MA SPACE: Arts & Civil Society Talks

26th Oct - 7th Dec 2017
Thursdays: 2.00pm - 3.00pm

Venue: Merriman House Campus, Limerick School of Art and Design

Create in partnership with Limerick School of Art and Design, LIT Limerick is programming a series of Civil Society talks as part of its MA SPACE (Social Practice and the Creative Environment). Create encourages debate on the role of the arts in civil society and curates public talks and lectures which examine intersections between art and the socio-political.

Create with Marilyn Lennon and Sean Taylor have programmed talks that challenge and provoke the students. For the 2017 autumn term, the aim of the series of talks is to bring a range of experts to the programme to discuss their expertise and research concerns in fields that have discreet languages, methods and structures. Previous topics have included gender and economics; European policy making; asylum and Direct provision; politics of commemoration; environmentalism; participatory theatre; youth work and social policy.

The talks aim to encourage debate on the role of the arts in civil society and examine intersections between art and the socio-political. The Art and Civil Society talks also aim to build capacity to connect emerging arts practice to society and facilitate a broader understanding of societal issues and how they inform and impact on collaborative arts practice.

This series of talks will begin on 26th October 2017 with Karen E. Till. The second speaker will be Niall Crowley on 2nd November (speaker biographies and talk topics are listed below).Other speakers include: Laurence Lord on 7th December and John Bissett on 30th November 2017.

Karen E. Till: 26th October 2017

Digging, Witnessing and Decolonising: Towards Responsible Forms of Collaborative Practice through Memory-Work and a Place-Based Ethics of Care

Using examples from Berlin, Bogotá and Cape Town, this talk explores place-based forms of activist and artistic engagements that invite residents to critically reflect upon difficult pasts and imagine and inhabit more just futures.

Biography

Karen E. Till is Professor of Cultural Geography at Maynooth University, where she is also directs the MA in Geography and the Space&Place Research Collaborative. She is founding co-Convener of the Mapping Spectral Traces international network of artists, practitioners and scholars. Karen’s geo-ethnographic research examines the significance of place in personal and social memory, and the ongoing legacies of state-perpetrated violence in countries around the world. Her curatorial work invites artists, practitioners, community leaders, scholars and publics to explore how creative practices might enable more responsible and sustainable approaches to caring for places, shared environments and cities. Publications include The New Berlin: Place, Politics, Memory (2005), Walls, Borders and Boundaries (2012), Mapping Spectral Traces (2010), Textures of Place (2001). Her book in progress, Wounded Cities, highlights artistic and activist place-based memory-work and ethical forms of care in Berlin, Bogotá, Cape Town, Dublin, Minneapolis, Ramallah and Roanoke.

Niall Crowley: 2nd November 2017

Valuing Equality

Culture and values have to be of core concern in seeking social change. Yet, there is an increasing departure from core equality values being forced on civil society. The arts should offer some sustenance but rarely give expression to such values. Civil society has failed to advance work at the level of values. Only slowly are we coming to grips with the challenge: A more equal society won't be achieved by preaching but by drawing out popular values of dignity, inclusion and justice and enabling people to give life to these values.

Biography

Niall Crowley is an independent equality and human rights expert. He works extensively with the Council of Europe and the European Commission. Most recently he has worked to devise new values based approaches to promoting equality and human rights in the public sphere and within institutions. He is co-founder of the Values Lab. He was Chief Executive Officer of the Equality Authority for ten years from its establishment in 1999 and prior to that was co-director of Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Rights Centre. He is author of An Ambition for Equality published by Irish Academic Press and Empty Promises: Bringing the Equality Authority to Heel published by A&A Farmer.