Join the Creative Interactions research group for our summer showcase event. We’ll come together to hear about some exciting projects currently being carried out at the intersection of academic research and creative practice, to take part in mini workshops and explore our own creativity across media and modes of expression, and to meet and network with fellow academic-creatives and creative-academics.

This is an in-person event, though hybrid attendance will be available for the morning presentation sessions.

All refreshments and lunch will be provided, including vegetarian and vegan options. Please mention any other dietary requirements when registering.

Please note: limited in-person places are available for this event. If you are no longer able to attend, please cancel your booking so others may make use of the space.

If you have any questions, please contact the director of Creative Interactions, Christine Plastow, at christine.plastow@open.ac.uk.

Programme outline:

10.00-10.30 – Arrival at the Study Studio; refreshments

10.30-10.45 – Welcome and introduction to Creative Interactions

10.45-11.45 – Project presentations

Amanda Potter - 'ACE & Creativity': a creative Classics blog

Emma Drye - The Artists Placement Group

11.45-12.00 – Refreshments

12.00-1.00 – Project presentations

Elizabeth Dearnley - Fairy Light

JC Niala - ‘1918 Allotment’ - an award winning public engagement with research project

1.00-2.00 – Lunch; opportunity to explore the Foundling Museum free of charge

2.00-3.30 – Mini workshops

A series of mini hands-on creative workshops, including storytelling, ekphrasis, and drawing an unresolved thought.

3.30-4.00 – Refreshments and networking

4.00-4.50 – Workshop and discussion: making your research with the public (led by JC Niala)

4.50-5.00 – Wrap-up and close

About Creative Interactions

At Creative Interactions, we explore the ways in which engagement with creative practice can enhance academic research, and vice versa; we seek to open up new avenues and opportunities for what it means to do ‘academic research’ and what ‘research outputs’ should look like; and we advocate for making collaboration with creative practitioners more accessible and easier in practical terms within existing structures for funding and administrating research. We also serve as a network for those seeking to share or access knowledge about projects that combine academic and creative approaches or to meet potential collaborators. Our members are involved in projects across a broad spectrum of academic disciplines and creative media, from working in collaboration or co-creation with artists to carrying out their own practice-as-research projects, and we showcase these projects at our events and on our website.

Although we are based in the School of Arts and Humanities at the Open University, we welcome academics and practitioners from across disciplines and forms of creative expression whose interests intersect with our own. You do not need to be actively working on an academic/creative project (or have ever done so!)

Creative Interactions Summer Showcase