Home – Provoking Conversations on Place or Belonging

How do artists and creative researchers draw on imagery, philosophies, theories, and methodologies to interrogate concepts of home, place and belonging?

Home, a one-day symposium at The University of Gloucestershire, encompasses multiple possibilities. It could be imagined in terms of geographical location, or in terms of the body or of the self. It may be articulated through its temporality; a legacy or sense of inheritance, a futurity or an aspiration. It may be conceptualised as occupying the physical, the spatial, the temporal and the cultural realm. It may be conceived of as gaining its coherence in displacement, in exile, in migration and threat.

To belong may be interpreted as something that is cultural or religious. Similarly, belonging could draw from affectual states where one feels secure and safe, or excluded from a place or community. It spans the personal, the local and the global, encompassing geopolitical concerns and their impact on people, through communities and on populations, on the consequences of the pandemic, climate change, war. In this way artistic and critical responses may range from the intimate to the global.

This symposium provides an interdisciplinary forum for researchers to explore current debates on themes of belonging, place and home. It aims to provoke conversations into the meaning of home, to have a sense of place and belonging and provides an informal and supportive forum for researchers to explore opportunities and challenges associated with inter-disciplinary research. This is a space to test ideas, discuss methodologies and receive feedback from peers.

Programme: Friday 1st July

Room TC014, Elwes Teaching Centre, Park Campus
Please note that times are subject to change – updates will be announced

09:00 Registration and coffee

09:30 Introductions: Professor Abigail Gardner, Professor Angus Prior, Anne Dawson, Kirsten Adkins

09:45 Keynote and Screening: Anne Marie Creamer (Introduction: Andrew Bick)

10:45 Panel 1: Room TC014

HOME VOICE STORY (Chair: Dr Julia Peck)

Speaker 1: Beth Derbyshire, Birmingham City University.
The Rootless Forest. Stories of change, home and relocation from people affected by the Afghan conflict.

Speaker 2: Georgiou-Tolley, Artists Georgiou-Tolley with BBC Radio 3.
Riley Square, A sound portrait in Coventry.

Speaker 3: Michael Turabian, University of Montreal.
European or Oriental? Armenian “Western Art Music” in Fin-de-Siècle Paris.

11:45 Coffee and refreshments

12:10 Panels 2 and 3: Parallel panels

Panel 2: Room TC014

BELONGING, IDENTITY, SUBJECT (Chair: Dr Jonathan Cable)

Speaker 4: Phil Barber, University of Loughborough.
Save me White Jesus. Belonging and white masculinity in the Capitol Hill Riots.

Speaker 5: Benjamin Green, Manchester Metropolitan University
The Chair. Place, the personal and political identities.

Speaker 6: Louise Atkinson and Victoria Kortekaas, creative activists, Leeds.
The Highrise Project. Together. Creative explorations of social housing during the pandemic.

Panel 3: Room TC015

HOME JOURNEY TRAUMA (Chair: Professor Abigail Gardner)

Speaker 7: Amy Pearce Buzzard, RCA London.
Sinews: A list. Care, home, globality and imperial history.

Speaker 8: Rebecca Truscott Elves, Christchurch University.
The House was Like Her. Rebuilding the Post-Traumatic Home Through Art Practice.

Speaker 9: Fiona Ranson, Northumbria University
No Place Like Home. Exploring policy discourses around unaccompanied asylum seeking children in the UK.

13:10 Lunch

14:00 Panels 4 and 5: Parallel panels

Panel 4: Room TC014

INSIDE-OUT AND OVER THERE (Chair: Jean Boyd)

Speaker 10: Nic Morris, University of Gloucestershire.
We Cannot Live Without a Home. A photography portrait of post Stalinist Albania.

Speaker 11: Sara Christou, Loughborough University
A Woman’s Place. Challenging the Binary of home/homelessness.

Speaker 12: Verena Niepel, Newcastle University.
Coping with Non-belonging: The Case of Turkish Artists in Berlin

Panel 5: Room TC015

CREATIVITY IDENTITY BELONGING (Chair: Fiona Curran)

Speaker 13: Shaniece Martin, Coventry University.
Indian English Poetry. Concepts of belonging and Indian, English poets relationships with homeland. Coventry University

Speaker 14: Kelly O’Brien Artist, University of Gloucestershire.
A Matter of Class. Reframing British Female Working Class Experience through auto-ethnographic
documentary practice.

Speaker 15: Dr Alan Marvell, University of Gloucestershire.
The Suburban Home: escape to the country.

15:00 Afternoon tea and refreshments

15:30 Panel 6: Room TC015

MEMORIES HISTORIES PLACES (Chair Kirsten Adkins, Tony Clancy)

Speaker 16: Ivana Mancic, Nottingham Trent University.
Yugoslavia as Home: an autoethnographic study through microscopic photography.

Speaker 17: Dr Philip Harris, University of Derby.A Hymn for Ukraine: national identity expanded cinema, music and performance.

16:30 Panel and Symposium plenary: Room TC014
Symposium plenary response – Anne-Marie Creamer.

17:00 Wine food and screenings

19:00 Close

For virtual attendance on Friday, 1 July:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86171023362?pwd=5OY8LYI-F7OSjw4Ro2wklDIyJ2-xfc.1

Meeting ID: 861 7102 3362

Passcode: 668672

View event details on Eventbrite

For more information contact Kirsten Adkins  kadkins@glos.ac.uk and Tony Clancy tclancy@glos.ac.uk