Beyond the Pastoral: New Perspectives in Place-Based Art Practice

* Please note that registration for this student-led event is managed through Eventbrite. It is your responsibility to ensure that you have signed up correctly to both the overall event and any specific workshops you wish to attend. *

This two day symposium brings together artists, researchers and practitioners to explore different ways of engaging with the landscape that provoke, challenge, or disrupt traditional depictions associated with pastoral and/or romantic gaze. 

Responding to a growing demand to decolonise, queer, and crip research, while also interrogating relational bonds between human and non-human beings during times of ecological precarity, we ask: how can the pastoral be reimagined to facilitate a progressive and liberatory model for generative politics? How can such aesthetics represent the reality of rural ways of living, in contrast and as a challenge to harmful and falsified ideals?

The symposium features exhibitions and experiential workshops alongside presentations from researchers and artists doing exciting work in their fields. 

We are joined by two keynotes. Day 1 will conclude with Stephe Harrop, a professional storyteller and Professor of Drama at Liverpool Hope University. Day 2 will close with Theo Panagopoulos, a BAFTA nominated film-maker and researcher based at the University of the West of Scotland.