The Creative Exchange Programme

University of Exeter Research Fellow, Thomas O'Shea-Wheller, and Falmouth University Lecturer in Photography, Catarina Fontoura, reflect on their fascinating collaboration co-creating artworks with ants as part of the pilot FX Creative Exchange programme.

This exciting project which took place between May and July 2023 saw the worlds of art and science collide to explore creativity, collective intelligence, and self-organisation amongst a diverse array of social insect species in the UK.

To find out more and read the full article visit the University of Exeter’s Arts and Culture website.

The FX Creative Exchange is an exciting transdisciplinary incubator programme supporting collaborations between early-career/emerging researchers across Falmouth and Exeter Universities. The programme aims to supports the development of a shared research culture around the themes of ecology, creativity, sustainability, and environment.

The programme is co-funded through a partnership between Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI), Falmouth University, and Exeter Arts and Culture. This is a pilot phase of a renewed FX Creative Exchange programme, building on a decade of creative collaborations hosted by the ESI.

From January – February 2023 ESI will host Madeline Donald, a visiting PhD student from UBC Okanogan. Madeline’s research is an investigation into Brandt’s Creek, in Kelowna, British Columbia, unceded and occupied syilx territory, and the riparian beings it supports. This creek came to into being as a result of Kelowna’s early colonial industrialization, a process that partitioned and paved over the expansive and ecologically complex floodplain that preceded the city, setting specific courses for water to flow through. Presently, the city’s waterways do not have the capacity to accommodate for current, let alone expected flows. Madeline is therefore asking the question, ‘What does Brandt’s Creek need in order to be(come) its most bountiful and vibrant self given the past histories, current policy ecology, and future needs of its diverse riparian communities?’

Madeline will be working from the ESI Creative Exchange Studio, displaying a selection of maps and photographs from this research to date and is keen to engage with colleagues interested in the ecocultural significance of material change and transformation.

Over the past decade the ESI Creative Exchange programme has facilitated dozens of collaborations between creative practitioners and researchers on the University of Exeter's Cornwall Campuses. On 16 November 2022 the ESI, Falmouth University and Arts & Culture Exeter hosted an event to imagine what the next 10 years might hold for the programme. RENEWAL EXE/FAL CREATIVE EXCHANGE was an opportunity for researchers and students from Falmouth University and the University of Exeter to discuss the renewal of the Creative Exchange programme as a joint Exeter/Falmouth initiative. 

Research staff and students from both universities were invited to join an open conversation over lunch, followed by an interactive workshop for early career/emerging researchers. As part of the workshop participants were asked to fill a small bell jar with something which represented their background and interests. We had some fantastic discussions about the future shape of our Creative Exchange programme.

Image © Tim Flohr Sørensen

Rare Earth is an exhibition which intertwines scientific and visual research in a multi layered collection of micrographs, photographs, paintings, sculptures and sound recordings.

It was created in collaboration between a team of ESI-based scientists, James Scourse and Alejandro Roman Gonzalez and Cornish artists Bridget Roseberry and Katrina Slack, who investigated and responded to climate and environmental change in the Antarctic.

The Rare Earth team will host an opening on Tuesday 31st May 4.30pm – 6.30pm. The exhibition continues from the 1st - 24th June. Open weekdays 9-5pm, except bank holidays. 

Ninety-nine percent of the population of the United States and Europe experience light-polluted skies to the point that well over half of them can no longer see the Milky Way. Artist and educator MJ Sharp, who has been making large-format, long-exposure photographs for over a decade, is collaborating with Professor Kevin Gaston to explore this ‘disappearing darkness’ as part of a 2021/2022 Fulbright award. 

The Researching Resistance exhibition developed from a collaboration between investigative artist Simon Ryder and the University of Exeter’s AMR network, and has been curated by Dr Kelly Thornber. Featuring portraits of members of the Network, Ryder’s artistic response illustrates that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an issue that goes beyond disciplinary, societal and national boundaries. 

Fifteen members of the AMR Network, spanning the breadth of subjects and career stages, were invited to feature in a series of photographic works. Originally exhibited at the Forum, Streatham Campus, Researching Resistance will be on display in the ESI Creative Exchange, Penryn Campus from 14 January – April 2022.

Image: Dr Liliane Mukaremera © Simon Ryder

2021 marks almost a decade of the ESI Creative Exchange, to celebrate this fascinating programme of creative collaborations, we’re delighted to be working with Exeter Arts and Culture on a stunning new online exhibition called Catalyst.

We have developed a virtual gallery where you’ll be able to navigate through a series of spaces to view photography, creative writing, visual art and film all exploring issues of climate, environment and sustainability. Launching on Earth Day (Thursday 22nd April), the exhibition will feature artworks of twelve previous Creative Exchange participants, which have been developed since their original collaboration.

Image: Towards Field Station Catalyst Remix © Bram Thomas Arnold 2021

In 2020 painter Bridget Roseberry and painter and sculptor Katrina Slack collaborated with Professor James Scourse and researcher Alejandro Roman-Gonzalez from the University of Exeter on 'Rare Earth', an immersive online exhibition inspired by an Antarctic research expedition taken by the academics in 2019. The work produced by Roseberry and Slack explored microscopic worlds in the ocean and on the ice whilst simulataneously drawing attention to the effects of climate change on the Antarctic environment.

This exhibition ran from 28 February - 3 April 2020 as part of our Underworlds series. Dr Tim Cockerill and Dr Elze Hesse worked together to produce of a series of large-scale macro photographic images visualising the effects of social and environmental cues on swarming behaviour in a model bacterium.

This exhibition ran from 17 January - 21 February 2020 as part of our Underworlds series. Hidden in Plain Sight was a photographic journey into the subsurface of Cornwall’s mining heritage. Photographer, caver and mine explorer Hugo Glasier collaborated with Laura Newsome (an ESI-based geomicrobiology lecturer), Tomasa Sbaffi (a PhD student studying the microbial communities living in Cornish mine waste), and Carmen Falagan Rodriguez (a researcher in the ESI geomicrobiology laboratory). 

UNDERWORLDS

Hidden in Plain Sight was part of an extended programme of art-science collaborations on the topic of Underworlds, hosted by the ESI Creative Exchange from January-June 2020. In a series of four projects, artists and researchers are exploring themes of the underground, the undersea, the hidden and the microscopic. Collaborators used scientific techniques and creative practices to better understand the habitats and behaviour of subterranean and submarine lifeforms, and worked with earth pigments and ocean sediments to produce visual representations of invisible or inaccessible worlds. Several of the projects engaged with the specificity of the Cornish landscape, and its legacy of mining and mineral extraction.

The Creative Exchange was co-funded by the Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) and the University of Exeter's Arts and Culture programme.

Christiane Berghoff worked on an area of the walled garden on the Penryn Campus, planting and nurturing a variety of plants selected for the purpose of botanically dying textiles and for their value to insect pollinators. She worked in collaboration with PhD student Will Hawkes, an environmental biologist at the University of Exeter whose research is concerned with recording the migratory behaviour of insect life. 

Art and Energy artists Chloe Uden and Naomi Wright collaborated with post-doc researcher Katie Shanks to challenge the aesthetics of silicon solar PV in order to re-imagine solar panels as places for artworks of the future.

Bram Thomas Arnold is an artist who started with walking and kept going, into performance, installation, drawing, academia, broadcasting and writing. Walking has become the foundation of his transdisciplinary practice, a practice that does not restrict itself to traditional notions, boundaries, mediums or modes of practice: it is an ecological form of practice that is simultaneously Conceptual in its methods and Romantic in its outcomes.

This collaboration artistically presented mathematical and engineering research outcomes related to ocean wave and wind energy extraction through the use of wave and wind energy converters. The exhibition featured a new series of seascape paintings by artist Yulia Dotsenko (Christie’s Education alumna, ESI affiliate) inspired by Dr Hamid Alemi Ardakani’s (Lecturer in Mathematics, University of Exeter) wave energy research and devoted to the theme of wave/wind energy harvesting. The purpose of this art-science exhibition was to present current world-leading research on wave/wind energy extraction through the medium of artworks, rather than sophisticated mathematical analysis. Website: https://www.hamidalemiardakani.com/exhibition

A collaborative project by ceramic artist Jake Boex, climate scientist Professor James Scourse and Phil Dyke (National Trust Coast and Marine Advisor), this exhibition explored our emotional reaction to climate change.

Sail Against Plastic, a pioneering team of scientists, filmmakers, photographers and artists, made an expedition to the Arctic to determine the levels of plastic pollution making its way there on ocean currents. 

On the 19th October the ESI hosted an event which looked at the importance of repair in the circular economy and the fantastic work that is happening around Cornwall to repair our much-loved items. The evening included talks from Stefano Pascucci, ESI Professor in Sustainability and Circular Economy, on ‘Community, Circularity and Innovative Practice’, and Pete Halswell, Falmouth & Penryn Repair Café Chair, on ‘The First Cornish Repair Café: Origins and Outlooks’.

The University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) hosted the Creative Exchange Programme’s ‘Melting Pot’ on 19 April 2018. The event brought together local creative practitioners to discuss and develop new collaborations with University of Exeter research staff. Details of future Melting Pot events will be posted here. Read more.

Rock, Paper, Scissors – When microbes play games was a graphic novel telling the toils and hardships of a cunning little virus triumphing over its enemies with the help of a valiant knight. It illustrated the intense struggles between viruses of bacteria and their bacterial hosts. The graphic novel was developed under an intense collaboration between Orlando Serpe (3rd year Fine Art BA, Falmouth University) and Mariann Landsberger (postdoctoral researcher, University of Exeter).

https://rpsnovel.tumblr.com/

The development of this book was funded and supported by the European Society for Evolutionary Biology, as well as the Genetics Society and the Environment and Sustainability Institute Creative Exchange Programme.

The Creative Practitioner

Orlando's practice focuses around narratives/story telling through visual language, making the story easy to read without words, whilst at the same time including a variety of different mediums, from digital art to printmaking and sculpture. Orlando is interested in the different view points of a subject in the same piece, as if a camera is walking around the subject and taking pictures. You can find more on Orlando's Instragram: andreio_as-art

The Researcher

Mariann is a postdoctoral researcher for the University of Exeter based in the ESI. She is an immunologist with a keen interest in virus-host interactions. Currently, Mariann is focused on different aspects of bacteriophages carrying anti-CRISPR genes, which facilitate the infection of bacteria using the CRISPR-Cas system to defend against phages.

More than food was a striking selection of photographs, designed to raise awareness and create debate around foodbank use, funded by the Creative Exchange.

The exhibition was a collaboration between the University’s Social Innovation Group, distinguished photojournalist Paddy Dowling, and local foodbanks. Reflecting on lived experiences of foodbank use, the images and stories illustrated the complex circumstances at play and the power of localised forms of care.

The exhibition was a creative exploration of the central organising concept of the Social Innovation Group’s existing EU funded projects: place based and person centred care.

The exhibition was on display in the ESI Creative Space from the 6th February to 16th March 2018. 

 For more information about the exhibition, please contact l.colebrooke@exeter.ac.uk

The workshop:

What next for welfare and support in Cornwall? Sharing learning and building responses to welfare change.

The Creative Exchange has enabled members of the University of Exeter’s Social Innovation Group to facilitate a workshop focussed on the delivery of care within a context of profound change to the welfare system. Using photographs and narratives from the ‘More than Food’ exhibition, which reflects on issues around food bank use in Cornwall, this workshop built on existing partnership work through the ESF funded project Smart Tenant, bringing together partners from the charitable and voluntary sector, food banks, housing associations and academics to share learning. The aim of the workshop was to provoke reflections and discussions on the issues raised by this work in order to produce guidance and recommendations for enabling local organisations to adapt to these changes in the Cornish context.

I am a mathematician and use continuum models – differential equations -- to analyse various aspects of environment and sustainability. Inevitably, these models are digitized on the computer to produce simulations, which in turn help me to understand and predict various scenarios. In some sense, this exhibition is a metaphor for my research. Paintings are models we can use to represent and interpret reality; landscape paintings create a simulation of environmental surroundings under certain conditions. Reconstructing and reinterpreting these paintings digitally can, in turn, be likened to computer-based modelling.

In my research I am highly collaborative and work not only with other mathematicians, but also a variety of life scientists and engineers. By working with others, one can develop a better understanding of issues and processes. In contrast, here I am collaborating with myself, reworking, challenging and reinterpreting my previous work. In this collaboration, I used the Art Studio®app on an ipad pro® 10.5 with Apple Pencil® to recreate: Blue Sky and Clouds over Exeter (No. 4); Sidmouth Storms (No. 9); Sunset at Lands’ End (No. 11); and Seven-Swans-a-Swimming at The Prince of Wales Pier (No. 12).

Finally. A traditional painting is never quite finished and modifications and embellishments are always possible. But digital art is live and interactive.

Pollinators, including honey bees, face unprecedented pressures through accumulated stress in response to disease, combined with exposure to environmental toxins. It is these multi-factoral stresses that have contributed to the current high rates of colony mortality.

In this Creative Exchange, academics from the University of Exeter facilitated a representation of honey bee data into a contemporary cello piece with an interpretive piece of music for both healthy hives, and those affected by pesticides and disease. The music is presented with a visual representation of the data, in the form of an animation.

By representing the data from bee hives in a novel way and going beyond language, the team hoped to tap into a fundamental way of experiencing a phenomenon to convey differences between healthy honey bees and those experiencing a number of stressors. The two tracks were created using two data sources each: the first from a study of honey bee behaviour when exposed to acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, commonly used as pesticides, with a control, and the second from acoustic recordings from within healthy hives and those infected with Nosema. Oak Matthias, a classical cellist and Falmouth University Fine Art student, produced a melodic line by improvising from music produced by converting the behavioural data into corresponding cello sounds.

To further explore the way honey bees and humans influence each other, this creative exchange also featured pieces from the artist Kurt Jackson, and his exhibition "Bees (and the odd wasp) in my bonnet". 

Natalia Eernstman, artist, researcher and project manager for Golden Tree, collaborated with the ESI on various projects concerning coastal change, extreme weather and community resilience.

Arvor is a long-term strand of creative work around the influence of the sea on the Cornish coast, its communities and culture. As part of the AXA Outlook project You, Me and Our Resilience (with Professor Katrina Brown) we completed Weather the Storm, an outdoor, interactive performance in Porthleven.

We are now working on Miss You Already, in which five artists will create work on three erosion-prone coastal locations, gathering people’s memories and stories of these places and exploring what it feels like to lose parts of the coast to the sea.

Dr Grace Twiston-Davies, the ESI Research Associate on the project said, “I am fascinated by Josie’s environmentally friendly techniques, powered by plants and combining traditional methods with modern technology, the perfect interpretation of our Farms for AONBees project”.

Through the Goonhilly Village Green (GVG) project, artists Sara Bowler and Elizabeth Masterton worked with academics and students at the ESI who were conducting research on the Lizard Peninsula's Goonhilly Downs.
Protected by its SSSI status and environmental heritage scheduling, the Downs form a unique landscape, underwritten by a distinctive serpentine geology. The project provided an opportunity for academics and other specialists to engage with amateur and lay people interested in sharing and exploring diverse bodies of knowledge associated with the Downs, and served as a temporary centre of cultural activity designed to generate a lasting legacy. A GVG event in 2016 included formal presentations, public lectures, workshops, guided tours and social activities intended to celebrate this special place.

In June 2015, Arts Council England made an award of £15,000 towards the project's further research and development. The award, made through public funding from the National Lottery, enabled the artists to consolidate their research to date and prepare for a pilot public event in September 2015, which included an artist’s commission, thematic workshops, walks, talks and social gatherings.
As artists, Bowler and Masterton make opportunities for new and innovative ways of disseminating research findings and debates, encouraging wider experiential understanding of complex issues. They actively looked to foster discussion between amateur and professional groups, with a view to understanding how Goonhilly Downs and similar sites could be supported and managed in the future. Through a process-based methodology, the aim of the project was to create a rich matrix of inputs for GVG with a view to fostering new and innovative outputs in the future.
The artists’ earlier project, Happidrome, presented the work of over 20 artists at the site from 2007-2011; Sara Bowler's website also has further details of her work.

In July and August 2015, a summer show in the ESI's Creative Studio featured work-in-progress from three current collaborations between ESI researchers and creative practitioners, including the GVG project.
The pilot project's culmination was a full day of events on September 26. This unique collaboration between local artists, organisations and businesses drew a wide range of visitors to explore the astounding natural environment, Earth Station structures, WW2 ruins and ancient archaeology. The project's aim was to be a place of assembly for locals and visitors alike: a common ground on which people could gather to meet, talk, learn and play. ESI researchers Dr Jonathan Bennieand Dr Caitlin DeSilvey were directly involved, sharing their understanding, knowledge and research questions with members of the audience.

Subsequently, the successful delivery of this Pilot project enabled the GVG team to secure funding from Arts Council England, Heritage Fund, FEAST, the Ernest Cook Trust and Elmgrant Trust for a programme of local events from February-April 2019, culminating in the main public event, The Gathering, in May 2019. The eclectic programme included: 6 new artists commissions; a Community Heritage Programme of workshops and talks; Goonhilly School, a day of outdoor learning on site for local children; the Village Green Society Lectures and Film Club; performances, themed activities and a “parish newspaper”, The Goonhilly Chronicle.

Work commissioned by Goonhilly Village Green from artists Phyllida Bluemel, Rosanna Martin, Elizabeth Masterton and Beth Emily Richards will be exhibited at the Eden Project’s Core Gallery from 2 November 2019-27 January 2019, as part of Unbounded: Contemporary Art Practices in Cornwall; a exhibition curated by the Eden Project and Field Notes showcasing artists working in or connected to Cornwall.

Artist Marissa Lee Benedict was awarded a Soil Culture residency to work with researchers in the ESI in August 2014. The residency was delivered by the ESI in partnership with the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (CCANW).

Marissa is a Chicago-based sculptor, researcher, writer, explorer, teacher and avid amateur of many fields and disciplines. Motivated by a sense of critical wonder, Benedict’s artistic practice is rooted in research and experimentation: she is drawn to systems that allow equal space for planned action and uncontrollable reaction. Working with biological, chemical and physical processes, her projects range from growing algae under fluorescent lights to digging up mud samples and assembling large-scale microbial fuel cells.

During her residency, Marissa worked alongside Dr Gabriel Yvon-Durocher, whose research interests focus on the response of soil carbon sequestration to climate change and land use management. He was, at that time, developing a research project at Lynher Dairies, a 250-acre organic dairy farm, to investigate how agricultural practices can promote carbon sequestration, improve soil carbon storage and maintain viable yields.

Marissa used video and photo to document the research and place a lens on the critical role carbon plays in our atmosphere, our soil and our future climate.

The Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, based at the University of Exeter, explores new understandings of our place within nature through the arts. Soil Culture, a collaboration with Falmouth University and involving many partnerships across the South West, uses the work of artists to inspire a deeper appreciation of the importance of soil – a resource on which our entire civilisation depends.
A book detailing the overall, three-year work of Soil Culture is available, as is a 30-minute film on the same subject.

Jonathan Bennie, ESI Associate Research Fellow, collaborated with artist and writer Gabrielle Hoad to identify and exploit microclimates where edible dessert bananas might be grown outdoors in the South West. By suggesting the imposition of this tropical alien into the traditional British countryside, the project opened up space for conversations about what it means to eat local food and the future of UK food supplies.

The project ran from January 2014 to January 2015 and culminated in an exhibition in the ESI; it modelled and mapped biologically-relevant microclimates in order to support a more informed investigation of the feasibility of banana cultivation – now or in a future climate scenario.

Jonathan hopes that the project will provide insights that he can incorporate into his mainstream research work, including new ways of understanding, visualising and communicating the complex spatial and temporal patterns of microclimate within landscapes. Gabrielle is interested in how the attempt to grow bananas offers a light-hearted route to engaging with future scenarios - such as ecological disruption and food shortages - and hopes that the collaboration will shift the experiment into the category of the 'possible' and give it more traction with public audiences.

All Washed Up was a collaboration between Dr Matthew Witt, a lecturer in Natural Environment within the ESI, and Rame Peninsula Beach Care (RPBC), a beach cleaning group from South East Cornwall.  

High-street ‘fast fashion’, which promotes fast-moving trends and disposable garments, is known to have serious environmental and social implications. Yet fashion is so highly embedded in matters of self-identity that relatively few consumers see beyond its glamorous side.

This project, a collaboration between Clare Saunders, Sue Bamford and Irene Griffin, looked to ask: how might fashion norms be re-shaped so as to reduce the environmental and social impacts of fashion?

The work, which ran from September 2013 to May 2014, had two strands: firstly, in October 2013, a symposium (Applying Cornish Wisdom) focused on how local and ethical textile businesses can overcome barriers to sustainable garment production in a globalised world. Secondly, in 2014, the researchers conducted an experiment to discover the extent to which involving individuals in making garments alters their attitudes and behaviours towards fashion. Additional workshops were also run in January 2015.

Creative outputs from the symposium, and garments designed and made by participants, were exhibited in the ESI Creative Studio.

This was also the venue, in July and August 2015, for a summer show featuring work-in-progress from three of the Creative Exchange Programme's continuing collaborations. These included an element from 'Re-shaping Fashion Norms' and featured some items of upcycled clothing produced in a series of public sewing workshops.

The collaboration between Hannah Guy and Thomas Davies took place between May and December 2013 and stemmed from the ESI research project, ECOLIGHT, which investigates the aesthetic, environmental and human health impacts of artificial light pollution.

The creative exchange between artist and scientist focused on a collaborative photographic project with residents from St Just, Cornwall.
The images, made during a series of night walks, aimed to re-engage participants with the naturally-lit night-time environment. The night walks / public workshops took place under the summer full moon, in July and August 2013. Each consisted of storytelling and an introduction to basic photographic techniques, which enabled the participants to create images with the streetlights on and then off for the final twilight photography walk.

During each nightwalk / public workshop, Thomas Davies talked to participants about the ecological and aesthetic impacts of light pollution, and its effects on the human population, including an increasing disconnection from the natural world. The photographs created by participants were featured in an exhibition at the ESI, which ran from 8-21 November 2013.