The Academic Artist: Merging the Performance Maker & Pedagog

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At Leeds Metropolitan University the whole of the academic performing arts team has been intentionally comprised of practicing artists and theatre makers that, as well as making work professionally, also cite their artistic practice within their teaching. Having moved on from a time when the struggling artist would just teach to supplement their income, can we now recognise the value of the artist as a practitioner and educator? Can this be achieved by drawing no distinction between the processes and learning experiences of professional devising and the creative acts of pedagogy? With so many emergent performance makers and artists coming straight from our universities, is it important to acknowledge the large quantity of contemporary performance work that is contextualised from an academic perspective? As the responsibility for the preparation of future artists rests within the academy and the recognition of practice as research increases, should university courses be offering less traditional and more vocational training opportunities to students?

Stream: Art and Education

Paper: Towards an Academic Artist

Oliver Bray is a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Theatre at Leeds Metropolitan University and Artistic Director of Until Thursday Theatre Company, Manchester UK. His theatre company tour nationally and he has directed and performed in work that has been shown in international contexts. He has presented work at the National Review of Live Art (Glasgow), NOW Festival (Nottingham), Nuff Said (Lancaster), Liverpool Live (Liverpool), Inbetween Time (Bristol), Budva International Theatre Festival (Montenegro), FIST (Serbia), Festival of International Theatre (Romania). He is an Associate Artist at the greenroom (Manchester) and has won a number of major commissions to develop his work.