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Photography Talks and Back to University

My last post was way back in August and while I had a few more ideas for things to write for the Autumn, I made the decision to head back to university in September. Since then things have got rather busy and even more so as I’m giving two talks at Carisbrooke Castle Museum in February and March.

University – Round Three

I graduated the Open University with a 2:1 which I was pretty pleased with and decided to keep things rolling rather than taking a year out. I’m now studying at Southampton Solent University, undertaking a MA in Critical Creative Practice.  This is a fairly new course currently in it’s third year and is set up for creative practitioners (aka artists, designers, photographers, film makers and fashion designers etc) to apply critical theory, art and design history, visual culture, cultural theory and material and digital culture to their practice. Coming from a photographic/art historical background I was excited to start the course and I’ve learnt a great deal. While there are options to answer the briefs with practical outcomes, I’m actually taking a more academic route and choosing the essay option. This plays to my current strengths since my OU degree, but it is informing my own photographic practice – and an ever deepening knowledge of photographic theory.

Over the coming months I’ll post up some of my essays (as I don’t have much time to write anything else) to keep things fresh. As an aside, my reading list at The Library has now grown rather considerably. It may be some time before I get around to updating that!

Photography Talks

Another thing I’ve been wanting to do is start venturing into talks about photography. This has resulted in not one, but two talks that will be held at Carisbrooke Castle Museum where I volunteer.

The first talk is on Hidden Heroes of Ryde. Hidden Heroes has been an on-going project for Carisbrooke Castle Museum looking at people who were living on the Island who have made a contribution to the Island’s heritage and culture, but who may not be too well known. For this talk I’m co-presenting with two other speakers, but I will be talking about Hughes and Mullins, two Ryde photographers who became very well respected and became photographers to Queen Victoria. This talk will be held on the 4th February, more details and tickets can be found on the Carisbrooke Castle Museum page.

My next talk, to be held on the 24th March, will be on Island Photographs and photographers. I’ll be looking at photography in the Castle archive, what it can show us about our past and look at some of the photographs in the collection. I’ll also look at some of the Islands photographers and their varied work. Again, do have a look at the Carisbrooke Castle Museum page for more info and tickets.