Living Research: The Urgency of the Arts
Date: 15th March 2019
Venue: Royal College of Art (RCA), London
Living Research: The Urgency of the Arts, was a NAFAE Research Student Conference held on 15th March 2019 at the Royal College of Art (RCA), Battersea, London. The conference focused on how arts and humanities research can address contemporary socio-political challenges, exploring the role of PhD research in understanding and interacting with the world. With contributions from research students from universities across the UK and the world, the Living Research conference featured six strands of thinking around creative propositions engendered by a single word. The categories; Collaboration, Documents, Entanglement, Environment, Me and Reenactment were taken from RCA's School of Arts & Humanities, bringing together researchers across disciplines, developing creative methods to explore terms that demand urgent enquiry.
An accompanying exhibition ran from 15th to 23rd March 2019 and featured artworks in various media, including painting, sound, sculpture, and performance, highlighting the artistic process and its interaction with the external world.
The conference and exhibition emphasised the role of arts research in addressing urgent contemporary issues, fostering collaboration, and exploring creative methodologies.