SPA Magazine - Spring 2018

CREATIVE MYTHS Being creative is a serious business CO-WORKING SPACES Because really we just want to get together

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PRINT: IT’S BACK! Why print has become a disruptive technology

The magazine of Bath Spa University

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SPRING 2018 ON CAMPUS 02 ON CAMPUS 03 LETTERS 07 SOUTH BY SOUTH-WEST: PROFESSOR ANITA TAYLOR 08 SECRET SPA: SOMERSET PLACE

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10 TOOLS: TEXTILE DESIGN 13 BRAINWAVES: DR PETE ETCHELLS

FEATURES 14 SIX AND A HALF MYTHS... ...about the creative industries which, at a whopping £84bn a year, we reckon must be worth investing in.

22 PROFILE: PAT BLACK The Head of Teacher Education believes in the power of story, that we all have a story to tell, and that everyody is part of that story.

Think print is dead? Think again. From indie magazines to the resurgence in direct mail, print media is turning the tables to disrupt digital media.

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In an age where remote working is possible for almost everyone, it seems that, actually, we’d quite like to work with each other.

BACK SECTION 41 UNIVERSITY MATTERS: PROFESSOR NEIL SAMMELLS 42 AT WORK: FLORA SEARSON 46 ADVENTURES IN.... AMBIENT LITERATURE 48 ON THE BUSES: GEORGIANS

42 Publisher: Bath Spa University, Newton Park, Newton St Loe, Bath BA2 9BN. Editorial enquiries: Kate Love – k.love@bathspa.ac.uk Alumni enquiries: Amethyst Biggs – a.biggs3@bathspa.ac.uk Advertising enquiries: Eloise Oatley – e.oatley2@bathspa.ac.uk Spa is produced by YBM Ltd – info@ybm.co.uk Copyright © 2018 The opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of Bath Spa University or YBM Ltd Editor: Mira Katbamna Deputy Editor: Steve McGrath Art Director: Finnie Finn Cover: Photograph by Victoria Ling Icons: Mikey Burton Fonts: Sentinel, Futura, Akzidenz Grotesk

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MEMORIES

From plasticine inventor Walter Sickert to children’s favourite Axel Scheffler, the Bath School of Art and Design has a reputation for excellence. But it’s also a place that holds many fond memories for the hoards of creatives who have passed through its doors over the past 160 years. As Bath Spa prepares to publish a book chronicling the development of this influential school, we’ve been thrilled to hear some of your memories of time spent there. Here is a short selection: Corsham was the most formative and illuminating period of my early life; it was like I came alive there. I loved the warmth of everyone, the beauty of Corsham Court, sitting on the stairs there waiting for dinner, the peacocks, the music room, our rooms over the doctor’s surgery, Liam’s pet pheasant in the kitchen – all a seminal experience.

Alan Humphries (Fine Art, 1971)

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There were parties and drinks at The Duke (that smoke-stained den that smelt of sour scrumpy). There was carol singing – the main aim was to do the round of the 13 or so pubs in the immediate area of Corsham, one where we had a welcome from Sir Michael Tippet the composer!

Roger Shapley (Fine Art, 1963) Two of the best and most exciting years of my life were my two years at Corsham.

My eyes were opened. I dissected lobsters and birds nests. I looked after and studied geese and crabs – I was The Goose Girl!

We explored the countryside and Bath with Stephen Russ, tied and dyed with Isolbelle Symmons, made puppets with Helen Binyon... It all ended too soon.

Julia Vezza (Art and Education Studies, 1960)

Love it? Hate it?

We want to hear from you!

Email us at alumni@bathspa.ac.uk or write to us at Bath Spa Development and Alumni Relations Office, Bath Spa University, Newton Park, Newton St Loe, Bath, BA2 9BN Please mark your letters ‘for publication’.

Letters may be edited for length. @BathSpaAlumni facebook.com/BathSpaUniversityAlumni

VICE-CHANCELLOR

New Vice-Chancellor takes up the reins

CREATIVE WRITING

Pineapple perfect: Bath Spa University’s Novel in 25 Words winner Less is more they say, but when it comes to writing novels there must be a limit, right? Not if you were one of the 1,415 entrants to Bath Spa’s Novel in 25 Words competition, marking 25 years of creative writing at Bath Spa. The winning entry came from American writer and actor Kelly Doran, whose story, FYI (above and right), portrayed “two lives tantalisingly hinted at”, according to the judges. “I love the word pineapple,” says Doran, “so it was a no-brainer for me to write a comical story about such a wonderful fruit!”

The announcement coincided with the launch of A Place in Words, a new anthology that contains work by the University’s most celebrated alumni and staff, including Tessa Hadley, Phillip Hensher and Naomi Alderman. To read excerpts and order your copy, visit www.aplaceinwords.com/anthology.

THE THREE FINALISTS FYI by Kelly Doran: Obviously I’m not judging Carl;

I just think it would’ve been nice to know about the whole pineapple situation before I moved in with him.

Early Learning by Clare Gallagher (Creative Writing, 2017): With boys she hit harder.

Hit at the child he once was. Thirty years’ ‘exemplary classroom practice’. The soft palm of so many small hands.

Rise of the shy horticulturalist by Michael Hunt: Veni, vedi, Aesculus hippocastanum: I came, I saw, I conkered. Caesar of playgrounds, bullied no more, commander of string, nut and a smattering of Latin.

Professor Susan Rigby, Bath Spa University’s new Vice-Chancellor, took up her role last month with a vow to continue the creative ambitions of the University.

Professor Rigby has a background in palaeontology, having worked as an academic at Cambridge, Leicester and Edinburgh universities before moving into senior management, first as Assistant Principal and then Vice Principal at the University of Edinburgh. She joined Bath Spa from the University of Lincoln, where she was Deputy Vice-Chancellor with responsibility for student development.

“I am delighted and honoured to be joining the creative community of scholars and makers that is Bath Spa University,” says Professor Rigby. “It is a privilege to join such a distinctive and effective university

It is a privilege to join such an effective university and I look forward to helping staff and students achieve their ambitions.

Professor Susan Rigby

and I look forward to helping staff and students achieve their ambitions for themselves and for the institution.”

Professor Rigby, who is also a Principal Fellow at the Higher Education Academy, takes over from Interim Vice-Chancellor, Professor Nick Foskett.

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I will always remember the beautiful surroundings of the ‘old buildings’, and squirrels scurrying up into the trees as you made your way along the driveway into the main building. I remember Simon, our Textiles technician, showing me how to use a sewing machine for the first time.

He made me realise we’re all learning new things every day.

Laura McCauley (Art and Textile Design Studies, 2003)

The college always had very high standards about using direct observation. For a lesson I was giving on teaching practise, I managed to borrow a smallish suit of armour which I had to manhandle onto two public buses. The lesson was on printing and I stuck the armour in a corner before the children came in. Things went badly and there was a lot of chaos. It was only after the class had gone that I realised I had never mentioned the armour – and neither had they!

Edward Coney (Fine Art, 1966)

INSTALLATION

160 years of Bath School of Art and Design celebrated

Design duo take their work to the global stage

Take a step back in time – it’s the 1850s, London’s King’s Cross station has just welcomed its first commuters, Queen Victoria has awarded the first 66 Victoria Crosses and the Bath School of Art and Design has opened its doors for the very first time.

Over the next 160 years, the School’s influence has reached across the city of Bath and beyond, and a series of events recently celebrated that impact.

Hot Springs of Art and Design, which ran last October, led visitors on a journey into the continuing influence and partnership of the Bath School of Art and Design and the city of Bath, from the 1850s to present day.

Organised by Bath Spa University, alumni of the Bath Art Secondary School and the Bath and North East Somerset Council-run Victoria Art Gallery, the events featured a selection of work by students and staff, and led visitors across famous Bath venues, including the impressive setting of Corsham Court.

With decades of the University’s art and design to showcase, the event celebrated heroic names such as William Harbutt, a former headmaster of Bath School of Art (1874 – 1877), who created the worldwide phenomenon that is Plasticine.

Dr Graham McLaren, Bath School of Art and Design’s Head of Research, said: “We hope that the city is proud of the amazing array of talent that the School has produced over the years, adding so much richness and diversity to the culture of Bath and beyond.”

Once you’ve graduated with a First Class design degree and launched your own startup, there’s only one thing left to do – display your work on one of the world’s biggest stages.

That’s exactly what textiles graduates Chloe Gregory and Annie James have done, being one of just 20 new designers to have their work (Foxglove, right) promoted worldwide through the 2017 London Design Festival.

The designer duo, who set up their business ‘Chloe and Annie’ last year, specialise in screenprint bespoke fabric for interiors. They admit they were thrilled

Bath Spa alumna stars on Sky 1 hit music show Rachel Mason (MMus Songwriting, 2015) said she was “astonished and flattered” to have been invited on to the judging panel of Sky 1’s hit music talent show Sing: Ultimate A Cappella. Rachel, who completed her MMus in 2015, said that her background in songwriting helped her judge the technical quality of the compositions on the show, as well as the vocal performances.

INSIDE OUT

New Art and Design campus on Locksbrook Road The former Herman Miller factory on Locksbrook Road is to be transformed into a stunning new campus for the Bath School of Art and Design. The University will now play a significant part in revitalising this Grade II listed building, creating a new history for this iconic building – originally designed by Sir Nicholas Grimshaw for the American furniture manufacturer Herman Miller in 1976 – through its philosophy of ‘thinking through making’.

WHICH? STUDENT SURVEY

Bath Spa creativity tops UK survey We are a high achieving university which is becoming recognised as a centre of excellence for creativity, culture and enterprise.

Professor Nick Foskett, Interim Vice-Chancellor, on Bath Spa being voted top six for creativity.

PHOTOS: ROGER MAYNE ARCHIVE/MARY EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY. ©GRIMSHAW. ILLUSTRATIONS: BLOOD BROS

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to be selected for the prestigious event, something they “have always wanted to be a part of.”

Both are 2015 graduates in Textile Design for Fashion and Interiors, and after showing their work at New Designers One Year On 2015, they were offered jobs on the same print team, which helped them to kick-start their business together. The pair have since been featured in The English Home Magazine and exhibited up and down the country, including the Great Bath Food Feast and the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show.

LOCATION, LOCATION The building is in a central location close to student accommodation and, as a former furniture factory, is part of Bath’s industrial design history.

MAKING WAVES The site has always been a place of ‘making’ and the University will continue that tradition through the School of Art and Design’s philosophy of ‘thinking through making’.

CHANGING NEEDS A first floor mezzanine will run along three sides of the building, maximising space, with ample headroom for studios and able to adapt to the School’s changing needs.

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ART AND DESIGN

A MAKING SPINE This design concept features fixed workshops with studio space surrounding them. On the ground floor there will also be some shared, open spaces and some offices.

Designers are more productive if they’re based in Bath Professor Anita Taylor, Executive Dean of Bath School of Art and Design, says the findings of a new research project should come as no surprise.

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reativity in our region is special: not just innovative but also extremely productive.

To anyone living and working here, this will come as no surprise whatsoever. But what may come as a surprise is the fact that we now have the evidence to back up this belief.

I was delighted and astonished to discover, through the research project, Bristol and Bath by Design, just how rich and intense that creativity is. The study found that yes, our region is special – design companies are generally 11 per cent more productive than other firms, but 14 per cent more so if based here.

In fact, our region has always been an inspiration for creativity. You have only to look at Bath’s architecture, or our art school, to see that. But even they only came into being as a response to the creative vibrancy already here. And we can trace this back from

The research found that the design of today is inextricably linked to the area’s history

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the innovators of today in everything from animation to aerospace, through the 19th century engineers, the leather trade, the cabinet makers and the textile mills, to the beginnings of the wool trade, and further still to the Romans and Saxons and the influences brought in by traders through the port of Bristol.

The research found that the design of today is inextricably linked to this rich history. The wealth of culture here has always been an attraction for people to leave London for this part of the country. But it’s not just Bath – unlike London or the major cities of the north, we are a distributed region, with the network and creative flow which that brings.

While Bath and Bristol act as city beacons, there are so many major players in the smaller towns: Mulberry in Shepton Mallet; Clarks in Street; Dyson in Malmesbury, Herman Miller in Chippenham.

Again, it has always been so – Spitfires were built in Trowbridge and the fabrics for Mary Quant’s fashion designs were made there too.

We also uncovered a thriving design ecosystem of strong and sustainable design identities, enterprises and networks in which designers are exchanging different kinds of value – ideas, inspiration, connections to talented people, and access to markets. Alongside the larger firms sit a wealth of micro-businesses and sole traders, all of them part of this vibrant community. We also found that growth isn’t everything. It seems many of these design-led firms have the opportunity to expand, but prefer to stay the size they are precisely because expansion would compromise their ability to innovate and sustain creative input. However, in maintaining that ideal size within the ecosystem, they are enabling and supporting other companies around them to flourish.

So why is it important to know and recognise all this? The Bristol and Bath by Design project contributes to an understanding about what design is, and the different types of value it can bring. In evaluating this, we can set out the case for further investment in the region and by understanding the strength of what we already have, we can promote it through initiatives – perhaps a design festival, a design quarter or through incubator hubs – and attract even more creative minds here.

The challenge now is how we forge those pathways.

My ambition is that the Bath School of Art and Design continues to play a leading role in supporting and enhancing the design economy in the city, and more widely, reflecting its founding principles in the 1850s.

As we open our new flagship campus in the former Herman Miller furniture factory in the city, we will actively engage industry and the community within our facilities to work alongside and to inspire the next generation of leading artists and designers.

We have something really special here – it would be great to see Bath and its surroundings as a flagship area for innovation for the whole country.

If you would like to know more about how you can be part of this creative community, please get in touch via alumni@bathspa.ac.uk

MILLS

SECRET SPA SOMERSET PLACE

Matt ‘Mills’ Miller (Graphic Design, 2000) says hanging out on the benches of Somerset Place helped him find true love – and global success.

WORDS: ANNA-MARIE CROWHURST PORTRAIT: NAOMI WOODS

I said ‘I really wanna kiss you,’ and she just said ‘Go on then’

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Matt ‘Mills’ Miller is co-founder of ustwo (www.ustwo.com), a digital agency with more than 250 employees worldwide.

The ustwo team is behind global hit mobile game Monument Valley, winner of two BAFTAs in 2015, and through ustwo Adventure, its startup incubator, is working with some of the world’s most exciting brands.

or Matt Miller, known as Mills, student life was about so much more than study. In fact, as a BA student on the Graphic Design course in the late 90s, it was about anything but study.

“I had a natural aptitude for being creative but didn’t go to many lectures,” he laughs. “Being at Bath Spa was about learning more about myself and absolutely letting loose. It was such a coming of age time.”

Embracing the student party lifestyle led to Mills discovering a certain place that has come to be highly significant in his university memories: the benches of Somerset Place, then in front of Sion Hill halls.

“Bath was an amazing place,” remembers Mills.

“It wasn’t so big that it was completely overwhelming, but it had enough going on to give you the chance to grow up and become an adult.

We went out in town every other night. There were some great nightclubs, like Moles and T’s, and I spent a lot of time drinking with all the new friends I was making. I remember very fondly that Red Bull and vodka had just became a thing.

“With the inevitable hangovers I was having, I’d sit on these benches, which were then in front of the halls, with a group of mates, striking up conversations with anyone passing. It was easy to spot me – I had long, golden, boy-band hair, a Gap sweatshirt and a big bead necklace I referred to as ‘the beads of love’.”

Time spent in the busy thoroughfare between halls and the art and design campus proved a good place for people watching, as Mills discovered one day in his first year. “This beautiful girl walked past.

She had a bit of an odd haircut and very striking eyes. I just thought ‘wow, incredible’. You know when you see someone and they just make your heart beat faster? That was Lisa.

“It wasn’t until the end of the year, at the summer ball, that I got to talk to her – I went to ask her if she’d like a drink. She was talking to one of her mates and I said ‘I really wanna kiss you,’ and she just said ‘Go on then’. We’ve now been together for 20 years – married for 10 of those – and have two children.”

Meeting his future wife wasn’t the only thing his time hanging out on the benches offered this digital entrepreneur; it was also an opportunity to develop skills that proved important in his future career.

“When I set up ustwo, I wanted it to be an outlet for me to express myself and have fun in the same way I had at Bath Spa,” Mills explains. “I’ve discovered when you’ve got good friendship at the heart of a business it builds a culture you can foster – now we’re one of the leading product development companies in the world.

“And I look back and remember that my time at Bath Spa was all about relationships – I was always the glue between people who wouldn’t naturally have been friends. I was all over our year, creating these little communities. So I think it was there that I honed the skill of community management. I’ve taken the curiosity I had about people that I developed making friendships on those benches and used it. That’s what my three years at Bath Spa taught me.”

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Amanda Goode, Course Leader for Textile Design for Fashion and Interiors and Subject Co-ordinator for the Field of Design.

WORDS: DIANE SHIPLEY PHOTOGRAPHY: JON DAY

1) Trend items: On my windowsill I keep items I’ve brought back from design festivals (Dutch Design Week is my favourite) or things I think are going to be on trend for the next year. At the moment, it includes: a pieced vessel by Taz Pollard, a former ceramics student; a glass bottle in the shape of a head from Merci Paris; and Kuidaore Taro, a clown biscuit box from Osaka, Japan.

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3) Embellishing machine: The size of a domestic sewing machine, the multi-barbed needle-head pushes fibres, threads and yarn through a base fabric and fuses them together to produce a new fabric of blended colours and texures. It’s addictive but don’t be deceived by its prosaic look and innocent appearance: it’s sneaky. It reconfigures time and saps your mental energy, inflicting surface injuries to my hands. But the outcome is wonderful – glorious samples of colourful alchemy which one day I will stitch and piece into a magic carpet.

4) Past work: Another inspiration is a display on the wall of students’ work and my own work. I have embroidery, felting, fabric manipulation and knitting that I’ve made throughout the years. You always want to improve, thinking, ‘What happens if I do this?’ even though it might lead you down a blind alley.

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5) Books: There’s loads of them in my office, on everyone from Christian Lacroix to Gustav Klimt. I really like a book about Kenzo by its former artistic director, Antonio Marras, and fashion historian Olivier Saillard. Kenzo is so exuberant and not ashamed to flaunt colours and patterns and be over the top.

6) Wet screenprinting: Digital has its place but if you want one-off pieces, then you usually do wet print.

I like the sensitivity and the naivety of it. Because nothing is programmed in, you get mistakes that turn into lovely effects rather than defects, and you can see the hand and the passion of the designer in it. The piece in the image is by a current student, Millie Clake.

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2) Flowers: I’m always surrounded by flowers – they’re a huge influence and never go out of fashion.

They work on wallpaper, on dress fabrics, even on appliances. On my desk now I have a white orchid, white lilies in a fish vase and a cactus in an ex students’s cactus ceramic pot. I’m a huge gardener, so that’s one of my biggest inspirations.

Video games aren’t bad, they’re just misunderstood Dr Pete Etchells, Reader in Psychology and Science Communication, says when it comes to the effect of screen time on behaviour, context is all.

ILLUSTRATION: STEPHANE MANEL

If you eat burgers exclusively for many hours a day that isn’t great for your waistline, but burgers are not inherently bad for you

It’s worth noting, too, that even violent games vary.

For instance, the 18-rated Call Of Duty and World Of Warcraft are often put in the same category because of their on-screen images, yet the player’s focus, and therefore processing, is very different. In Call Of Duty, the focus is on the centre of the screen, whereas in World Of Warcraft there might be a monster throwing a fireball right in front of you, but the information you need to care about – a chat box, the players’ health in the game – are on the screen’s periphery.

There’s also the context in which the games are played. We found those playing against each other in a social environment are more sensitive to angry faces (so-called ‘hostile attribution’) than those playing the same game co-operatively. Games themselves aren’t special – not inherently so. It is the environment and context in which you play them that matters. It emerged that the terrible Sandy Hook school shooting in the US in 2012 was carried out by a young man who spent many hours a day on Call Of Duty – but what were the social circumstances that allowed that obsession to become his life?

And it is the same with screen time generally. It’s like food – if you eat burgers exclusively for many hours a day, that isn’t going to be great for your waistline. But burgers are not inherently bad for you – and in questioning how many you can eat, you have to ask: what else are you eating? Are you doing exercise? Why are you eating so many burgers in the first place?

So the next time you read that some aspect of digital life is bad for your – or your child’s – health, take a deep breath and remember that there are many contexts and environments that affect how we react to media. And sometimes, those other factors are actually more important than the media itself.

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creens are bad for you. The internet is like the wild west. Digital technology is the scourge of modern life – and could damage your child’s development. So say the headlines.

We shouldn’t be surprised at this sensationalism.

Society had the same moral panic over rock music, television, newspapers, even books. All of it, ultimately, without foundation.

So how much do we really know about whether screen time impacts child development? It’s a difficult question to answer. Everything that we do has an effect on us, and screens are no exception. But the fact is that, at the moment, we have no evidence of any clear negative effects.

My recent research focused on the perceived correlation between video games and violence, and found that the link is not as strong as the media would have us believe. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which has monitored the entire lives of babies born in 1990, we took a sample of youngsters who had played video games aged eight and assessed them again at 15, using a six-step ‘conduct disorder’ scale to determine if it had had any effect on their future behaviour.

There was indeed a pattern – those who played shoot ’em-up games at eight were 19 per cent more likely to be a notch higher up the scale than those who played puzzle games – and they in turn were 19 per cent more likely to be a notch higher than those who played no games.

However, less than 1.5 per cent showed any actual evidence of conduct disorder and, interestingly, we got similar results from those who played competitive sporting computer games – suggesting it’s arousal that made the difference, not the violence.

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a year. If that’s not worth investing in, we don’t know what is.

WORDS: MEGAN WELFORD / ILLUSTRATION: HARRY MALT

oh – I don’t know about ceramics/graphic design/theatre/music technology,” says your uncle, who has done very nicely for himself in something to do with widgets. “It’s nice to follow your dreams, dear, but aren’t you worried you won’t be able to get a job?”

We’ve all heard it: the concerns of a family friend or relative who thinks your degree is a pathway to unemployment. And there is a part of all of us that worries that they may just be right. Which is why we are here to tell you they are wrong.

Not just a bit wrong, but utterly, completely and triumphantly wrong. Want to work in the creative industries? Great. Do a creative degree. And while you are at it, make the most of every possible industry placement and partnership you can.

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The UK’s creative industries are worth a whopping £84bn

MYTH #1. Say that you want to spend your day creating something – anything – and you’ll quickly be accused of not having a ‘proper’ job, as Kerry Irvine, Producer and Music and Performance Senior Lecturer, knows only too well.

“It gets me that actors are always having to defend themselves from the question, ‘What have you been on?’,” she says, “as if you can only be considered to be ‘proper’ if they recognise the name!

Acting isn’t just about being on EastEnders. There are actors on Xbox games, audio guides, radio, ads and on stock photos. They do therapy, corporate role play and they present. Although it is a vocation, as a way of life it is also pretty normal.”

Susan McMillan, Head of Writing, Film and Digital Creativity, agrees. “You don’t have to be a composer or a film director,” she says. “Not everyone needs to be Hans Zimmer or Tarantino. The BBC and other creative industries employers in Bristol, for example, told me they are crying out for production co-ordinators and managers. I also know the film industry needs digital information technicians (DITs) and sound designers. There’s a whole emerging tech sector of Virtual Reality and 360 filming. So, there is a huge range of jobs that parents, and students themselves, have not even thought of.”

And they are all real jobs. In fact, far from not being ‘proper’, while creative jobs are rewarding, interesting and fun, they are also, often, extremely hard work, as anyone who has stared at a blank piece of paper on deadline will tell you.

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MYTH #2. The creative industries are the third highest grossing sector in the country, just behind finance and pharmaceuticals, and worth £84bn a year. “That’s £9.6m per hour,” points out McMillan.

“In Dundee, where there’s a vibrant gaming industry linked to the university (and excellent graduate employment), you see a lot of Ferraris! Digital technology and the proliferation of media platforms mean there are more jobs than ever.”

Indeed, as the working world begins to incorporate Artificial Intelligence, creativity is likely to become more highly prized than ever. Colin Breckenridge (BA Visual Communications, Bath Academy of Art, 1974), who started his own graphic design business in 1983, says: “I was at a conference last week where they were saying creativity is going to be a key element for employers as robotics takes over many processes. Traditional sectors, such as manufacturing and even finance, will shed workers whereas higher skilled, creative and adaptable people will become more valuable.”

He also points out that entrepreneur and inventor James Dyson and Habitat founder Terence Conran both did art degrees. “Having a creative approach is an extremely transferable skill – for instance, being able to visualise an idea and then show it in a visual way. In the future, people are likely to have several different careers and creative industry training allows you to move around.”

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MYTH #3. “It used to be that you got trained on the job,” says McMillan. “Now, that doesn’t happen – universities can provide that training. Students are coming out of our programmes able to write, film, manage content, vlog or blog for multiple platforms. These are skills that all companies are looking for, because the future economy will be in the digital space. This means it’s a boom time to do a creative degree. Being a VR developer, a cybersecurity producer or content provider – all roles that combine creativity and technology – are the jobs of the future, and none of them are careers you can go into without training first.”

Miles Sullivan (Creative Music Technology, 2017) agrees. “If you’re focused on what you want to do, then university is where you’re going to learn your skills.”

And that’s true whether you are in marketing or acting, because whatever your chosen career, without skills you won’t get a foot in the door, as Irvine points out. “Actors have to learn processes, movement, to speak clearly, control their nerves. They have to relearn to use their imagination – school often knocks this out of us. It’s very exposing; they have to learn to cope with that. They also learn presentation, communication, team working, leading on projects and rigour. These are the essential skills of the job, and you won’t work without them.”

MYTH #4. As someone who has won a Royal Television Society Award and two BAFTAs, and worked as a television producer for 20 years, McMillan is unsurprisingly dismissive of the idea that she doesn’t have a connection to the ‘real world’. “At Bath Spa we are building a talent pipeline to the creative industries,” she says. “We have contracted links to, for example, the Virtual Reality Lab in Bristol, to Avid (post production software) and TEDx.” The benefits of these links to students are obvious, but less talked about is the fact that the creative industries increasingly look to universities to gain access to top-level studio facilities and a trained, competent labour pool.

Irvine explains how it works on her course. “Instead of paying a director to come in for four weeks, put on the play Miss Julie and then go away again, where we can we are getting them to develop work with us. We will do the research and development phase for a new project, say, which perhaps they can’t afford. Or, for example, with [theatre director] David Glass we will put on a co-production, such as we did with Bleak House, where we both put money in. He has already done the R&D and we help professionalise it, with students actually being employed when possible.”

Irvine says the days of the journeyman actor, jobbing and doing auditions, are limited. “We see actors as creators as well as interpreters,” she explains. “We say, when jobs aren’t knocking on your door, you have to create your own work. So we teach how to create work and get audiences. We have our own production company, Onset, and I will put on a festival, for example, to get work out to venues.”

MYTH #5. “Of course it’s about who you know, but bringing industry into universities is how you network,” says McMillan. “Recently, the BBC ran some production management sessions for our film and TV students. They were so impressed, they asked for CVs and one of the students was offered a job. She just got her first BBC1 credit in October on Countryfile.”

Sullivan was using his reimagining of music and sound for the Disney film, Piper, to show off Bath Spa’s facilities at an open day, when he popped out to get a glass of water. He came across Susan McMillan, who was a little lost, and they got talking. She ended up seeing his film and put him in touch with a BBC director, who in turn contacted the sound design company, Wounded Buffalo, where Sullivan will shortly start a runner’s job.

“Talk to everyone!” he insists. “All the opportunities I’ve had have been through people I’ve met. If you prepare, tread your steps carefully, talk to everyone, make the most of your teachers, don’t be afraid to ask questions, then leaving university won’t mean you’re in at the deep end.”

MYTH #6½. The very nature of creative work

MYTH #6. “It’s not like anyone ever said to me, ‘Oh, you’re really good at drawing,’” says Breckenridge, “but I was always creating things, building things, copying things. It was an interest that developed through school. Luckily my mum had met the head of my local art college at a cheese and wine party – it was the 70s! – so when I said I wanted to do an art foundation she thought it would be fine. Interestingly, I’m now looking to retire from running my agency so I can go back to actually making things – mostly printmaking – without the financial imperative.”

Sullivan has completed his Creative Music Technology degree and moved into a creative music technology job, but he says he almost didn’t study music at all. “I always loved the piano,” he explains, “but I never considered studying it. It was only my school music teacher, Mr Ogley, who said to me at GCSE time, ‘You are taking music, right?’ My mum and grandma encouraged me, but my dad thought I should just go straight from school into a job, any job. I’m so glad I didn’t, because I’ve ended up doing something that I love.”

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means practitioners often work freelance for a time, or even set up their own business, which requires feet on the ground as well as a head full of ideas.

“Perhaps the odd creative genius will always have a job,” says Breckenridge, “but most of us need to combine business and creativity to a certain extent, and the two are definitely not mutually exclusive.

At the beginning I didn’t really know about business but after a few clients disappeared overnight I learned that I could organise and run things, and that’s mainly what I do now. I still have ideas, but I get other people to carry them out.”

A Chinese proverb states: ‘The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.’ As Irvine observes: “Our students are learning how to be adaptable and flexible, and it takes rigour to adapt.

You have to be robust enough to survive. The working world is changing so fast, the ones who will make it must not be averse to change or risk.”

I really believe in the power of story: that we all have a story to tell, and everybody is part of that story.

WORDS: LUCY JOLIN PHOTOGRAPHY: KAT GEREN

C

ommunity is the theme that shines through everything that Pat Black talks about. Whether it’s her memories of growing up in a small, working class town, her experience of teaching in a low-income area, or the philosophies that she now, as Head of Teacher Education, passes on to trainee teachers, the idea of people living, learning and working together is key.

“Schools are very much part of their communities and we must never lose sight of that,” she says. “When I taught in my local school, I knew the children out of school as well as in school, and I knew their parents and carers. You can have the absolute best subject knowledge, but you must understand how these children live, the barriers they may have towards learning – and know how to overcome those barriers.”

Black spent her childhood in a council house in Ardrossan, Ayrshire, on the south-west coast of Scotland. “We were poor in material goods, but we were rich in love and support,” she says. “My father died when I was 12, but both he and my mother were devoted parents. They never had the opportunity for education. As I grew older, I recognised that not all children are offered an equal start in life, or equal experiences. Education, for me, was this aspect to life that would have an impact on children.”

Alongside her immediate and extended family, she found her way to the Church and to the Labour Party. These, too, were communities – wells of

PAT BLACK Pat has spent all her professional life working with children and young people, initially as a youth and community worker and then in schools as a teacher and deputy head. She joined Bath Spa in 1999, where she has been responsible for advancing national and local initiatives in teacher training, such as Teach First, Troops to Teachers, School Direct and the PGCE Partnership.

endless ideas, stories and opinions to be debated, related and shared – and she’s drawn inspiration from them ever since. “As a young child, I was a listener to conversations. Listening to people’s stories. I absolutely loved it, and I developed a lifelong love of English as a result. I really believe in the power of story: that we all have a story to tell, and everybody is part of that story.”

Black’s route into teaching began when she moved to the south-west of England and became a youth worker. She intended to study youth work at university but decided that the classroom was where she could make a difference – at the same time, she was also offering help and support in local primary schools. “I worked with some fabulous children and young people. But I was very aware that they didn’t all have the same start in life and that school wasn’t always the best learning environment for them. And so some of them became very quickly alienated and disillusioned.”

Following her teacher training at Bath Spa (1994, BA with QTS), Black taught in her adopted home town of Yate, South Gloucestershire. She chose primary education: “Understanding those early development stages and what had an impact on children actually helped me understand where things went wrong. I think the primary and early years phase is probably undervalued by many people.

But I do think that attitudes and the love of learning are established in those early years of life.”

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PAT BLACK

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25 TH E POWE R OF S TORY

After four years, during which she progressed quickly to acting deputy headteacher, she was faced with a choice: apply for a headship, or take a different path? She chose to move into teacher training, initially as PGCE English Co-ordinator at Bath Spa, then Programme Leader for Primary and Early Years, which led to her current role.

At the time, she says, the only route for progression in schools was to become a head teacher, a role she didn’t feel comfortable with. “I felt you became a little bit removed from the children and their learning. And you get involved with the decisions that, important though they may be, are not the most important decisions to be sharing with parents and families. Whether a child can wear certain shoes or cut their hair in a certain way, for example. It becomes very bureaucratic. And, to be honest, I was missing my own learning.”

The past decade has certainly seen plenty of opportunity for new learning. “Life used to be just PGCE until dear Mr Gove got his hands on education and changed our lives completely!” Black says with a laugh. A big part of her role is meeting the challenge brought about by new routes into teaching. These

MARY DAWSON Mary (pictured above left, and meeting the future Queen, Princess Elizabeth, in 1950 above right) was the founding Principal of Newton Park Teacher Training College, now Bath Spa University, in 1947.

She has been described as a “forward-thinking, progressive educator and inspiring leader” who believed passionately in the transforming possibilities of education. At her retirement in 1968 she said: “I wish I were beginning all over again to continue the fight to keep humanity in education.”

include the Teach First Leadership Development Programme, where Bath Spa collaborates with teaching schools and academies to develop bespoke models of school-led PGCE provision. The PGCE qualification itself is still very much a vital part of the mix, and Black has also been heavily involved with Troops to Teachers, a consortium of seven universities across England, which has designed and delivered a unique undergraduate course for armed services leavers.

It’s a challenge she clearly relishes. “I think that the routes offer different types of applicants a way into teaching,” she points out. “The beauty of having all those routes is that not everybody will apply for one route. There are a variety of routes and of partners.” Trainers, too, are then exposed to different training methods. For example, Teach First involves an intensive Summer Institute while Troops to Teachers includes countrywide webinars, whereas other routes are much more focused within the university and school.

Whatever the route, coming together again is key to making it work. “I firmly believe in partnership between schools and universities,” she says. “I think

we can solve many problems together. It’s so much harder solving problems on your own. And when you’re developing new programmes with all the different people, you closely examine your own programmes, and they are improved through learning from others.”

Nobody can deny that education is going through a difficult time. Against a background of school funding cuts, training bursary cuts, increased paperwork and what can seem like constant curriculum changes, more young teachers are leaving the profession.

“We talk about the power of narrative and at the moment there’s a disruption in that narrative,” says Black. “Where you would once have been employed by your head teacher, you might now be employed by a CEO in London or Manchester or Southern Ireland.

“Where do you fit within that? I think that teachers have become a little bit alienated because of the constant changing. It worries me the funding spent on developing new structures and systems might be better spent on children and teachers – for example, reducing class sizes and continuing

Black is unashamedly political and happily enters into robust discussions with government

professional development for teachers. The political aspect of the ideologies can get in the way of education.”

Yet Black remains optimistic. She’s unashamedly political, she says, and happily enters into robust discussions with government in her role as primary chair for the University’s Council for the Education of Teachers. Her objective is simple: not to be confrontational but simply to seek ways of ensuring that every child gets the best teachers.

“Education will survive, just as long as politicians don’t interfere too much!” she says. “Children’s lives are changed because of a good education. And there are things that we can’t measure very accurately that are a big part of that: relationships, how children get on with each other, their understanding of the world, the environment, and the future of the planet. So I’m not pessimistic. Teachers continually challenge. That’s part of our role as educators – to remind people we are bringing up future human beings and not just future units for measurement. In an ever-increasing digital world, we need to focus on how we can make things change – and how well we get on with each other.”

Think print is dead? Think again.

From indie magazines to the resurgence in direct mail, print media is turning the tables to disrupt digital media.

WORDS: LUCY JOLIN PHOTOGRAPHY: VICTORIA LING STYLING: VICKY LEES

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Print is a disruptive technology

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Print is a vehicle for conveying something significant and thought provoking

rint: it’s sparked revolutions and spread new religions. It’s put knowledge and power into the hands of countless millions. It’s allowed the masses to access the world’s greatest ever ideas and works of art, once only available to the privileged few. Long live the most disruptive technology ever invented.

“I like print because it exists forever,” says illustrator Mr Bingo (Graphics, 2002). “All this digital stuff is great but it’s very fast, especially stuff like Snapchat and Instagram Stories. People are obsessed with things that only exist for 24 hours, which is crazy. I love books and print because they stay around. People put them on their walls. There is something amazing about making a physical thing that people can actually buy and touch.”

Reports of print’s death, it seems, have been greatly exaggerated. This year’s sales of ebooks were down to their lowest level since 2011, while the UK print book market went up by eight per cent to a

VICTORIA LING AND VICKY LEES

A HISTORY OF DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY Print is one of the most disruptive technologies ever created.

Invented in around 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg, the printing press allowed – for the first time ever – the rapid circulation of information and ideas. And it’s argued that print’s impact extends to everything from the Reformation to the death of Latin and a massive increase in literacy.

Since the printing press, technologies from the gramophone to the television have fundamentally changed the ways in which people consume media and spend their time, but the idea of ‘disruptive technology’ itself is relatively new, thought up

by Harvard academics Joseph Bower and Clayton Christensen in the 1990s.

Bower and Christensen were interested in why companies don’t invest in new tech, theorising that disruption was about a competitive response.

As Christensen told Forbes magazine: “An entrepreneur needed to predict whether the incumbent leaders would kill them, ignore them or flee from them. The theory of disruption is a theory of competitive response.”

Since then, digital technologies have done much to disrupt competitor firms (cameras and newspapers will never be the same again) – and for some firms, it can seem that the disruption, rather than the technology, is the point. Mark Zuckerberg famously exhorted his staff to ‘move fast and break things’. Incidentally, Facebook abandoned this as its motto in 2014. It now lives by: ‘Move fast with stable infra [infrastructure].’ “It might not be as catchy,” Zuckerberg has admitted.

In his later book, The Innovator’s Solution, Christensen abandoned the phrase ‘disruptive technology’, preferring instead ‘disruptive innovation’. He pointed out that very few technologies are themselves disruptive. It’s the business models applied to them that do the disrupting.

“Generally, disruptive innovations were technologically straightforward, consisting of off-the-shelf components put together in a product architecture that was often simpler than prior approaches,” he writes (in The Innovator’s Dilemma). And funnily enough, it’s hard to think of a better definition of the printing press.

A PERCEPTION OF QUALITY Then there are the associations. Print, unlike the flash and fakery of the screen, is traditionally something we trust. We turn to it for comfort, for authority, for gravitas. “Print has been associated with being instrumental in deepening our knowledge and the understanding of our world,” says Jon Willcocks (Graphics, 1967), owner of design consultancy jwa. “We tend to be sceptical about so much of the information that comes across on a screen. Whereas print, perhaps because of its associations with learning, has built a reputation as something to cherish. Rather than being a ‘snapshot’ commodity, print seems to have gained respect: it’s a vehicle for conveying something significant and thought provoking, and a chance to promote quality.”

Matthew Robertson, senior lecturer in graphic communication, links this perception of quality to the rise of interest in vinyl, a format that he assumed would rapidly die off in the age of MP3s. “A lot of my freelance work is for bands, and the vinyl revival in recent years took me by surprise. As a young designer in the 90s, I thought: ‘Vinyl’s gone; I’ll never have the chance to design a record sleeve.’ But in the last few years, I’ve worked on more LPs and 7-inch singles than I ever imagined. I genuinely thought records were going the way of the dinosaurs.”

Quality is something we are coming to value more than ever in a world of digital ephemera – and there are plenty of ways to achieve it. Mr Bingo raised £135,000 on Kickstarter to create a retrospective book of his four-year Hate Mail project. (It’s exactly what it says on the tin: you pay Mr Bingo to send you a vintage postcard replete with his highly offensive drawings and carefully chosen, hand-lettered insults. It also speaks to the joy of getting something tangible through your letterbox, just like a magazine: Mr Bingo points out

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Victoria Ling’s photographic work is rich, colourful and playful. She works in photography and stop motion shorts/GIFs, and aims to create graphic yet painterly imagery; simple in form with a sense of atmosphere and place. Stylist Vicky Lees is a London-based set designer and creative problem solver working across media. She has a passion for hand crafted objects which she often introduces into her work.

five-year high of £3bn. The magazine market saw print political weeklies including The Spectator and Private Eye hit their highest sales ever. (This is a big deal: at 189 years old, The Spectator is the world’s oldest weekly magazine.) Indie magazines, championed by the likes of The Gentlewoman and Printed Pages, are thriving.

What’s driving this resurgence? It’s partly down to aesthetics, says Caroline Harris, lecturer in publishing and co-founder of book creation business harris+wilson. “Digital offered all these new possibilities – linking text and so on. But people are starting to realise that there are things that books do better aesthetically. You can design a page and have it look the way you want. The image is much better quality. There is nothing quite like the crispness of very beautiful typography on a page, and the tactility of paper.”

It’s hardly surprising that print has achieved such perfection, Harris points out. The printed book has existed in its current form – the codex, with a spine – for hundreds of years. “We’ve had plenty of time to find out what works and what doesn’t. We now have a whole language of how to put a book together: digital, meanwhile, still tends to ape what books do; it doesn’t have the same kind of established rules.”

MAGAZINES, MAGAZINES EVERYWHERE Advances in print technology mean that it is far easier to produce a small print run, or a few copies of a book, using self-publishing sites such as Blurb or local specialist printers. A generation ago, Robertson points out, you could only do that if you had a big bank balance, or were prepared to spend a lot of time photocopying. “You’ve always had zine culture and do-it-yourself culture, and now we’re back to that: ‘Yeah. Let’s do it. Let’s start a magazine.’”

Harris agrees: “It does almost feel like people have an idea and they can say: ‘Right, let’s do a magazine about it.’ The south-west is kind of a mini hub for it, as well: it’s not all coming out of London.

It’s small groups of people, anywhere. You can make a magazine anywhere.”

To prove the point, today’s specialist magazine market is flourishing, with local titles such as style and travel magazines Cereal and Another Escape leading the charge. It’s easier to seek them out, too.

Shops such as Bath’s Magalleria offer a carefully curated sample of the very best the sector has to offer from across the world: latest titles include Future Fossil Flora, a modern botanical study focusing on a single flower in each edition, Record Culture Magazine for crate-digging vinyl junkies, and Recorder, a visual and literary celebration of pop deities. “It’s a candy shop if you love magazines,” says Robertson. “I’ve seen students there pore over the magazines, appreciating the content, design and print production, especially the lifestyle, fashion and design titles.”

Perhaps, in a noisy world, the joy of print lies in its silence, suggests Harris. “It becomes a restful option: a place to turn off the digital chatter, and become involved in something where it’s just you and that piece of print.”

No emails, no alerts, no distractions: just you, the paper, the words and the pictures. It’s a ground-breaking, astonishing, truly disruptive idea. You never know. It might just catch on.

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that these days, the only things we get through our letterbox are “bills, or letters telling us we’ve done something wrong.”)

It’s a beautiful, expensively made book, using cloth and two kinds of paper, and printed at a small family printers in Italy. “I spent all the Kickstarter money on it,” says Mr Bingo. “Making it perfect was important to me. We went to Italy and stayed there for four days, watching 12 tons of paper go through the machine. We could be really pedantic and fussy: a sheet would come out and we’d say: ‘Can we up the magenta by three per cent, take the cyan down by two per cent?’ Very different from getting it printed in China, where you just send off a PDF.” In this way, the print process becomes part of the product: it tells a story, and people want to be part of that. “If something’s being printed, I have to be there and watch it being printed,” says Mr Bingo.

“For one print, I used Typoretum, a letterpress studio. The print was done on a 1963 machine. They mixed the Pantone colour by hand, which is a real skill. It’s really important to me if something is being printed to be there and watch it being printed.

It’s exciting, but people also love to see it, and it helps to sell it as well.”

Digital is great but it’s very fast, especially stuff like Snapchat and Instagram Stories. People are obsessed with things that only exist for 24 hours. Print is forever.

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All together now!

In an age where remote working is possible for almost everyone, it seems that, actually, we’d quite like to work with each other.

WORDS: ALEX MARSHALL ILLUSTRATION: LYNDON HAYES

The story of how Tom Lewis came to revolutionise the way people work in Bath is, by his own admission, unlikely to be turned into a Hollywood blockbuster any time soon because it’s just a bit too, well… British.

“A few years ago, I was living in Bournemouth and I was going to a coffee shop every day to work,” he says. “And I was drinking a lot of coffee – too much even for me. I felt almost morally obliged to buy an espresso every half an hour because I was sitting there using the owner’s electricity. Then one day I just said to him, ‘I’d rather give you £50 a month, so you could let me work here and I wouldn’t feel so guilty.’ And that suddenly put this idea in my head.”

Not long afterwards, Lewis moved to Bath and, with the help of the council, opened The Guild – the city’s first co-working hub, a breathtaking space on the High Street that’s located in a Grade 1-listed former part of the Guildhall. The Guild, which receives sponsorship from Bath Spa in return for access for staff and possible opportunities for

Above: The Guild opened in 2013 in the Grade 1-listed former Tech College at Bath’s Guildhall.

Described as “LinkedIn for the real world”, its 3,500 square feet contain a mix of work rooms – The Engine Room, The Lab and The Fixed Abode – and meeting rooms, including The Kennel and The Never Bored Room.

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Above: The Engine Shed is housed in the original Temple Meads train station, designed

by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and opened in 1841. It formally opened in its current form as a platform for collaboration in 2013, evolving from the Bristol SETsquared Centre previously based at the University of Bristol.

37

You can run a business from a phone, but you can’t get a sense of community or people to share ideas with

students, now has some 200 members. This includes everyone from scientists to start-ups creating the next must-have app, and from consultants for some of the world’s biggest firms to Bath Spa’s own professors.

All of them pay a small fee to gain either 30 or 60 hours’ access each month. For that, they get comfortable desks and meeting rooms, super-fast Wi-Fi and, unsurprisingly, very good coffee (a coffee machine was one of their early investments).

The Guild didn’t just pioneer co-working – the idea of dozens of businesses sharing a space – in Bath; it was one of the first such spaces in the UK. When it opened in 2013, there were just 3,000 such spaces worldwide, mainly in the US, according to Deskmag, a co-working magazine. Today, there are estimated to be more than 14,000, catering for every niche. There’s one for fashion designers in Lagos, for instance, and another in Berlin that includes a recording studio to attract musicians. Some are a bit clichéd – with ping pong tables and beer taps to attract hipsters – but others, especially those in the south-west, simply aim to create an inspiring space for entrepreneurs.

In Bristol, for instance, Engine Shed (which includes co-working spaces alongside two business incubators and, like The Guild, receives financial backing from Bath Spa in return for staff access), Redbrick House, Raw Space and Desklodge are all popular. These have been so successful, big corporates are now getting involved. “Regus – the world’s biggest provider of office space – is opening a space right opposite our front door under its parent company IWG,” says Lewis. (It’ll be under the name, Spaces, so it doesn’t carry the more formal air of Regus itself, he adds). “Then you’ve got WeWork, a start-up worth $15bn, who are coming to Bristol. And almost every restaurant and café you can name seems to be trying to become more like an office. The office as we know it really is changing. It might be disappearing.”

Most experts trace co-working’s origins to Spiral Muse, a place that opened in San Francisco in 2005. It was set up by Brad Neuberg, a computer programmer who was fed up with the loneliness of working at home and the anonymity of business centres. He decided to create a ‘home for wellbeing’, where people would be encouraged to meet and collaborate (he insisted on a daily communal lunch) as much as get their head down. It only lasted a year, but dozens of places quickly followed its model.

Barrie Grey, Bath Spa’s Head of Careers and Employability, says it’s unsurprising these places are booming in the south-west, given the rise of the gig economy and because the area is home to so many creative and cyber business – “sectors where self-employment is often high”.

“If we roll back the history of self-employment, people used to take out a business loan, get all the equipment they needed, then rent an office,” he says.

“Now people can work from their phone, so their needs are smaller. But the thing people can’t get from their phones is that sense of community or people to share ideas with. Co-working really creates an opportunity for people to work together.”

Grey says co-working is especially good for the 10-20 per cent of students who set up their own businesses straight after university. “Students are used to working on projects together and in a social setting, so to suddenly jump from that to the isolation

Almost every café seems to be trying to become more like an office.

The office as we know it really is changing.

It might be disappearing

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of a room in a house is going to have a negative impact on them psychologically,” he says. Grey’s team makes sure that Bath Spa’s students have information on co-working and, in some cases, university grants enable them to actually use such spaces. Students sometimes also experience this way of working while still studying by doing internships with businesses in The Guild and Engine Shed.

Lewis agrees that the sense of community people find in co-working spaces is a major reason for their appeal. “We got a watercooler in and people love it,” he says. “People love the photocopier and things like the Christmas party. You’d think people would love escaping the drudgery of the nine-to-five but, in reality, there are parts of office life that play a key role in people’s social lives.”

Of course, any co-working space worth its salt will also mention another benefit of co-working: the chance to collaborate with others you would never otherwise meet. A brain surgeon might sit next to a cellist one day and come up with a project looking at the origins of musical creativity, for instance.

It sounds far-fetched, but co-working firms insist it does happen.

“Collaboration genuinely occurs – although I think it does need a bit of nudging to encourage it,” says Nick Sturge, director of Engine Shed, which has six formal co-working desks and a more informal ‘business lounge’. “In the business lounge, we quite often introduce Jane to Fred or whoever, on the fly, because we get to know them and can make connections that might not otherwise happen.

“If you surround yourself with others, you’re more likely to be inspired and assisted than if you stay wrapped up in your own four walls,” he adds.

Users of The Guild also say they have benefited from such connections. “I wouldn’t have my business today without the people I met here,” says Michael Youngman, founder of Blispa, a firm that uses low-energy Bluetooth ‘beacons’ to beam site-specific content to people’s phones, such as city tour guides or a music festival’s programme.

Youngman used to be an IT consultant for Deloitte, but started working for himself at The Guild and got interested in the idea of beacons.

“Because I was here, I met the entire team needed to build the application – not just on the IT side, but the designers and even people with the wordsmith skills to make the content readable.

“When we got up to a team of five it was possible that we might find a cheaper office of our own, but everyone was of the view that they benefited so much from being around others – able to ask them a question if we have a problem, or just go for a coffee with them – that we’ve stayed.”

Co-working isn’t suitable for everyone. If you need a quiet space to work, or you deal with sensitive data, it doesn’t seem a great idea. But it’s clear the number of such spaces is only going to grow, and so will the number of Bath Spa alumni using them. Engine Shed is planning to open a second building in 2019, while The Guild’s Lewis envisages new possibilities every second.

“I really do think soon there will be a co-working space for everyone, it just won’t be in the same space,” says Lewis. “So you might end up with one for journalists and one for engineers, or even one for salespeople – a really noisy room where everyone could ring a bell when they make a sale. When I was a student, I joked that everyone wanted to be a DJ; now everyone seems to want to be a co-working operator.”

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LYNDON HAYES

Illustrator Lyndon is riginally from the heart of the East Midlands, and says his style is divided into “two parts: painted pieces that played a key part in my early development as an artist/ illustrator and the more fine line reportage observational approach that now forms most of my commission requests”.

His influences range from Peter Blake, David Hockney and Ruskin Spear to street photographers such as Saul Leiter, Ernst Haas and Bruce Davidson.

Creative and critical thinkers – just what businesses need We need to broaden the conversation: the value of a degree is about more than its graduate salary, argues Neil Sammells, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Provost and Professor of English and Irish Literature.

INTERVIEW: LUCY JOLIN. PORTRAIT: STEPHANE MANEL

The jobs that are currently considered safe and reasonably well paid may not survive in the future

Numerous studies into the benefits of education have proven that there is so much to gain from being a graduate, aside from financial advantage. Graduates live longer, are healthier and are less likely to engage in crime, especially violent crime. They are also more likely to vote, join political parties, volunteer, work for charities and serve as school governors.

Bath Spa graduates have an international perspective, but many work in the local and regional economy. Many of the businesses in our region want students with that kind of perspective. We work very closely with local businesses – particularly in the creative industries sector – producing the graduates that they want, but also helping them with the consultancy support they need to thrive.

Today, we are on the brink of another industrial revolution, one defined by artificial intelligence. Many jobs that are built around the routine application of sophisticated skills, and that we consider secure and reasonably highly paid, may not survive in the future.

They may well be digitised into oblivion.

Our students may study different subjects, but they have a family resemblance. Whether they are teachers or fine artists, they are creative and critical thinkers. They are digitally literate and work well in teams. All these qualities are necessary to flourish in a changing workplace. And they make a contribution that you can’t measure simply in tax receipts – and we should never lose sight of that.

This column expands on a 2016 article for Times Higher Education by Professor Neil Sammells and Professor Rob Mears.

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ack in 1984, when I began my career here, around 15 per cent of the population went to university. Now, it’s closer to 50 per cent. That move to a mass higher education system has changed the expectations of both staff and students.

To a 20-something student, three or four years of their life is a considerable investment. And here at Bath Spa we recognise that. The investment of time and creative energy from our students is something we work hard to nurture. For students, it’s about being given the chance to choose and pursue a career that they will find rewarding and fulfilling. It is about making a contribution.

The crudest way to assess the benefit of a degree is to look at the kind of jobs students get. The current Destination of Leavers from Higher Education survey, which takes place six months after students graduate, is a very blunt instrument. But, nevertheless, it is the one that figures in league tables.

We do well in this survey, inasmuch as 70 per cent of our graduates go into reasonably well-paid professional managerial jobs. But I don’t regard that as the only measure of whether a student has benefited from taking a degree with us. I’m just as interested in those students who have found a career that they find satisfying and fulfilling, and which meets their aspirations – whether it is highly paid or not.

We must broaden the conversation to properly understand the deeper and longer-term benefits of higher education – both to individuals (beyond the measures of salary and employment ‘status’) and to society generally.

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AT WORK FLORA SEARSON A degree in Creative Media Practice is the perfect training for a sheep farmer, says the co-founder of The Dartmoor Shepherd.

WORDS: DIANE SHIPLEY PORTRAIT: BILL BRADSHAW

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e live in Chagford, right in the heart of Dartmoor. You don’t have to walk far to be out on the open moor where our sheep graze. Walk a mile down the road from there and you’re in town. Chagford is a really special place – there’s a real sense of community and local people are very supportive and engaged in what we do.

The most common commercial breeds of sheep wouldn’t be able to survive on Dartmoor because of the harsh weather. It can have up to three times the rainfall of Exeter (our nearest city), not to mention the high winds and lower temperatures. But our traditional, rare breeds of sheep have adapted over centuries to thrive on the rugged Dartmoor landscape, developing a thick, luxurious, fleece. This is why the sheepskins are unique; they’re shaggy and durable to withstand the wild moorland climate. Dartmoor is also great for marketing – its wild, dramatic landscape provides a wonderful backdrop for photographing our local, sustainable products.

I designed and built the website for our business, The Dartmoor Shepherd, which I run with my partner Lewis Steer, and enjoy updating it regularly

with new photographs and products. I also manage our social media, marketing, and branding. I love the creativity of taking photos, planning social media and using InDesign.

For some aspects of the business I have had to learn as I go. For example, at first, we paid for Facebook advertising to boost our online presence – however I don’t really feel that worked for us. It’s hard to market food and high-end interior items on social media. We have found that social media is a great way to tell the public our story, though. People seem to love the insight they gain from discovering our farm lifestyle and they enjoy reconnecting with the origin of their food.

Our business has attracted quite a lot of national media interest, with a number of appearances on BBC Radio 4 and CBeebies, and programmes such as Countryfile, Escape to the Country and Back to the Land with Kate Humble. The impact of some of this publicity was amazing – within an hour we’d often have hundreds of Facebook ‘likes’ and even had chefs messaging us asking: ‘Would you be interested in supplying our restaurant?’

People love the insight they gain from discovering our farm lifestyle and they enjoy reconnecting with the origin of their food

Previous page: Flora Searson on Dartmoor with her flock.

This page, clockwise from left: Flora and her partner Lewis Steer; one of the Devon and Cornwall Longwool flock; tassel keyrings, part of the range of products using sheepskins from the team’s own flock.

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We were also invited to Clarence House, as guests of The Prince’s Countryside Fund, to meet Prince Charles, which was a real highlight for me. This fund sponsored Lewis by supplying a brand new Land Rover Discovery for one year to help set up our rural business.

Lewis and I are the only employees at the moment, so it’s keeping us really busy. I didn’t know anything about farming before we met; my parents are teachers, so it was a steep learning curve, but I love it.

Lewis didn’t come from a farming background either, so we rent all of our land, which is spread out across Dartmoor. We hope soon to get a base in the Chagford area, with an office and a yard. It can be challenging at the moment as I’m running the business from my bedroom – emailing clients, editing the website and answering phone calls. A base would open up new opportunities and allow us to expand the flock, as well as organise events such as lambing experience days for the community.

I’m certain I wouldn’t have been able to co-found The Dartmoor Shepherd without the knowledge and skills I gained through my degree in Creative

Media Practice at Bath Spa. It taught me how to operate professional filming equipment and how to build websites and manage social media accounts, all of which has been invaluable.

Lewis and I attend lots of shows in the summer months – such as Countryfile Live, The Big Feastival and The Royal Three Counties Show – to sell our sheepskin products and promote our lamb box scheme. But we’re hoping to do more. The Royal Agricultural University (where Lewis studied) has an amazing enterprise programme that sublet an area of its stand to us for a fraction of the usual price. This has been incredible because, without it, the cost of attending such high-end shows would be prohibitive.

At Bath Spa, I knew I loved telling stories through media and I thought my degree might lead into a career in film production. But instead I have found an outlet for my skills in something much more rewarding.

I am promoting something I feel passionate about and, although we don’t know what the future holds, I’m sure it will flourish. www.thedartmoorshepherd.co.uk

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ADVENTURES IN...

AMBIENT LITERATURE Professor Kate Pullinger on what happens when storytelling and mobile technology collide.

WORDS: PETER TAYLOR WHIFFEN

some form ever since writers had access to computers.

But smartphones, and the information they can absorb and transmit about whom, how and where we are, has brought about a step change. This technology has allowed new forms of storytelling to emerge.”

As part of the research, Pullinger and two colleagues have been commissioned to write three works of ambient literature. Breathe is a ghost story that uses technology to put the spirit alongside the reader. “It’s an interrupting ghost,” says Pullinger.

“You might be reading that the action takes place at 11.30pm, but the ghost interrupts and says: ‘No it’s not, it’s 3pm,’ because that’s the time where you are, or it might point out it’s not raining, it’s sunny, because that’s the weather you’re having.”

The two other works in the project are just as fascinating. Duncan Speakman’s It Must Have Been Dark By Then is a book and audio experience mixing narration, evocative music and field recordings. It invites the listener to seek out types of locations in their own environment and, once there, hear stories from remote but related situations and tie them in to their own memories of where they are standing. The Cartographer’s Confession, by James Attlee, invites readers to tour London, either in real life or virtually, as narrative is layered across locations, both real and imagined, using audio, prose, photographs and soundscapes to create a story of migration, loss and betrayal.

PROFESSOR KATE PULLINGER Kate writes novels, short stories and digital fiction, including multimedia interactive collaborative works.

Jellybone was written for smartphones and published last Spring, and Breathe was published in January and is available via the website at www.breathe-story.com.

Read more about Ambient Literature at www.ambientlit.com

“This research is all about experimenting and seeing where it takes us,” says Pullinger. “It’s about watching to see how readers respond. It’s taking our own writing experience, drawn from our literary studies and the history of the book, and combining it with app design, performance, creative writing and questions about how we interact with our technology.” The research, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, also studies the innovation process itself.

This is not Canadian-born Pullinger’s first foray into the digital field. Last year she published Jellybone, a thriller about a young woman who receives messages from the dead, as a multimedia novel designed to be read on a smartphone, complete with the opportunity to follow the fictional protagonist not just in the novel, but in real time on social media.

“I’m fascinated by new ways of telling stories – and of what kind of tales might emerge,” she says.

“It’s about more than writing novels for consumption on digital technology – it’s about how that technology, in turn, influences what and how you write.

“There are people who fear the end of the book, or believe technology means people aren’t reading as much as they did. But stories won’t go away – they have always been in people’s heads. This technology gives us wonderful new ways to tell them – opportunities to immerse readers in those stories as never before, in ways we never previously thought possible.”

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ILLUSTRATION: PATRICK MORGEN

“ ’m going to tell you a story. It’s a bedtime story.

It doesn’t matter if you’re not in bed. But think about it that way. Imagine it that way.” So the line goes in Breathe: the book that watches you, the latest work by Kate Pullinger, Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media and Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries.

But Breathe is more than simply a new piece from a multi-award-winning author: it is also part of a research project into new creative formats that have the potential to connect readers to imagination and environment in new and unexpected ways.

Ambient literature uses digital technology to make the words we read relevant to the space we’re in – which may be where we are, what time it is, even the current weather. And now Pullinger and her colleagues are exploring what she calls “the locational and technological future of the book”.

The idea that the world really is a stage and we can be players on it – for real – opens up a whole new, seemingly limitless genre. The notion that the place where you’re reading a book might then turn into the story’s setting not only has the power to enhance your reading experience – the two-year research project is also examining how this changes the art of writing itself, and how technology can actually play a part in designing stories, rather than merely presenting them.

“It’s tremendously exciting,” says Pullinger.

“Ambient literature is not new – it’s been around in

ON THE BUSES GEORGIANS Third-year History and Heritage student Jess McKenzie talks mob caps and mice skins on the journey between town and Newton Park.

WORDS: DIANE SHIPLEY

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PORTRAIT: NAOMI WOOD (Graphic Communications, 2012)

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signed up to volunteer at No. 1 Royal Crescent because I am a a massive history nerd. The museum takes you back to the 18th century – and I wanted to know more about that time. I didn’t learn anything about the Georgians until I started university, but I instantly clicked with the period, especially with all the Georgian architecture around Bath. I love that you can get so close to history.

I was trained for 10 weeks by my guide mentor, Barbara Chappell, which was pretty intense – we spent three and a half hours in each room, learning about its contents and history. I fell in love with all the little details, like the fact that ladies would use mice skin for fake eyebrows, put egg-white washes on their faces to seal their make-up, and slept upright to avoid damaging their wigs.

The first time I was in a room on my own, I was shaking with nerves, but the nicest couple came in and I calmed down when I realised I was able to answer their questions. I’ve taken an 18th century module every year of my degree, which often helps me at the museum as I can add extra information

I fell in love with the little details, like the fact that ladies used mice skins for fake eyebrows and slept upright to avoid damaging their wigs

I’ve learned, and the museum helps me to understand more about the social side of the period.

I love it when I can make someone’s visit better.

One day, we had a visitor who was unable to take the stairs to the second floor, so I sat with her for about 20 minutes and led her through our virtual tour on an iPad – she was so happy. It meant a lot to me to help her get the most out of the museum. One of my biggest challenges was trying to organise a huge group that didn’t speak any English. We got there eventually – with a lot of signing and pointing.

After a few months, I was offered a job as a live interpreter, welcoming people at the door in full period costume, including a corset and mob cap.

Guests would often take the mick because I have braces on my teeth, saying, “They’re not very 18th century, are they?” I’d just joke: “Didn’t you know we Georgians are very ahead of our time?”

I’m now an ad hoc duty manager; I feel incredibly lucky. When I started university, I thought I wanted to be a teacher, but now my aim is to eventually become a director of a museum. It’s my passion.

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