching that old chestnut.  But one woman suggests an approach to the Hull story, considering what 2017 will mean to the local community by exploring the effect of City of Culture on the community in Derry, the current holder.

My own response is a riposte to the stream of predictable sniggers in the national press, a sort of ‘let them get it out of their system’ angle with a strong dose of irony thrown in.  But hers is a much more refreshing approach and anyway, I don’t really want to spend the day thinking about Hull.

I was taking part in a masterclass on freelance journalism run by The Guardian newspaper.   I am interested in this as part of my own professional practice, but especially wanted information to pass onto the students on the BA(Hons) Journalism and Digital Media programme at HSAD.  And I’d always wondered what the Guardian workshops were like and who attended them.  On the latter point, what an eclectic and interesting mix of people.  I sat between a markets inspector, whose patch was Borough and  Smithfield markets and a science academic and journalist.  Many others already worked as freelance journalists, which indicated that they reckoned the day would hold something even for professionals.  A tall blonde girl, who was quick to respond in the open sessions, was wearing one of those dresses that you see on the rails and wonder if anyone ever buys.  A vivid royal blue shirtwaister buttoned up to the neck, with hemline well below the knee.  Probably the least flattering garment she could have chosen, but so distinctive that I bet everyone will remember her. The real draw for me was Marina Hyde, my favourite columnist, who was doing a Q&A session at the end.  But the day was packed full of useful and practical information.  Sessions on Features Pitching, Dissecting Publications, the Do’s and Don’t’s of Pitching, How To Break Into Freelance Journalism, Original Writing  and Top Ten Tricks and Tips were backed up by contact addresses and advice on the best method and time to follow up contacts.  Sessions were timed to the minute, there were opportunities to talk to the speakers and we were provided with a great lunch. This was real value for money, well-organised and to the point, delivered by experts and with plenty of material to take away.

And Marina Hyde?  More Caitlin Moran than Orla Guerin and she’s grown her hair, but the acid wit of her engagement with all things absurd, pretentious and celebrity-oriented  makes her unassailable in the column writing business.  So now I just need time to put all that information to good use.  And as a bonus, I did manage to bag one of the speakers for our annual Journalism Day at Hull Truck Theatre on Thursday 20 March.

Train return Harrogate to Falmouth= 16 hours + Pedare conference 8 hours = 24

Wise Men “A fact: You will always feel like your work isn’t good enough. As a salve, or simply as a way to stay sane, be in the world. Ride the train. Listen to strangers. Occasionally, if you’re brave, speak to them. Walk in the city you live. Pay attention. Don’t bother with taking notes, or buying fancy notepads. Try to remember as much as you can. Have just enough confidence in yourself to not be an asshole. Then, get up and go to work and try again.” taken from…Stuart Nadler http://www.timeout.com/newyork/things-to-do/fifteen-successful-authors-share-their-best-writing-tips 

After, I guess, what must be 17 years…I returned to Falmouth! having studied illustration at the Woodlane campus in 1994, the place of course looked different, the sleepy Cornish town as I remember it, is now set within a contemporary facade of cool bars and restaurants….hip!! and so back to the reason for travelling North to the South, spending 16 hours on an aching bottom to the point of being almost delirious-was to attend the Pedare (pronounced Pe-da-re) conference held at The Exchange, Penmere. 

To provide some background information… ‘Pedare’ is the Centre for Pedagogic Arts-Based Research. It’s community is made up of educators, academics, scholars, researcher and practitioners, their focus is to generate leading research in e-learning, pure pedagogic research, performance based pedagogy and visual thinking within the arts curriculum- ‘We explore the creative curriculum generating leading edge teaching and learning methods, practices and insights that contribute to and inform education practices and policy’…Perdare 2013

 

Workshop 1 Visual Thinking led by Rob Bloxham from ‘ORB’ creative agency http://www.thisisorb.com/

The first part of this session was to get into partners, one to tell the story, the other to draw it and then re-tell in 30 seconds. (the aim here was to see how much you were able to remember through visuals). The 2nd part of the session required us to get into groups of 4 and apply drawing’s only to come up with a number of ideas exploring a particular brand. Our Brand was called ‘Glide’- life made simple…the concept behind this was life could be made sooooooooooooooo much easier if students who use ‘Glide’ for help with financial matters, i.e. paying bills etc would be much happier students?. We decided to come up with an app called Sim-ple which required 5 players to sign up and become one of the household issues, the game would resolve in the student being directed to ‘Glides’ webpage and sign up??? something like that anyway…

 

Workshop 2 Interactive Spectatorships Led by Dr. Dario Llinares and Dr Sarah Arnold

Taken from Pedare website…Interactive Spectatorships is a project funded and based at Falmouth University. It aims to investigate the effect of social networking technologies, and the attendant influence of new digital cultures, on film studies pedagogic practice specifically and film spectatorship generally. We aim to explore the potential forcommunications media such as Twitter to be deployed as a interactive tool for facilitating students’ critical engagement and discussion of indicative viewing. 

This was a great session, and valuable to my research, it looked at encouraging students into a situation where a screening of i.e. Jackie Brown, Catfish, Moon etc with aid of twitter could be used as learning tool. Its focus -a multi-tasking platform that enables students to express him or herself through ongoing commentary that is in real time rather than an after thought discussion with tutors and peers. Further, a student used in this pilot did note that he watched it again (alone) without any distractions and although may have not been discussed in a group situation was talked about with other cohorts for up to a week later…whether we think this is a good idea or not is questionable? but the aim here is not to take away the notion of watching a film, that little place of worship, where the screen poses itself as a bright shiny god-like figure. Instead, it is about enhancing teaching and learning to watching media, in this case using twitter as a quiet mode of communication to act and respond in real time. 

 Workshop 3 Screen Writing- Everything but the Movie led by Neil Fox 

note to myself- Must watch Casablanca!! Again another interesting session…the focus here was to work with ‘haiku’ a Japanese poetry form that uses just a few words to capture a moment and create a picture in the readers mind. Thus a tiny window into a scene much larger than itself. We all had to write one and later read aloud for others to guess…ok this was mine.

‘intense relationships and lobsters in a pan,

large framed glasses, androgyny, exhibition of dialogue, 

attraction, love and comedy ingenious’

 

Wise Men “A fact: You will always feel like your work isn’t good enough. As a salve, or simply as a way to stay sane, be in the world. Ride the train. Listen to strangers. Occasionally, if you’re brave, speak to them. Walk in the city you live. Pay attention. Don’t bother with taking notes, or buying fancy notepads. Try to remember as much as you can. Have just enough confidence in yourself to not be an asshole. Then, get up and go to work and try again.” taken from…Stuart Nadler http://www.timeout.com/newyork/things-to-do/fifteen-successful-authors-share-their-best-writing-tips 

After, I guess, what must be 17 years…I returned to Falmouth! having studied illustration there at the Woodlane campus in 1994, the place of course had changed, and for the better! what I remember as a very laid back sleepy town, with too many pasty shops and ‘Trago’ department store has had a make over; the old docks now have a contemporary facade of cool bars and restaurants. And so the reason for travelling North to the South, spending 16 hours on an aching bottom to the point of being almost delirious; was to attend the Pedare (pronounced Pe-da-re) conference held at The Exchange, Penmere. 

 

To provide some background information ‘Pedare’ is the Centre for Pedagogic Arts-Based Research. It’s community is made up of educators, academics, scholars, researcher and practitioners, their focus is to generate leading research in e-learning, pure pedagogic research, performance based pedagogy and visual thinking within the arts curriculum- ‘We explore the creative curriculum generating leading edge teaching and learning methods, practices and insights that contribute to and inform education practices and policy’…

 

Workshop 1 Visual Thinking led by Rob Bloxham and others

The first part of this session was to get into partners, one was required to tell the story and the other to draw it and then re-tell in 30 seconds. The 2nd part of the session required us to get into groups of 4 and apply drawing only to come up with a number of ideas exploring a particular brand. Our Brand was called ‘Glide’ life made simple…the concept behind this was life could be made easier if students which to Glide for help with financial matters, i.e. paying bills etc. We decided to come up with an app called Sim-ple which required 5 players to sign up and become one of the household issues, the game would resolve in the student being directed Glides webpage and sign up??? something like that anyway…

 

Workshop 2 Interactive Spectatorships Led by Dr. Dario Llinares and Dr Sarah Arnold

Taken from Pedare website…Interactive Spectatorships is a project funded and based at Falmouth University. It aims to investigate the effect of social networking technologies, and the attendant influence of new digital cultures, on film studies pedagogic practice specifically and film spectatorship generally. We aim to explore the potential forcommunications media such as Twitter to be deployed as a interactive tool for facilitating students’ critical engagement and discussion of indicative viewing. 

This was a great session, and valuable to my research, it looked at encouraging students into a situation where a screening of i.e. Jackie Brown, Catfish, moon etc with aid of twitter can be used as learning tool. A multi-tasking platform that enables students to express him or herself through ongoing commentary that is in real time rather than an after thought discussion with tutors and peers. Further, a student used in this pilot did note that he watched it again (alone) without any distractions and although may have not been discussed in a group situation was talked about with other cohorts for up to a week later…whether we think this is a good idea or not is questionable? but the aim here is not to take away the notion of watching a film, isolated, within the confounds of darkened room, a place of worship, modeled on a theatre, instead it is about enhancing teaching and learning to watching media, in this case using twitter as a quiet mode of communication to act and respond in real time. 

 

Workshop 3 Screen Writing- Everything but the Movie led by Neil Fox 

note to myself- Must watch Casablanca!! Again another interesting session…the focus here was to work with ‘haiku’ a Japanese poetry form that uses just a few words to capture a moment and create a picture in the readers mind. Thus a tiny window into a scene much larger than itself. We all had to write one and later read a loud for others to guess…ok this was mine. any ideas??????

‘intense relationships and lobsters in a pan,

large framed glasses, androgyny, exhibition of dialogue, 

attraction, love and comedy ingenious’

Heidi Donohoe 

Writing in Creative Practice: Towards Academic Publishing

Piecing the jigsaw together… WRITING PAD

This interesting and thought provoking workshop focused on creative writing and how it can be turned into writing for academic publication. Nancy de Freitas, associate professor at AUT University, New Zealand and Editor-In-Chief of studies in material thinking, presented to us the context of material thinking practices, thinking about methods and insights on good structure, clear writing and style as an underpinning to research, processes, images, objects and spaces. Alkie Groppel-Wegener led genre in crafting academic writing, you can follow her on http://tactileacademia.wordpress.com/

To view full posting please go to http://heididonohoe.blogspot.co.uk/

References: 

Gavin Melles and Julia Lockheart, Writing purposefully in art and design: Responding to converging and diverging new academic literacy  http://ahh.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/02/28/1474022211432116

Nancy Roth, Writing as pretext: On the way to an image  http://ahh.sagepub.com/content/9/2/256

Robert Nelson, Toward a history of rigour: An examination of the nasty side of scholarship,  http://ahh.sagepub.com/content/10/4/374

Brian Paltridge, Sue Starfield, Louise Ravelli and Sarah Nicholson; Doctoral Writing in the Visual and Performing Arts: Issues and Debates

 

Lindy Norton

Award-winning artist Lindy Norton specialises in hauntingly atmospheric dry-point etchings and joyously colourful illustration. An experienced educator and practitioner, both areas of practical expertise inform her Illustration teaching at Hull School of Art and Design (HSAD).

She has 17 years’ commercial experience as a freelance illustrator in London, notably working on children’s books, greetings cards, wrapping paper and packaging. Her portfolio includes work for clients such as: World Wildlife Fund; Hamlyn; National Gallery Publications; Medici Society; Greenpeace; The Born Free Foundation; Boots; Marks And Spencers; and Random House. She does private commissions, and counts TV medic Dr Miriam Stoppard among her clients.

In recent years, she has shifted the focus of her personal practice towards fine art and exhibited her dry-point etching work in the Royal Academy in 2011. The following year, a large dry-point piece, Martin’s Room, won first prize in a competition at the Ropewalk gallery in Barton-upon-Humber, where she delivers regular workshops to beginners and experienced artists.

Visit www.the-ropewalk.co.uk for details of Lindy’s next dry-point printmaking workshop.

She also delivers workshops at Studio Eleven, in Humber Street, Hull, and is currently working towards a solo exhibition of drawings and etchings.

“My research is chiefly my own practice,” she says. “With my fine art dry-point work, I like the atmosphere of empty rooms and the quality of light coming through windows. You could say I’m exploring a sense of human presence without explicitly including the figures“.

Although Lindy says she loves to explore dry-point as a medium, she has not turned her back on her illustrative past.

“I still like the decorative qualities of the illustration work,” she says. “It’s more cheap and cheerful – in many ways, a happier piece of work than a dry-point.”

Lindy has a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from HSAD and an MA in Printmaking from Chelsea School of Art. While working as a freelance illustrator in London, she taught at Stourbridge School of Art, and returned to HSAD, this time as a lecturer, in 2000.

Some of her commercial illustration work can be seen HERE & HERE.

Caroline Miekina-Houseman

A freelance illustrator with more than 30 years’ experience, Caroline Miekina-Houseman has adapted her craft for use in the digital age.  After all this time she is still excited by the many different styles and applications of the genre. She prefers to think she is not typecast, and is fluid and adaptable, but concedes that her portfolio has a certain colourful, playful, upbeat consistency, which she hopes sums up her attitude to her life and her work.

Having made the transition from traditional media to digital in the late 1990s, she now enjoys blending the “integrity” of the hand-drawn with the “excitement and freedom” of digital. She continues to use a range of media, from oils to vectors.

Over the years, her illustrations have been used by clients including: Nestle UK in York for its seasonal packaging for Smarties and Milky Bar; advertising agencies producing educational, medical and architectural literature; and an impressive range of museums and galleries.

“Some of my early influences were the greats of the Golden Age of Illustration,” says the Harrogate School of Art and Design (HSAD) media lecturer. She refers to the “flowering” of mass printing and publishing that occurred during the industrial revolution. These influences still underpin her professional practice and her current MA research draws upon parallels between that era and the present.

Caroline says:

“Arthur Rackham, one of my all-time heroes, is a very good example of a traditionally trained artist who was able to take advantage of the rapid progress of new technology and infrastructure in the late-Victorian epoch to share his phenomenal work with a worldwide audience. In a similar way, illustrators and creative people in general are now discovering that we can use evolving technology to share our work in new ways. We have to move along with current practice and be prepared to take advantage of all the new avenues that are available to us.”

Caroline has lectured at HSAD on a part-time basis since 2002, and has found a niche teaching digital media. She specialises in illustration, graphics, retouching, photo manipulation, 3D visuals and spatial design.

She delivers modules on the FdA Visual Arts, Interior Architecture and BA Applied Creative Design courses, as well as running evening classes in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

In 2009, she joined forces with museum designers JANVS Design, for whom Caroline has produced designs, 3D concepts, visuals and illustrations for clients such as: National Trust – Clumber Park Discovery Centre; London Transport Museum; National Coal Mining Museum; Waterford Viking Triangle; and the recently opened temporary exhibition ‘Strike a Pose’ at the National Football Museum in Manchester.

Her illustrations have been commissioned for use in two recent temporary exhibitions in Mickelgate Bar, York commissioned by York Archaeological Trust; The Battle of Towton 2011-2012 and A Royal Gateway 2012-2013.

Caroline’s current research interest is an MA in Image and Time-Based Media. She is linking sequential imagery and the story telling legacy that found favour during the golden age of illustration with research on the historical and academic aspects of an 18^th-century North Yorkshire hero, Jack Metcalf, commonly known as Blind Jack of Knaresborough.

She is working on 12 finished images, based on an anonymous contemporary account of his life, The Life and Times of Jack Metcalf. These will be exhibited at Henshaw’s Arts and Craft centre for blind people in May 2014.

“It’s an extraordinary story about an extraordinary character. He had a series of very physical adventures, including taking part in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, marching with the king’s army and playing his fiddle … it’s hard to believe that Blind Jack had no peripheral vision at all, and it’s certainly an avenue I am investigating as part of my research. I’m trying to bring that story into a form that 15 to 18-year-olds would engage with, and bring to life the rollicking adventure story that it is.

“I know from my experiences teaching National Diploma Graphics and Multimedia that it can be quite a difficult audience to impress,” says Caroline, “it needs to be presented in a style or styles that will grab their attention and make them want to find out more.”

In her spare time Caroline enjoys playing the violin and helping her husband to look after their flock of Zwartbles sheep – not necessarily at the same time.

Caroline has BA (Hons) in Art and Design from North Staffordshire Polytechnic and a PGCE from Huddersfield University.

Some examples of her work can be seen at www.miekinaillustration.co.uk and on her blog.

Some of the museum, gallery and visitor centre projects she has worked on can be seen HERE.

Mik Newton

Music professional Mik Newton has two complementary roles here at Hull School of Performance Arts (HSPA). As a lecturer on Music and Music Production degree programmes and the head of our very own independent record label, Purple Worm Records, he is our go-to contact for any aspiring musician or performer.

With Purple Worm, a not-for-profit label that celebrates the best of the Hull music and champions the city’s homegrown talent, Mik promotes musicians from HSPA and beyond. He has secured global distribution for Purple Worm artists across 140 countries, in 90 online stores.

“You can buy all of our music from online stores including iTunes, Virgin Napster and Spotify,” he says.

“We’re currently working on releasing a Humber Street Sesh fundraising album in advance of the 2013 Humber Street Sesh music festival in Hull’s creative quarter.”

The Humber Street Sesh double album features 36 of the bands and artists from Hull, including EndofLevelBaddie, Street Parade, The Colour Line, Mono Life and Audio Subscene. The 2013 festival sees the introduction of The Purple Worm Stage.

The record label recently produced the Dr Skank’s Skool of Skunk album, featuring punk/ska acts including Counting Coins, The Talks, Double Down and System Paralysis.

It has also launched a new dubstep/drum’n’bass “sub-label”, Sub Cube Records, which features international DJs and producers from Ukraine, Bali, Poland and Italy.

Students on the degree programme also benefit by gaining hands-on experience at Purple Worm. Mik says:

“We teach work-related learning. This means the students are put into A&R teams to go out and source bands; then they put together and release a prototype single; after that, they release and market a compilation album; finally, they learn how to run a record label on zero budget.”

Running a record label on zero budget is exactly what Mik has been doing at Purple Worm since 2009. “We don’t have any funding,” he says. “All the profit goes straight back into the label and it gets bigger and bigger, year on year. I’m now researching the possibility of establishing it as a social enterprise.”

Mik is also working on the development of a standalone Purple Worm events company that would allow prospective sound engineers to progress and get first-hand experience of working in Hull’s live music scene.

His own professional network of contacts is diverse and ever-growing. Arriving in Hull as an engineering student in 1993, he soon picked up a residency at The Strand student union venue. Eventually switching his academic studies to a more musical path, in the early days he worked as a sound engineer for a touring Kylie tribute act, before engineering at Zenith Studios and Red Star record label, working with Hull bands, such as GST Cardinals. He then set up his own production company, Mik Newton Recording. As a result, he guesses he has worked with “most of the bands in Hull” over a 20-year period. Mik has a BA (Hons) in Music Production and a PGCE.

Mik has released his own alternative dance, hip-hop material, as Supercharge. He also DJs at venues including Fruit, Welly, Adelphi and Zest in Hull, and Sankey’s Soap and Boardwalk in Manchester. He manages music events, such as Hull’s Love Music, Hate Racism festival and Concrete Jam Skate festival.

You can listen to Purple Worm Records’ weekly radio show on West Hull Creative Radio (WHCR) 106.9FM, every Friday at 10pm.

Connect with Mik on LinkedIn; and with Purple Worm Records on YouTube and on Facebook.

Marissa Steer

“Singing should be absolute fun. It should absorb you totally and exercise you mentally and physically.”

Marissa Steer (formerly Claughan) is a professional singer, cellist and teacher at Hull School of Performance Arts (HSPA). She coaxes strong vocal performances from our Music students, also teaching music history and theory, research and analytical skills and personal and professional development.

The school’s annual trips to Stax Music Academy in Memphis, USA, have proved to be a huge boost to students’ confidence. The brainchild of Marissa and husband Craig, who visited the music Mecca on their honeymoon, now sees second-year students and staff attending workshops and delivering lectures to Stax students for one week every summer. While in Memphis, the Hull students also have the opportunity to follow in Elvis’s footsteps, recording at the iconic Sun Studios.

Marissa own musical inspiration came from Hull Youth Music Service – a free service that provided talented primary school pupils with music tuition. Aged 10, she began cello lessons and went on to play in the service’s symphony orchestra.

Her band, Launderette Poets (see a performance HERE) now provides the perfect showcase for her soaring vocals and folk-tinged cello performances.

 – Their music is available HERE –

She has previously toured with tribute act, The ELO Experience, been commissioned to write music and play as a session musician at Fairview Studios, East Yorkshire.

Marissa’s teaching experience includes adult education, working with adults with learning disabilities and private lessons. Having completed a BA (Hons) in Music Performance, she went into education, teaching at Wakefield College and latterly, Hull.

“All ages and all types of people want the experience of singing,” she says. “Some people come to me because they daren’t sing in church, one comes for help with interviews – it can be a way of confidence-building that is an alternative to public-speaking lessons.  There are also health benefits. Mild exercise, such as singing, can help the respiratory system. I recommend it to people as a way to regulate breathing and open the ventricles.”

She finds a lot of adults and children with hearing impairments ask for her help through singing lessons.

“It’s often a combination of a confidence and an anatomical issue,” she says. “Singing lessons can help things along. It’s a holistic approach.”

A project with independent theatre company, Animotion, brought a new and interesting challenge to this aspect of her personal practice. She was asked to play cello as an accompaniment to signing actors in a play produced for hearing-impaired and deaf audiences.

Thanks to her positive experiences working with deaf and hearing-impaired musicians, Marissa hopes to soon complete an Ear, Nose and Throat short course in speech therapy for singing teachers.

At HSPA, she has big plans to introduce speech therapy training for other members of staff; and contemporary music certification. Long-term, she would like to establish the Horncastle Building as an accreditation centre for the Rock School examination syllabus of performance and theory.

In her spare time, she “keeps her academic hand in” by conducting ongoing research relating to her teaching practice into the socio-cultural ways in which music is used.

Visit www.marissasteersinging.vpweb.co.uk

Emma Smetham

A fast and varied career in the world of interior design has taken Emma Smetham all over the UK and parts of Europe.

 “My practice has become increasingly interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary with an emphasis on visual communication,” says Emma.

Emma teaches Interior Design at our Harrogate site. Her professional expertise spans the Faculty of Art and Design to include Hull and Harrogate. She is also our Quality Improvement Student Support Manager at both sites has recently been involved in Open University validation events; and offers academic advice and support where she is able to within the faculty.

Emma began to diversify into teaching in the early 1990s and has taught higher education at Harrogate since 2007.

Reflecting on her own academic background, Emma says:

“It was An Art and Design Foundation course at Nottingham Polytechnic in 1988 that sparked my interest in interior design, engaging in the design process including 3D design. “I was very lucky to have tutors that guided me in the right direction.”

After graduating in Interior Design from Leeds Polytechnic, Emma went straight into industry, working with an architecture practice in London. The next rung on the career ladder took her to another architecture practice in Nottingham this time as project designer on large-scale commercial interior and architectural projects.

By 1990, she was working on large office environmental design projects throughout the UK planning and specifying high spec. system furniture for large office environments.

Here, Emma developed a niche area of expertise in commercial lighting, specifying for a variety of internal and external environments. Again she diversified into another area of Interior Design working initially for a German lighting company and then an Italian lighting company and subsequently designing a range of bespoke fittings for a variety of clients and concepts.

For Emma, teaching combined with research and consultancy is the natural career progression.

Her research interests include issues surrounding regeneration and renewal of industrial architecture in Yorkshire and beyond.

In 2012, Emma completed an MA in Image and Time-Based Media based around her research interests, which allowed her to maximise existing skills and learn new ones, such as photo-etching.

“I based my MA on the theme of regeneration and renewal of existing industrial architecture located in textile towns in and around Yorkshire,” she says. “One of the focuses of my investigation was a building called Pioneer House in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire which was once a co operative and now a Grade 2 listed building. Working with Kirklees Council, I looked at ways in which its legacy could be continued by regenerating it for a variety of uses and opportunities with in a once thriving and now struggling community. I feel we have a responsibility as designers to look at ways of regenerating communities and areas that are sadly in deprivation”.

The social responsibility of designers is a recurring theme in Emma’s teaching, practice and research. Organisations such as English Heritage, Urban Splash, Urban Renaissance,  The Prince’s Regeneration Trust are all influences.

“My work is a fusion of my industrial experience, research and teaching,” she says. “This involves raising awareness of personal and professional responsibilities as a designer, being aware of environmental issues, utilising sustainable design and developing a strong identity and philosophy.”

Consultancy work in the interior design industry has been a constant throughout Emma’s career. She aims to achieve a balance between having an awareness of contemporary current industrial knowledge and experience which ultimately feeds into her teaching.

Ellen Wynn

Watching 24-hour live media coverage of the 2010 Chilean miners’ rescue brought memories rushing back to fine artist Ellen Wynn.

Her father worked at Markham Colliery in Chesterfield when disaster struck the pit in 1973 and 18 of his colleagues lost their lives.

Footage of the Chilean rescue struck a chord with Ellen, who has been teaching at Hull School of Art and Design since 2004, and led her to develop theories about the idea of the spectacle in relation to disaster, rescue and her own artistic practice.

Alongside her teaching practice in Critical and Theoretical Studies, Ellen practices fine art.

Ellen’s teaching has primarily centred on 3D design, graphics and architecture and she regularly attends lectures and exhibitions to update and extend her knowledge.

A fully trained architect, she practiced architecture before developing her interest in fine art.

Currently she is researching a follow-up to a 2002 one-woman show at Red Gallery, Inform.

Inform 2 centres around TV coverage of the Chilean miners’ rescue.

For Inform, she combined newsprint and media imagery with everyday domestic items, thereby instilling the artworks with literal and figurative additional layers of meaning. At the time, Ellen said:

“By distorting or changing their expected context, household objects such as blankets, chairs and newspapers are transformed into works of art which aim to awaken an interest in the relevance of news in our routine lives and to question, even threaten, our domestic comfort zone.”

Now, she says:

“Inform was partly a personal response to the media coverage of 9/11. Distant and ‘unlikely’ events create anxiety, fear and euphoria, which distort the core of our everyday reality”.

Poststructuralist and postmodernist theory runs through all of this work. Exploring the way events are mediated through our TV screens as an assumed reality is central to Inform 2.

Craft in relation to fine art played and still plays a large role in her work. When she was young her mother worked from home as a milliner and curtain maker, and she taught Ellen to sew. The process of hand-stitching represents independence, comfort and control which form a strong juxtaposition with the subject matter she tackles.

Inspired by her response to the Chilean miners’ rescue, she hopes to exhibit Inform 2 in 2015.

“This work will reference my early paintings,” Ellen says. “Using textile craft techniques to labour and ‘upholster’ the canvas and in particular to reference to the home environment, I will explore the status of craft in relation to painting and in particular the language of embroidery.”

Focusing chiefly on materialising painting as object, she plans to use the TV imagery that captured the collective consciousness during the rescue.

Ellen says:

“In relation to my role as a HE lecturer, I would like to enrich my teaching through my practice and to establish research interests in relation to my work.”

A larger range of Ellen’s work can be seen in her online gallery HERE: