Re-covering the Meaning of ‘Small and Local’ in Organisation: Barefoot Organisations

Deadline for submissions of abstracts (400 words) is 15th July 2012.   

For more info visit www.apros.org

APROS 2013, 15th - 17th February 2013

Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo

Stream A:                            Re-covering the Meaning of ‘Small and Local’ in

                                               Organisation: Barefoot Organisations

Convenors

Dr. J. Miguel Imas,                        Kingston University, UK

Professor Deborah Blackman,    University of Canberra, Australia

Dr. Deirdre Tedmanson,              University of South Australia, Australia

Professor Katarzyna Kosmala,   University of the West of Scotland, UK

Contacts:

J.Imas@kingston.ac.uk

Deborah.Blackman@canberra.edu.au

Deirdre.tedmanson@unisa.edu.au

Katarzyna.kosmala@uws.ac.uk

“Weather was always here: winds attacking

From every direction: above, below,

east, south, west, north. Until the palms

were gone, leaving only their memory.

No more canoes. Twisted paper mulberry

offering only beaten cloth

and mirror-image carvings….”

(Margaret Randall, Their Backs to the Sea, 2009: 5)

Globalisation, since the collapse of the Soviet empire, has promoted new market opportunities for business trade around the world. Countries as far as Chile, Peru and Mexico in the pacific realm of South America as well as, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and Singapore in Asia benefited from this economic expansion. The rapid stimulus to job creation and development brought quick wealth, along with aggressive neo-liberal economic policies and the organisational and managerial practices which support such policies.  A managerialist (postcolonial) discourse embedded within western ideological traditions of market liberalisation and exploitation of local natural and human resources took hold then in many localities across the Asia-Pacific region.

The expansion of businesses, at the outset, allowed for rapid organisational successes and economic growth. For instance, GDP in most of the Asian-Pacific countries which opened their doors to globalization increased, through the receipt of this investment from abroad. The successes gave the impression of rapid and sustainable development for businesses within these countries and led to some being metaphorically called the ‘tigers’ of Asia or the ‘pumas’ of South America. Furthermore, these countries were selected as case examples of a triumphalist discourse of management, which assumed rapid economic development was the result of the application of efficient organisational practices articulated within rationalist western neo-liberal ideas about how to modernise. It was a convincing and powerful narrative that resonated throughout the pacific region and along some Asian shores.

However, this fairy tale collapsed in the late 1990s when most of these countries entered major economic crises similar to the one experienced now in Europe and the United States. Indeed, the expansion was, as it is now known, mostly as a result of government borrowing which left countries (and their citizens) impoverished and with huge debts (not to mention the destruction of local land and communities). Local and small organisations in some communities, suffered enormously and a long period of contracted recession took hold – while western nations (e.g. Europe and the US) continued to grow as a result of borrowing money.

Little was learnt from these experiences, as the new (global) crisis has shown. The sense of superiority and arrogance of an economic system that supports managerialist practices geared to benefit a privileged few rather than entire communities was, – as it is now experienced in the western world – gradually exposed. Debts, displacement, pollution, bankruptcies, poverty, increasing inequality -  these are just some of the legacies of a grand discourse that promoted exploitative management and organisation practices incapable of fostering sustainable futures for  communities.

As a consequence, we are now at a junction in considering how to approach the study, practice and creation of new organisations. We consider that an intimate look at ‘local’ community small organisations may provide new guidance, discourses and narratives upon which to construct, or re-cover, the meaning of ‘organisation’; – an understanding of ‘organisation’ that is supportive of the environmental, social and economic well-being of communities at the local level; an understanding of an ‘organisation’ that promotes equity, participation, innovation and local-to-local integration.

This stream invites papers, posters, art interventions, visual anthropologies and other forms of ‘ground-up’ narration that re-connect us back to organisation at the local level; the small community, the island, the fishermen and women and their way of life etc., as a counter response to the global grand narrative of globalisation that has brought such destruction to communities. The following topics we found of interest:

1. Indigenous organisation narratives
2. Precarious spaces where organising adopts a different meaning
3. Critique of mainstream management/organisation ideologies
4. Discourse and practices which promote sustainable environments and community development. New methodologies that permit us to explore small local organisations in depth
5. Practices that are beneficial for community and, therefore, humanity
6. Theories and philosophies of economic organisation which reflect alternatives to the status quo.
7. Social enterprise; micro-enterprise; co-operative and communal organisations
8.  Creative forms of local resistance organisation

We welcome other creative and innovative initiatives that address these concerns, inviting you to submit your work to our stream.

Chris Dooks: Gardening as Astronomy

Chris Dooks recently completed a short residency at Woodend Barn, Banchory. This collaboration will also feed into his doctoral research project. Whilst there he spent a lot of time in the wild gardens around the Barn, and interviewed a number of visitors and volunteers. The first audiovisual piece made from this residency is here.

The status, role and future of Russian language training and Slavonic studies in the Scottish education system

Scotland-Russia Institute, 9 South College Street, Edinburgh, 1pm-5pm, Monday 28th May, 2012

Training and education in Russian language and Slavonic studies remain tenuous within the UK education system. The recent investment in higher education language-based area studies (LBAS) via research council and, in the case of CRCEES, Scottish government funding, gave the subject area a significant boost and yet it is not clear whether this targeted support will extend beyond 2014/16. This workshop is framed by an 18 month AHRC-funded Research Networking initiative, ‘Translating Russian and East European Cultures,’ which is exploring the multiple ways in which such cultures are translated, constructed and narrated within the multi-disciplinary and multicultural context of Russian, Central and East European Studies.

 Preliminary programme: 1300-1400 – Lunch 1400-1405 - Katarzyna Kosmala/Jon Oldfield, Introduction 1405-1530 – Session 1: Russian language teaching & Slavonic studies within the Scottish education system Chair: Jon Oldfield, Central & East European Studies, University of Glasgow Martin Dewhirst, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Glasgow, ‘How to improve and increase the teaching of Russian in Scotland' Jenny Carr, Chairperson, Scotland-Russia Forum, ‘How the SRF is trying to reverse the decline of school Russian in Scotland’ Simon Macaulay, Chair, Languages Working Group, Scottish Government, ‘Some reflections on Russian language provision in Scotland’

 1545-1700 – Session 2: Russian & Slavonic studies and the UK education sector Chair: Katarzyna Kosmala, School of Creative & Cultural Industries, University of the West of Scotland Jon Oldfield, Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow, Slavonic studies in the UK: a brief historical overview Clare McManus, Co-Director of the Centre for Russian, Central & East European Studies (CRCEES), University of Glasgow, ‘Reflections on the current work and future initiatives of CRCEES and the Language-Based Area Studies (LBAS) initiative’ Nina Kruglikova, Russian Centre (Russkiy Mir Program), University of Oxford, ‘The work of the Russkiy Mir Program in the UK’

MashingUp: Art+Wandering

UWS space @ CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow

5.30 - 7.30pm, 7 March 2012

an event with

Dr David Pinder, Reader in Geography, Queen Mary, University of London
and
Liza Dimbleby, artist and writer

The diverse ways in which artists, writers, dreamers, drifters and activists inhabit, shape and respond to the city as a space for exploration, imagination and re-creation offer key themes for narratives of urban re-invention and renewal, in literature, politics, the arts, and cultural and critical geography. In this event we bring together two leading figures, both of whom have a fascination with the urban imaginary, to discuss their approach to art, wandering and urban space.

David Pinder: Navigating cities: journeys through the not-yet-set

Liza Dimbleby: Hide and Seek in the City: walking, drawing and displacement

Chaired by Graham Jeffery and Katarzyna Kosmala, UWS

David Pinder is Reader in Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of numerous articles and books on situationist urbanism and the cultural politics of urban space, including Visions of the City: utopianism, power and politics in 20th Century Urbanism (Edinburgh University Press).

Liza Dimbleby is a writer and artist. Her book I Live Here Now (Firework) is about walking and drawing in Moscow, Glasgow and London. Currently based in Glasgow, she continues to move between these three cities.

[...MASHING-UP...” An Event Series presented by UWS and CCA. This ongoing series stimulates critical, transdisciplinary research communities to discuss advanced knowledge and to build networks of excellence among producer communities. ‘Mashing up’ [definition] "a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration...to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data" (Wikipedia, 2009). The lecture series exhibits the values of new media culture to explore synergies between institutions, ideas and disciplines. This aspiration originates with the UWS and CCA partnership, which extends to the specific areas of inquiry that we pursue. It advances the core mission of each organization to initiate applied, international research opportunities through experimental, local dialogue to foster collaborative, bottom-up, sustainable practices of development. #mashingup We want attendees to blog, photograph, film, tweet and do all they can to share the content of these talks to democratize access to knowledge....]

GI Festival and Curriculum for Excellence @ Tramway, 28th April

Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and Curriculum for Excellence: the significance of contemporary art practice in meeting the experiences and outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence

Conference and bus tour
Tramway, 25 Albert Drive, Glasgow, G41 2PE
(bus tour departs Tramway)

£45 Visit the NSEAD website for full details and bookings (ADVANCE BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL)
10.30 - 4pm

In partnership with the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD) and UWS Artist Teacher Programme, this event is designed for primary and secondary teachers of art and design. Presentations during the event will focus upon the experiences and outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence and will include presentations from HMIe/Education Scotland on Creativity in the art and design curriculum, the staff and young artists of Room 13 from two Fort William primary schools will look at contemporary art and how it helps raise contemporary issues in the classroom. Others in the field of arts education in Scotland and beyond including Paul Dash, (Goldsmiths, University of London), Graham Jeffery, Diarmuid McAuliffe and Katarzyna Kosmala from UWS. The GI-commissioned artist Graham Fagan will also contribute to the event.

The event concludes with a guided tour of selected GI Festival projects led by GI's Creative Learning co-ordinator Lesley Hepburn.

www.nsead.org/cpd/conferences.aspx

My Glasgow Granny from Donegal

Is there a woman from your past who made the journey to Scotland from Ireland?

Why not come along to one of three sessions at the library on Thursday 15th March 2012 to share stories about the tales of your female relatives who came over to Glasgow from Ireland.

These sessions are an opportunity to meet Rachael Flynn, the artist-researcher running this project in a relaxed spaces with tea, coffee and chatter.

Rachael is working as part of the Scottish Centre for Island Studies. Her current research is a response to the narrative of her grandmother who left Donegal in the 1930’s to find work in Glasgow. The work she makes is a response to the written letters between her grandmother and the family she left behind, the fables, anecdotes and memories weaved by family members, and the social histories of the various women who made similar journeys.

My Glasgow Granny from Donegal project will give the public an opportunity to recognize and pay honor to such women who faced vast challenges and obstacles in order to shape their own futures.

There will be 3 sessions on Thursday 15th March:

3pm to 4pm, or 4.15pm to 5.15pm, or 5.30pm to 6.30pm

Spaces are limited but we would love to accommodate everyone so please register your interest so we can plan for this. If you are interested in coming along and taking part please contact us on 0141 248 9969 or fill out a booking form here. You are also most welcome to forward any thoughts or questions to Rachael directly, her email address is Rachael.flynn@uws.ac.uk.

Rachael is also launching a project in which women will be able to add the names of these ancestors to an artist’s book which will start to build up a collection that seeks to move beyond formal data to create a human and embodied document. By adding the names of their Irish mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers, aunts, cousins… the women who visit the book in the library will have the chance to effectively ‘light a candle’ in memory of these relatives.

In creating this work she is hoping to raise awareness of such women, but also to open up the opportunity for people to share the stories that are part of their personal histories. By acknowledging these accounts there is the opportunity to become empowered by the perseverance, strength and spirit of our female ancestors.

All of the activities and experiences of this process will culminate and build towards a developed exhibition of this material which reflects the subject matter of the women who originally made such a brave journey. Hopefully weaved through this will be the ‘journeys’ made by the women involved in this project as we share stories and pass these books between each other.

Rachael Flynn is an artist and PhD Research student currently working as part of the Scottish Centre for Island Studies, University of the West of Scotland. Rachael completed her Undergraduate degree from the School of Fine Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, and went on to study and be awarded her MA at Goldsmiths, University of London.

During her time studying Rachael received various opportunities through awards from The Scottish Sculpture Workshops (Residency award 2006), The Angus Memorial Sculpture Prize, The Hunting Art Prize Competition (Young Artist of the Year runner up, Royal College of Art 2004), Carnegie Undergraduate traveling Scholarship (Australia 2004), and Outstanding Film Achievement Award by Honorable Goldsmiths Society, Creation II (London).

Within the creative industries Rachael has worked with independent film-makers, artists, research groups and production companies. These include Paul Watson (Bafta Lifetime Achievement winner), Juniper Television (productions – The Indian Miracle? [Channel 4] & Battle for the Holy Land, Love Thy Neighbor [Channel 4]), Generator Projects (artist-run space), Wendy Ramshaw OBE, Professor David Watkins (RCA), and BBC London (Watchdog, BBC Politics Show)

Remaking Society

Graham Jeffery, Reader in Music and Performance has been awarded a grant from the AHRC, as part of the Connected Communities 'pilot demonstrator' follow-on funding scheme, jointly with Dr Tom Wakeford of the University of Edinburgh and Dr Kerrie Schaefer of the University of Exeter. A brief summary of the project is below, and a project blog will be set up in due course. Partners for this project include Mission Models Money, Cadispa Trust, NHSGGC, Theatre Modo, Bradford Community Broadcasting, Swingbridge Media, Love Milton, www.poverty.ac.uk, and Professor Jon Hawkes from the Community Cultural Development Network, Victoria, Australia. 

Remaking Society

Realising the potential of cultural activities in contexts of deprivation

Remaking Society will exemplify the central themes of the Connected Communities Programme via three inter-dependent routes:

i) Working with local partners in demonstrating and assessing participatory cultural
activities in four contrasting contexts of deprivation – Bradford, Glasgow,
Fraserburgh and Newcastle.
ii) Using these four pilots to generate new forms of evidence about the lived
experience of poverty and exclusion.
iii) Creating opportunities for marginalised and less visible sections of society to
communicate with wider audiences, including policy-makers.

Cultural dimensions of regeneration – making, creating, performing and celebrating – are often neglected. Yet these aspects can be vital to the sense of shared wellbeing, belonging and aspiration for community members. Hawkes calls the integration of a cultural perspective into the planning of change the "fourth pillar" of sustainability, alongside economic, social and environmental dimensions. He suggests that cultural projects provide "avenues for the expression of community values..[that can]...directly affect the directions society takes" (Hawkes 2001).

Recent Government-commissioned research has added to a growing body of evidence suggesting that participatory arts and media processes can act as portals to wider processes of social development, by offering for example access to further learning, training or social networks (Scottish Government 2006). Activities which promote imaginative engagement through creative practice can offer additional opportunities to conceive and enact alternatives. Members of a community experience processes allowing them to imagine different possible futures. Collaborative participatory arts have been shown to make a significant contribution to both the confidence of individuals, their trust of others participating the process and in overall quality of life and wellbeing. Remaking Society is to collaborate with four experienced partner organisations that work intensively, through participatory arts and media practices, with communities in four neighbourhoods - Bradford, West Yorkshire (community radio), Milton, North Glasgow (visual arts), Benwell, Newcastle (film) and Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire (theatre). With much of the population in each area currently experiencing high levels of economic and social deprivation, we will explore the socio-cultural dimensions of 'living with/in poverty'.


The practice of community cultural development (CCD) in North American cities, such as that led in Chicago by John Kretzman and John McKnight from Northwestern University, exemplifies the model demonstrated in Remaking Society. Traditionally the communities that were identified as deprived had been provided with services and programmes designed and delivered by outside experts. The effect of this now discredited cultural deficit model was to position people as passive recipients dependent on service providers (including university researchers) to address their deficiencies and their needs. Yet the model still persists in most deprived areas of the UK. By contrast, our asset-based approach recognises such communities as resourceful and gifted (Goldbard 2006). We draw upon and harness the capacities and creativities of local people to address issues and solve problems. Outside assistance and resources from government agencies, institutions and other organisations are still going to be required to address issues of deprivation. But, in our model, the agenda of such interventions is to be set more by the community of people most directly affected. 


Using performance, visual art and digital media, the Remaking Society research collaboration will this demonstrate ways in which communities conventionally regarded as excluded can negotiate either their own inclusion in - or their continued exclusion from - society. In this project, the concept of community is not restricted to communitarian accounts of 'a group of people in a given place', or as a site of consensus and constructed oneness based on social categories such as race, class, gender or location. Ours is a dynamic model in which community formation is seen as a continual re-negotiation of co-existence and interdependence, not confined by place, as illustrated by the thirty years of pioneering work by Southall Black Sisters (Gupta 2003). 


Questions about how communities conduct these negotiations become particularly important now, at a time of economic crisis, when resources are scarce and stress levels among vulnerable individuals are high. The study will make critical connections between our understanding of community performance and participatory process across academic fields - including conflict resolution, cultural geography, public health, social psychology and sociology. It will allow a re-examination of inter-disciplinary concepts of community through arts and media practices. 


Belonging to a community is critical to a sense of wellbeing for individuals and families, particularly significant for those who live on the breadline. The second element of Remaking Society is the generation of narrative evidence of the cultural dimensions of poverty and social exclusion. It will add a unique inter-disciplinary arts and humanities perspective to the ESRC's national study, Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK (PSE).