Central hosts Collisions 2019, an Annual Festival of Practice Research in Performance
Collisions 2019 Festival, Photographed by Holly Revell
From 2-3 October, Central hosted Collisions 2019, an annual festival of practice research in performance.
Collisions is an annual festival that showcases the thriving doctoral practice research community at Central and across London institutions more broadly. Through Collisions, research degree students and creative fellows engage with what it means to be researching with, though, in and by practice, and share this engagement with a wider academic and public audience.
The team behind Collisions 2019 was particularly interested in curating conversations about accessibility and quality within practice research. Drawing inspiration from Rachel Hann’s argument for a second wave in practice research, where new knowledge and insights should be accessible beyond the individual project, Collisions 2019 aimed to encourage dialogue across projects and to question how individual research insights might also speak to others’ work.
In this spirit of knowledge exchange, and as new members of the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP), Central’s curation team put a call out to its LAHP partners for collaboration. Previous years have seen a variety of London institutions collaborate with Collisions, including Kings College London and the Royal College of Music. For 2019, the Festival featured participation by a number of students from the Royal College of Art. This unique collaborative process allowed the Festival to curate conversations around what practice research looks like across different institutions and art forms.
The 2019 Festival was co-curated by four of Central’s current PhD candidates: Simon Dodi, Anna Woolf, Laura Kressly, and Josephine Leask, with Dr Kate Elswit acting as academic mentor in the project and producer Rebecca Hayes Laughton.
On each day of Collisions, the Festival opened with a two hour practical workshop facilitated by a current research student. Afternoon sessions focused on a combination of performance and discussion, including panel talks, installations and immersive works.
Dr Kate Elswit, Reader in Theatre and Performance at Central and the Academic Mentor for Collisions 2019 said:
“Research @ Central is thrilled to see how Collisions has become a vital hub for conversations around the many forms in which practice can inform and further research inquiry, drawing participants from across London area universities and arts communities.”
Co-curator and current PhD candidate at Central, Simon Dodi, said:
“Collisions is an amazing opportunity for PhD students to share their current practice research to the wider research community at Central and a public audience. The feedback I have gained through Collisions has been integral to developing my practice and my ongoing research project.”
As a doctoral student at Central, students are fully immersed in our research culture, which is one of enquiry, innovation and experimentation. They are engaged in exploring new and pioneering ideas and practices under the supervision of research active staff, many of whom are the leading scholars and practitioners in their fields. To find out more about what we offer and what it means to be part of our community of postgraduate researchers at Central, as well as how to apply, please visit the Research section of our website or contact us directly.
Presenters at Performers at Collisions 2019 included:
Marina Hadjilouca – Performance Designer and PhD Researcher at the Royal College of Art: The Role of the Performance Designer towards Triggering Active Co-Existence
Rebecca Hayes Laughton – Community Theatre Director, Producer and Researcher at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama: Staging the Traumatic: My Body Is/ My Body Is Not
Kate Scarlett Duffy – Theatre Maker and PhD Researcher at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama: All the Beds I Have Slept In
Cathy Sloan – Applied Theatre Maker, Recoverist and Performance Researcher at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama: Recovery Arts Café
Clio Unger – Dramaturg and PhD Researcher at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama: We Present a Presentation
Marina Stavrou – PhD Researcher at the Royal College of Art: Synaptic Galore
Chang Gao – Sculptor, Public Art Researcher, Establisher and Director of the International Laboratory of Social Innovation, Central Academy of Fine Art of China and PhD Researcher at the Royal College of Art: Emotional Encounter
Peizhi Zeng – Multidisciplinary Theatre Director, Writer, Dramaturg, Musician and PhD Researcher at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama: We Are Just a By-Product of the Most Radical Social Experiment in China
Simon Dodi – PhD Candidate at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama: Tickle Your Fancy