Join us for a day of discussions, presentations, demonstrations and networking around practice-as-research in Plymouth. Meet a community of researchers involved in any aspect of practice-as-research (incl. performance, music, creative writing, etc.). It is intended as a chance to strengthen the research community and is open (and free) to anyone interested; postgraduate participation is particularly encouraged. The programme is intended to encourage participation and discussion, while inviting thoughts on ways of doing practice-as-research. Free lunch and refreshments provided.

Roland Levinsky Building, Room 206-207

9.30: Registration and welcome

10.00-11.00: Helen Billinghurst and Phil Smith (Workshop)

11.00-11.30: Tea and Coffee

11.30-12.30: Peter Falconer - What Happened to Seaton Snook? A Parafictional Archive of Sounds and Music from an Abandoned Seaside Town (Seminar)

12.30-13.30: Lunch

13.30-15.00: Scott McLaughlin - Articulating Practice Research (Workshop)

15.30-17.00: Núria Bonet - Historically Informed Pub Crawl of Greenbank (Walk)

The programme is provisional and could be subject to change.

• Helen Billinghurst and Phil Smith are a collaborative duo who explore and reveal the secrets of everyday spaces through artworks, publications, readings, scryings and performances. https://crab-bee.tumblr.com/

• Peter Falconer is a UK-based sound artist and composer, originally from Hartlepool. His work frequently combines music, sound design, narration, historical research, and sonic journalism to tell parafictional stories about both our own and possible alternative realities. https://www.peterfalconer.co.uk/

This practice-based PhD takes the form of a web-based archive of sounds and music from a parafictional seaside town in North East England called Seaton Snook, and an accompanying commentary. The archive features a wide range of individual sound pieces across a range of materialities, including artistic compositions, pedagogic compositions, recorded musical performances and field recordings. It also includes interviews and transcriptions, photographs of handwritten scores, and accompanying explanatory information. The project draws on Carrie Lambert-Beatty’s notion of parafiction (artistic practices that play in the overlap between fact and fiction) and Peter Cusack’s practice of sonic journalism, to investigate aspects of twentieth century and contemporary North Eastern English culture. More broadly, this project investigates how listener experience can be shaped by the stories we tell about musical works, the compositional process, and social and biographical aspects surrounding the work.

• Scott McLaughlin (b.1975) is an Irish composer and improviser based in Huddersfield (UK). He started out as a shoegaze/experimental guitarist before studying music in his 20s at University of Ulster then MA/PhD University of Huddersfield (with PA Tremblay, Bryn Harrison). Currently, Scott lectures in composition and music technology at the University of Leeds, and co-directs CePRA (Centre for Practice Research in the Arts), as well as convening the RMA Practice Research Study Group. His research focuses on composing for contingency and indeterminacy in the physical materiality of sound. Scott is currently Co-I on the AHRC SPARKLE (Sustaining Practice Assets for Research, Knowledge, Learning and Engagement), and recently completed an AHRC Leadership Fellowship, the ‘Garden of Forking Paths’ project, on composing for contingency in clarinets — forkingpaths.leeds.ac.uk

Thinking of how practitioners can really integrate their research narrative and their practice in a manner that shows both the imperative for doing this through practice, but also how it speaks clearly to the wider field that they contribute to as researchers (not just as practitioners).

• Núria Bonet is a composer and Lecturer in Music at the University of Plymouth. Her research interests are varied, but include the use of scientific material as compositional material, Catalan woodwind instruments and pub jukeboxes. In 2020, she began the 'Pubs of Greenbank' project which aimed to collect the oral history of the pubs of the Greenbank area of Plymouth. The long-awaited 'historically-informed pub crawl' of the pubs of Greenbank took place on 1 August 2021. It will be repeated on this occasion and you are invited to bring your own memories or make new ones, while we combine archival, oral and personal history during the walking tour. Please note that this tour will go through uneven streets and pavements, and you may wish to enter pubs on the way. http://pubsofgreenbank.co.uk/

This event is supported by the Royal Musical Association.