doing together 2025
News
BSU community set to make, collaborate and experiment in ‘doing together’ symposium
Thursday, 3 April, 2025On Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 April, Bath Spa University is hosting a two-day event at its Locksbrook campus to connect staff, students, and the community through making, collaborating and experimenting.
‘doing together’ is a yearly making and sharing practice research symposium hosted by BSU’s Art Research Centre, alongside input from its Bath School of Design and Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries.
Workshops, delivered by staff and postgraduate students from across the University, share practice-based research methods and a broad range of approaches to practice. ‘doing together’ provides a space to make, do, share and discuss creative practice.
Creative practice research is where a specific question or area of curiosity is explored through a creative process or method - it is a way to think through making or doing.
Charlie Tweed, Subject Leader in Art at BSU and previous ‘doing together’ facilitator said:
“The event is unique as it is truly interdisciplinary, and, with its focus on workshops as a method of sharing, it allows researchers from across the university along with postgraduate students and the public to work together, thinking through making.”
Bringing together the community, ‘doing together’ provides an opportunity to explore and be part of current innovative art, design, cultural and creative research. The symposium celebrates the spaces, people, relationships and creative approaches at BSU, sharing them beyond the walls of the institution. The symposium opens up not just BSU’s Art and Design campus at Locksbrook but invites the community inside the thinking and making of the University’s creative research so everyone can learn together.
Reflecting on the opportunity ‘doing together’ presents, Dr Natasha Kidd, Associate Vice-Provost Creative Engagement at BSU said:
“This symposium is the most wonderful two days. It’s been a delight to establish this yearly event that enables practice researchers to share their work with each other and the wider community. It is two days filled with generosity and learning for us all. This event shares what we do as ‘makers’ and invites our own university community and the wider one inside our practice to ‘do together’.”
Throughout the symposium, facilitators and participants work together to demonstrate practice-based research, rather than simply describe it. From a Creative Writing Laboratory, a Rethinking Machine Futures workshop, and Location-Based Reading, to Embroidery Experimentation, Making Poetry, Bodging and Turning, and Artificial Virtual Reality, there’s plenty to explore. The event will close with a plenary discussion led by Bristol-based writer, artist and researcher, Dr Lizzie Lloyd.
Dr Conor Wilson, Research Lead in Art for BSU said;
“’doing together’ allows practice researchers from across the University to test and to share methods, with participants from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. Rather than talking about what we have done, we explore what we do through workshops. We see workshops as research methods in themselves – the process of planning, instructing, holding, listening, reflecting can give us fresh insights into our methods and is a dynamic form of sharing new knowledge.”
Interested in attending? The event is open to anyone interested in creative practice research. Day tickets are available on Ticket Source.
Find out more about the programme and about the symposium on the 'doing together' webpage.