Presentation delivered at ARLIS UK & Ireland Conference, Bristol 2013

1. ARLIS Conference 2013
Have the Border Guards lost
interest?
Professor Paul Gough UWE

2. What are the big issues facing you?
Behaviours
• Material is used differently than mainstream
• Art students use space differently; more like a
studio
• Arts students browse; they trust in serendipity
• They prefer the tactile, often over the digital…

3. What are the big issues facing you?
• Less specialist art libraries and librarians
• Subject area is not well covered by electronic
resources
• Issues about the value of and promotion of
special collections
• Funding being withdrawn from smaller arts
organisations, and many museum librarians
under scrutiny

5. The growth of information over 300 years
Academic articles published per year
1726 344
1750 699
1800 3,066
1850 13,439
1900 58,916
1950 258,284
2000 1,132,291
2009 1,477,383
Source: Arif Jinha, Article 50 million: An estimate of the number of scholarly articles in existence, Ottawa 2010

6. 6
Presenting the Evidence
Practice: research traditions & infrastructures
- Research through practice:
work conceived in a research context
- Practice-as-research
work conceived in other contexts and presented
in a research framework
John Adams, 2012

7. How we appear…
Well evidenced Not well evidenced
Andrew Patrizio, ECA /
University of Edinburgh

8. UK RESEARCH EXCELLENCE
FRAMEWORK

9. Art, Design: a confident sector?
• Mature research environment
• User-centred. Strong on KT and KE
• Volume of PGR completions
• Embedded use of practice as research
• Institutional support tied to strong
recruitment, impact factors, GDP.

10. Sub panel advice (contd)
‘Can it be accessed, seen, visited, heard, or
reviewed either in itself or through a
comprehensive record of the event, activity,
installation etc? Can it be ‘re-visited’ by those in
the field who may want to find out more about
what was done, why it was done, using which
methods and approaches, and the eventual
outcome. How do other people know about it?
Can future generations of researchers access the
new knowledge, interrogate and employ it?’
(Prof Paul Gough, Sub-Panel Chair, Art & Design)

11. RAE08 Art & Design Sector report
‘The sub-panel welcomed the general improvement in the
presentation of research outputs. In most cases, the work
was well presented and… the portfolios of further evidence
had been thoughtfully and intelligently compiled. In a
number of cases, departments had augmented their
outputs with a comprehensive web presence… being made
openly available on-line.
In some submissions, more attention could have been given
to providing fuller evidence of the research process so as
to give sub-panel members the most comprehensive
picture of how the output related to the field of
enquiry, the questions that were being addressed and the
overall articulation of the research context.’[emphasis
added]

13. Moocs- a sustainable business model?
• Envy – would rather be inside seeing what’s going
on
• Brand – want to be associated with an elite group
• Marketing – Providing a taster / showcase and
generate recruits
• Learning – we can spin what we learn back into
the organisation
• Ethical/Charitable– desire to generate a public
good…
John Rushforth, UWE

15. Estelle Morris, MLA, 2011
Museums and libraries only make real sense
when they connect with people; when they
become part of the life of the nation and its
citizens. The arts and cultural sectors are united
by their embodiment of civil and civilised
society. Culture is at the heart of enabling
people to be active and dynamic citizens; of
raising aspirations; of encouraging engagement
and strengthening ties within and between
communities.

16. ACE advice, 2012
• 1 place the library as the hub of the
community…
• 2 make the most of digital technology and
creative media…
• 3 ensure that libraries are resilient and
sustainable…
• 4 deliver the right skills for those who work
in libraries…

19. The Secret Lives of Books
Guerilla Dance Project
and Tom Mitchell of
University of the West of
England

20. ‘…these pages fall like ash’
Artists collective
Circumstance and Tom Abba
of University of the West of
England will work with
leading authors Nick
Harkaway and Neil Gaiman

21. “Despite the growth of ebooks, the comments one mostly
hears are appeals to a book's physicality…. Books are
amenable to interaction -analysis, yet those interactions are
so complex, so embedded in our minds and in our culture,
that it seems impossible to separate them from the thing
itself. Books are encoded experiences, they are repositories
of the experiences we have with them, and they are
ultimately souvenirs of themselves. The publishing industry
has long profited from this unique assemblage of product
and meaning. As a result, it has been slow to respond,
philosophically and organisationally, to the challenge of new
media.
… The radical ephemerality of the MP3 file suits music in the
same way that it destabilises the book, which has always
existed to provide the corresponding physical weight to
literature's intellectual heft.” James Bridle Wired magazine

22. Bristol: Great Reading Adventure 2010

30. Stanley in the Wards, signed ‘me’

40. “ Banksy Hits New York’s Most Famous Museums.”

49. “Museum shows are like Center Parcs:
you can do it once to get it out of your
system, but you don't want to live there.”

54. “Expert insists stencil of sweatshop
worker with Jubilee bunting is a
genuine Banksy.”
http://www.theweek.co.uk/art/46976/c
hild-labour-image-wall-poundland-
fuels-banksy-hype

55. “A highbrow specialising in Bansky
believes it is a Bristol-born artist’s
work.”
http://news24h.info/banksy-boy-
worker-image-on-shop/

58. Summary
• 1 Border Guards, open access and
permeability of disciplines
• 2 Distinctiveness, unique character or
special pleading?
• 3 Art Libraries as places of trust, integrity,
and ‘creative innovation’
• 4 AHRC, REACT and hybrid creativity
• 5 Stanley, Banksy and iconic communication

59. A last word
“The people of Bristol have always been
very good to me – I decided the best way
to show my appreciation was by putting a
bunch of old toilets and some live chicken
nuggets in their museum. I could have
taken the show to a lot of places, but they
do a very nice cup of tea in the
museum.”

61. Thank you!

62. Assessing impact in UK
The emphasis is on assessing rather than measuring
impact with the key assessment criteria being:
Reach (how widely the impact was felt)
Significance (how transformative it was)
 Expert review of impact case studies
 Impact Template/Statement

63. 63
Presenting the Evidence
Practice: research traditions & infrastructures
- Research through practice:
work conceived in a research context
- Practice-as-research
work conceived in other contexts and presented
in a research framework

64. UWE employability rises
• UWE at an institutional level. The key figures
are:
• National unemployment: 8.8% UWE 5.3%
• Professional and managerial employment (i.e
graduate jobs): national figure 63.7% UWE
66.4%