My coursework this year been more involved than I was initially expecting. My dissertation, associated research and my creative works have been absorbing and at times frustrating but at the same time with periods where this work has been, and continues to be, very rewarding. My external facing project is not work which has arrived fully formed with an easy plan from start to end. The birth of ideas and the paths leading to engagement with peers and co-participants has not always been smooth. In some ways, my collaboration experiences fit into the same space as when I seek peer feedback or when I am asked for feedback. These experiences give a good idea of the complexities of dealing with other people, whether for creative purposes or with a potential audience. In addition to how I dealt with others there was the challenge of how I responded to input from others and working in a space where I not the sole author. These challenges in this process around the exploration of the self but in close proximity to others who have their own ideas they wish to explore, how to engage with other people and how to present creative ideas, to test and develop these ideas and to form good working relationships and ways of working together.  At the same time as working with partners, the process doesn’t stop and the challenge remains of how best to seek out potential for growing network of valuable and interesting contacts. On one level, the timelines of university study create a time limit for such engagement which might not always be followed so strictly in the wider world as the learning experience tends to truncate and compress my creative practice through the simple lack of time.

My engagements more often than not have led to dead ends with other potential partners not having time to fit a collaboration into their workload or worst, not responding at all. However, the element I mentioned of time is a consideration here and I can see that moving into the next year of study in 3.3 – Major Project, there is scope to continue this engagement and sharing process. If I choose, then this sharing can become a feature of my creative practice beyond the bounds of this degree, and unbound by time limits.

I am involved in three collaborative exercises at present. Each has its own feel and pace with different creative touchpoints and sense of direction but each is as valid as the other.

The first is a shared work with Caroline Black. This explores loss, the liminal space of death along with memory and folklore. Most recently, we have been exploring the texture of objects associated with memory and of loss and of reimagining such objects. An example of this is with knitting. A common idea would be to save a small item of knitwear worn by babies. Saving these as a momento of when the child was very young. Such objects take on another meaning should that child die or even if child is lost before the item had even been created in which case the knitted object resides in the mind. We been experimenting with knitting as a texture related to memory but also used as a feature within landscapes.

My second collaboration is with Deborah Humphrey and has headed in a very different direction to my first shared work. We have been looking at words, whether simple words or complex poetry, as a part of a visual image. This feels more complex to me and I have to work harder to think about my process and what I want to achieve and whether I have the necessary skills. I think, in part, this is simply because I am less familiar with a creative expression using words and images. I have experimented with still images and with video.

My third collaboration, is the least well developed and is the most impacted by the time constraints of coursework and of degree time limits. It is with Helen Rosemier. This work been slowest to agree a way forward and to see concrete progress. Initially, I was downbeat about this but on reflection I see this as part of the politics of dealing with different people in different circumstances. I believe that good work will come out of this relationship but am realistic enough to admit that this might be limited in current year and might be something which carries forward to the following year. This point is true of my other collaborations and of other approaches I have made which, to date, have borne no fruit. The timescales of developing work can easily continue for another year and even beyond the confines of my undergraduate study.

As part of this review I was updating my plan. When I reached feedback point 4 I had revised my approach and made a seperate plan for this external project work, distinct from my overarching plan for the entire 3.2 unit. What I saw is that much of my plan based on review. Reviewing my approach and seeing if I needed to change how I was going about finding partners. Producing and then reviewing my creative work and repeat. I think that seeing this in black and white re-enforces my idea that this approach of continually questioning myself seemed right for me. Updated version of this plan is shown below.