Case studies: Beyond the Campus
Archiving the Nottingham Contemporary Public programme
Beyond the Campus had the opportunity to talk to Isobel Whitelegg from Nottingham Contemporary about their collaboration with Nottingham's universities University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University.
Can you introduce us to Nottingham Contemporary?
We opened in 2009, almost exactly 3 years ago. Nottingham Contemporary includes 4 exhibition spaces. The space which I use the most is called “space”, which has a purpose built auditorium that can be changed around and used for performance and film – including expanded concepts of film installations. It is a very versatile space. We also have a seminar education space, which is used for hosting our adult and cross-generational programmes offering all types of educational activities. We also have a research room that is stocked up with books and research material for our exhibitions. How did you approach the development of a public programme? The public programme includes various discursive forms from reading groups to international conferences. It is intended to form an integral part of the overall artistic programme at Nottingham Contemporary. It is also importantly the platform and catalyst for our development relationship with the higher education sector. This is because the universities in Nottingham (University of Nottingham, Nottingham Trent University) were involved in the development of this project right when it was under early discussion in the early 2000s. The public programme is the aspect of our organisation that the universities fund. They fund it 50/50 on a 3 year basis. It is an unusual partnership in that it involves 2 universities in the same city. I haven’t come across any other examples of that. That makes it particularly interesting and gives it a particular purpose! The funding goes into my work and the development of the programme. The reason we have a public programme is because of the our mission and values of the organisation. As well as showing art in the allocated 4 exhibition spaces, we state a commitment for research, exchange and dissemination of ideas inspired by today's art. And embedded in the business plan for Nottingham Contemporary is a cross-disciplinarity – this means across disciplines as well as across cultures. As well as attracting new public to contemporary art, which is the mission of most publically funded contemporary art institutions, we also state that we want to support innovative, creative and critical thinking in artists and audiences. |
Related case studies
Presentation & PodcastListen to Isobel Whitelegg, Head of Public Programmes at Nottingham Contemporary, who presented at our First Workshop in Manchester – or download her presentation: Archiving the Nottingham Contemporary Public Programme
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Why is the partnership with HEIs crucial for Nottingham Contemporary?
Having a partnership with higher education in particular allows us to achieve what we say we want to achieve as an artistic as well as critical programme. Through that we can form relationships and dip into a very wide pool of expertise contained within two universities and multiple departments, and also take advantage of the kind of research infrastructure that both universities have. And this allows us to also build different communities of interest for contemporary art, which – I’ve been talking to professionals in similar positions – is becoming more and more important because of the current education agenda. Thus art’s relationship to different disciplines can be underlined , which creates a more solid case for the arts. It’s also very important in that the people that I work with at universities lend great expertise and teaching. And this allows us to do a different kind of teaching – a type of teaching that takes place in the public realm. Hence we organise seminars and reading groups which you might also find within a university context. But they bring together people who are in higher education with people who aren’t. This is very important from a skills development point for young academics, challenging them to address a mixed constituency. But it also allows us to support the idea that audiences can be creatively and critically empowered through learning from our exhibitions. Nottingham Contemporary is distinctive in that quite often the exhibitions will have a lot of contextual relevance. It brings a responsibility to deal with various different aspects. So being able to work with higher education allows us to explore the responsibilities that certain platforms of art demand.
In what particular ways do you work together with HEIs?
The ways in which the university helps us to realise exhibitions events are diverse. When we were showing work by Mika Rottenberg, a contemporary artist based in New York alongside work by James Gillray, I spoke to Matthew Green who is an associate professor of English at University of Nottingham. He uses graphic novels in his teaching, hence we got in touch to think about how we could create a parallel series of events about the critical power of caricature and to find out why it is commonly associated with political issues. And this allowed us – via his contacts – to invite the living legend Alan Moore to Nottingham Contemporary, which is a relationship that I wouldn’t have managed myself given the fact that he doesn’t have an email address and you have to correspond with him by writing letters.
In terms of reading groups HE staff would often volunteer their time to lead a series of reading groups, that allow them to prepare for a big conference. We really rely on members of staff volunteering. So recently alongside our exhibitions, a member of staff at Nottingham Trent University lead a series of workshops on how creative writing might be used as a form of critical writing/critical interpretation for art. So it is possible to realise different types of events. And really productivity is not a problem. It is always possible to come up with ideas and find somebody within the university that could help you realise them or to find a key speaker or chair who would want to answer. Communication is quite easy with the university, so we find it perfectly possible to work quite fluidly with them.
What are the challenges in curating a collaborative public programme?
One of the major concerns after 3 years of this programme running, producing and recording – we now have a substantial archive of events – is to know what to do with this legacy and how to turn it into a longer-term sense of what the institution is about. These questions would need to be answered. Why do we want to work with higher education? Why do we want to work with certain disciplines. And one of the things I’ve set up since working here is an academic working group which is cross-disciplinary and comes from both universities, bringing together a range of interests. What each of the members of the group share is a certain commitment to contemporary visual art in particular at a way of articulating their research interests. Whether they are working in philosophy and have a particular concern with the visual and perception, or whether they are working in cultural geography. Even working with the business school from a critical point of view, has a huge relevance to contemporary art and questions of institutions and critique. And they are also willing to work not only as a working group, I also invite them to Nottingham Contemporary to help me think trough certain managerial issues. Quite a lot of them are emerging academics, so we start off at lecturer level. It goes up to reader level, but they also need to have a certain connection to students and involvement in teaching...also not be too heavily committed administratively, so that they are able to come to meetings and do homework.
How would you like to consolidate and document your collaboration?
One of the things that I’ve been thinking through with HEIs recently is how we can identify what are the consistent concerns of the programme. So we came up with a set of 4 themes of questions that seemed to recur again and again through exhibitions. We started using them as a way of working towards long-term research. We are planning to hold meetings, where we will be talking about expanding our online presence. So we came up with a series of questions that brought together academics with other colleagues at the university, so that we can raise ideas and develop longitudinal ideas for the programme, also projects that have the capacity for inter-funded research. This is feeding into an overall concern with what our type of institution means in terms of what it produces and what our heritage is i.e. what are we actually contributing or holding on to? And in distinction perhaps to how other partnerships work when you have a physical collection, for them it is comparatively easy to propose a collaborative doctoral award or research project with focus on the conservation of the collection. When what you are producing is knowledge and recorded events, then the question is: how do we turn it into a focus for research and how can our connection with HE find an answer to that. Also how can we increase access to this knowledge which we are continuing to produce and record.
To conclude with one project, we worked with both universities to recruit for a very high level paid placement, to produce an online archive focused on a specific exhibition period. The recorded events would be made editable and accessible so that they would be more usable for education purposes. This would be annotated with all the critical terms used during our high level conferences. So everyone who contributed to it can reuse the records as a learning tool but also as a platform for discussion. This allows us internally to look back into the programme and reflect on what the concerns and achievements have been.
(edited by Silvie Jacobi)
Having a partnership with higher education in particular allows us to achieve what we say we want to achieve as an artistic as well as critical programme. Through that we can form relationships and dip into a very wide pool of expertise contained within two universities and multiple departments, and also take advantage of the kind of research infrastructure that both universities have. And this allows us to also build different communities of interest for contemporary art, which – I’ve been talking to professionals in similar positions – is becoming more and more important because of the current education agenda. Thus art’s relationship to different disciplines can be underlined , which creates a more solid case for the arts. It’s also very important in that the people that I work with at universities lend great expertise and teaching. And this allows us to do a different kind of teaching – a type of teaching that takes place in the public realm. Hence we organise seminars and reading groups which you might also find within a university context. But they bring together people who are in higher education with people who aren’t. This is very important from a skills development point for young academics, challenging them to address a mixed constituency. But it also allows us to support the idea that audiences can be creatively and critically empowered through learning from our exhibitions. Nottingham Contemporary is distinctive in that quite often the exhibitions will have a lot of contextual relevance. It brings a responsibility to deal with various different aspects. So being able to work with higher education allows us to explore the responsibilities that certain platforms of art demand.
In what particular ways do you work together with HEIs?
The ways in which the university helps us to realise exhibitions events are diverse. When we were showing work by Mika Rottenberg, a contemporary artist based in New York alongside work by James Gillray, I spoke to Matthew Green who is an associate professor of English at University of Nottingham. He uses graphic novels in his teaching, hence we got in touch to think about how we could create a parallel series of events about the critical power of caricature and to find out why it is commonly associated with political issues. And this allowed us – via his contacts – to invite the living legend Alan Moore to Nottingham Contemporary, which is a relationship that I wouldn’t have managed myself given the fact that he doesn’t have an email address and you have to correspond with him by writing letters.
In terms of reading groups HE staff would often volunteer their time to lead a series of reading groups, that allow them to prepare for a big conference. We really rely on members of staff volunteering. So recently alongside our exhibitions, a member of staff at Nottingham Trent University lead a series of workshops on how creative writing might be used as a form of critical writing/critical interpretation for art. So it is possible to realise different types of events. And really productivity is not a problem. It is always possible to come up with ideas and find somebody within the university that could help you realise them or to find a key speaker or chair who would want to answer. Communication is quite easy with the university, so we find it perfectly possible to work quite fluidly with them.
What are the challenges in curating a collaborative public programme?
One of the major concerns after 3 years of this programme running, producing and recording – we now have a substantial archive of events – is to know what to do with this legacy and how to turn it into a longer-term sense of what the institution is about. These questions would need to be answered. Why do we want to work with higher education? Why do we want to work with certain disciplines. And one of the things I’ve set up since working here is an academic working group which is cross-disciplinary and comes from both universities, bringing together a range of interests. What each of the members of the group share is a certain commitment to contemporary visual art in particular at a way of articulating their research interests. Whether they are working in philosophy and have a particular concern with the visual and perception, or whether they are working in cultural geography. Even working with the business school from a critical point of view, has a huge relevance to contemporary art and questions of institutions and critique. And they are also willing to work not only as a working group, I also invite them to Nottingham Contemporary to help me think trough certain managerial issues. Quite a lot of them are emerging academics, so we start off at lecturer level. It goes up to reader level, but they also need to have a certain connection to students and involvement in teaching...also not be too heavily committed administratively, so that they are able to come to meetings and do homework.
How would you like to consolidate and document your collaboration?
One of the things that I’ve been thinking through with HEIs recently is how we can identify what are the consistent concerns of the programme. So we came up with a set of 4 themes of questions that seemed to recur again and again through exhibitions. We started using them as a way of working towards long-term research. We are planning to hold meetings, where we will be talking about expanding our online presence. So we came up with a series of questions that brought together academics with other colleagues at the university, so that we can raise ideas and develop longitudinal ideas for the programme, also projects that have the capacity for inter-funded research. This is feeding into an overall concern with what our type of institution means in terms of what it produces and what our heritage is i.e. what are we actually contributing or holding on to? And in distinction perhaps to how other partnerships work when you have a physical collection, for them it is comparatively easy to propose a collaborative doctoral award or research project with focus on the conservation of the collection. When what you are producing is knowledge and recorded events, then the question is: how do we turn it into a focus for research and how can our connection with HE find an answer to that. Also how can we increase access to this knowledge which we are continuing to produce and record.
To conclude with one project, we worked with both universities to recruit for a very high level paid placement, to produce an online archive focused on a specific exhibition period. The recorded events would be made editable and accessible so that they would be more usable for education purposes. This would be annotated with all the critical terms used during our high level conferences. So everyone who contributed to it can reuse the records as a learning tool but also as a platform for discussion. This allows us internally to look back into the programme and reflect on what the concerns and achievements have been.
(edited by Silvie Jacobi)
