On Friday I took part in the UWS Research Student Conference, being given my first opportunity to discuss my research in public through a poster presentation. It went reasonably well and more importantly I was able to take a lot away from it. It helped me to see how to better articulate my research ideas to a range of people with differing backgrounds and the range of questions I was asked allowed me to see aspects of my research from different angles that perhaps I would never consider myself. Having discussed my research with only a few people up to this point, this experience has made my PhD seem more real now and I suppose that this has given me fresh focus and determination, so can only be a good thing. It was also great to see other students work and listen to their ideas and different approaches to their research. Thanks to David McGillivray for supporting me at this event. 

 

The Big Issue seller outside the National Portrait Gallery in London wasn't too impressed with the crowds gathering to see the recent Lucian Freud exhibition as he said, to no one in particular, "paying for pictures, that's sick". 

I've always felt slightly uncomfortable in art galleries, I suppose I have never been a big fan of the conventional way art (particularly paintings) is commonly shown, yet I have rarely experienced a real alternative to this approach. I find viewing the likes of Lucian Freud in an overcrowded gallery to be pretty distracting and for this reason have always been drawn more to video art and film, where the dark/dimmly lit room allows the viewing experience to be much more focused on the work itself, rather than where it is being shown and those who are viewing it along side you. It follows that my favourite viewing of paintings is in the Rothko Room at Tate Modern in London, where Rothko's paintings are displayed in a dimmly lit room at the request of the artist. I find that when the lighting is lowered, people also tend to lower their voices, allowing for less distraction. Despite this, I enjoyed seeing Freud's paintings a great deal as I have admired his work for many years. 

The Freud exhibition was an experience in complete contrast to the London Marathon, which I participated in the previous day. The London Marathon appeared to me to invlove a vast array of people. From the variety of mass participants themselves, to celebrities, elite runners (including those hoping to make Team GB), spectators from all walks of life and the many ways they could be involved in the event via online tracking, webcams and the tv coverage and highlights. This year was the first year I have run the London Marathon but in previous years I have watched on tv or online and I have always been excited by the experience of both viewing and participating. I have never felt the uncomfortable feeling I get when I enter an art galley - a place I sense is more closed than open. 

In all the activities and studies I have taken part in throughout my life, running has proved to be the most accessible in terms of making conversation and bonding with other people. Whilst studying for my Masters in event management, my dad said to me he was pretty glad I do all this running as it makes for much more interesting conversation with friends/guests of his than event management. That really said it all for me. 

I can't help but think there are more barriers to arts participation than to participating in sport and think that art's association with the middle classes and sport with the lower classes still rings true in some ways. I'm not sure what this says for the inclusion of culture in mega sports events, because mega events like the Olympics appear to me to be fairly exclusive generally, in both the sporting and cultural elements. However, with the sporting elements broadcast on tv, this does seem far more inclusive than an art exhibition in a gallery charging £15 a head. 

The way I have so far experienced the London 2012 Olympics and the Cultural Olympiad, mainly through the media, has been dominated by its exclusivity. I'm not so interested in the big name exhibitions and £2012 tickets for sports events, but what's available for those in the community. How can they benefit? 

With the inaccessability that I have sometimes experienced in the art world, I wonder how community arts projects can be developed in conjunction with mega sports events in such a way as to involve a wide range of people in the community, in order to include the impressive array of people that events like the London Marathon seem to me to include? 

 

It's been a while since I set up this blog and have so far posted nothing so I figured I best start now or else I'd be better off forgetting about it altogether. Despite using Twitter a fair bit I'm not a massively 'online' person, I've always just written things down in sketchbooks or thrashed out arguments with whoever was around and seemed remotely interested. I prefer face to face interaction as I dislike the feeling that people can hide behind what they say online, but do appreciate the value of a space like this in that it allows you to interact with a wider group of people. In any case, I've come to the conclusion that this space can really just work like a sketchbook in itself. 

At the moment I'm at what I feel is quite an exciting stage but also pretty daunting considering I've little to show for myself. Having begun my PhD in October, I am just beginning to figure out the process and get some decent reading done. In a way, I'm somewhere I never expected to be but that is part of what makes it exciting for me and I'm up for the challenge. 

When thinking about cultural value, as I have recently started to read into, I feel like I cannot escape my own history and that my views are so much shaped by the experiences I've had and the way I've experienced the world. I have only begun to scratch at the surface of what is a wide debate on measuring cultural value, what 'culture' and 'value' even mean, and I am more aware than I've ever been as to why my views on cultural value are as they currently are, the more I read, the more I question them. For example, having been an art student I'm firmly in support of arts funding, but on the other hand think in the case of individual artists certainly, there is something to be said for making your own way, regardless of what the government and funding bodies or whoever else chooses to provide funding think to it, or how they may or may not value it. Evidently, this is only one small aspect of the arts and the wider world of culture, but as it is where my experience lies it is easiest for me to illustrate in these terms. 

There seems to me to be the overarching debate about why the arts should be funded at all, then there is, within the arts, the debate between who gets arts funding and why. It will be interesting to discover on what terms elligibility for funding is currently judged. In a sense, there will always be some form of inequality in the allocation of funding, at least felt by some, as there is no clear way to make value judgements at all, I feel, which raises the question of where this debate will end up... 

An interesting article about Jeremy Deller: 

"Jeremy Deller: 'I'm more interested in ideas than money'"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jan/29/jeremy-deller?INTCMP=SRCH