Dr Carrie Westwater

(she/her)

Publication

• Date
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Research

Research Interests:

My research interests could broadly be considered as enquiries into use of film, theatre and community arts participation as arts activism.

With a predominant focus on theatre and film I aim to analyse the texts, audience engagement and the psychogeography that the 'event' and / or what the text has to offer? Furthermore I aim to investigate the participatory opportunities and the challenges the actor/ audiences may experience in engaging and accessing these events/ texts. I find this work fascinating and am interested in how the site and method of engagement can be a metaphor and a tool to inform social change as an embodied experiential platform.

My research investigates arts installation, interventions and happenings and how theatre and film production as tools for participation are effective conduits for raising awareness of human rights issues, locally and globally.

This research interest finds me enquiring into aspects of identity, difference, access and representation, participation and democracy, social group dynamics and spatial justice and representations of trauma. I often find myself moving between cultural, critical and film theory whilst engaging in policy and language that negates social justice.

Current Research Projects:

I am investigating how the method of Theatre Reportage can experientially inform policy makers of the "cnsequences of livng in war", using case studies from Palestine, Iraqi-Kurdistan and Ukraine. This work involves ethnographic observations and presnetations at EU Parliament. 

I am revisiting an AHRC project I worked with in 2014 to look at how one play from the Scottish Rennaisance, The Satire of the Three Estates by Sir David Lyndsey can help inform contemporary theatre on methods for environmental sustainability and training of the 'site reflective actor.

Working with Dr Alida Payson as co-investigator, we are exploring the 'transformational effect' of upcycled clothing as costumes to explore motherhood, when working with homeless young mothers. 

Previous Research Projects:

Clwstwr R&D "Heritage Walkers".

Heritage Walkers is in partnership with National Slate Museum. I was awarded Cluster funding to conduct an R&D on a proposed outdoor walking experience that harnesses digital and screen methods of interpretations. through projections onto landscape and artifacts.

Imagine taking a walk around a museum site and along the way stories of the area appear as films projected onto forests, buildings and on water. As you, the 'Heritage Walker' take your journey you are on a quest to experience visual and auditory heritage interpretations that appear in spaces to accentuate the site experientially. The screen based materials are not experienced in your digital device but are projected out from the device into the space before you and onto relevant objects, layering the interpretations poetically.

Our hope is to animate outdoor environments to engage families and international visitors in the landscape and heritage of Wales, through creative and interactive means. Think Pokémon Go meets the Ramblers. 

Heritage Walkers is a Cluster R&D project. Clwstwr is an innovation programme for the South Wales screen sector, funded by the Creative Industries Clusters Programme which is part of the UK Government's Industrial Strategy.

Gravida, with the Gravida Collective.

As initially writer in residence and one of the dancers involved in the R&D performance of 2018 (funded by Arts Council Wales) I have been working with choreographer Aleksandra Nikolajev Jones and dramaturg Jelena Vaksonovic to explore maternal mental health and the mother/artist (mother/ dancer) in performance.

We are continuing to develop Gravida as an ongoing performance and will be performing again early 2022. I have recently written a chapter on a the performance at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff in 2018.  This is for forthcoming Routledge publication called Mothering: Processes, Practices and Performance (ed) Lena Simic and Emily Underwood-Lee. Our chapter "Gravida, the weight and wait of together/ apartness: a performance of pregnancy to mothering" focuseses on "Staging Pregnancy" and maternal mental health in performance by mother/ dancers. As one of the dancers this chapter is somewhat auto-ethnographic and explores the choreo-dramaturgical decisions made in production.

Festival of Voice (2018) with Creative Cardiff

I was co-investigator under the direction of Sara Pepper and Professor Justin Lewis to evaluate the audience satisfaction and engagement in the Festival of Voice (2018). A short film was developed on the findings by me and Danial Alford.  

The Voices Project of War and Peace, with Cardiff (JOMEC), Birmingham and Newcastle Universities

As research assistant to Dr Jenny Kidd and Dr Joanne Saynor, I visited most of the installation sites for the 1418 Now, Weeping Window and Wave Poppies Tour of Britain (Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red). My role was to interview visitors to the installation on how the poppies may or may not initiate thoughts on remembrance. This project has been longitudinal between 2013 and 2018 and featured as one of the REF Impact case studies earlier this year.

Wales for Peace (HLF Evaluation) with Dr Jenny Kidd, JOMEC and the Temple of Peace, Cardiff

As research assistant working again with Dr Jenny Kidd, I conducted 'deep dive' case studies', interviews and focus groups for the Wales for Peace Project interim and final report for HLF. The interim report below can be found here http://www.walesforpeace.org/wfp/news-article.html?id=84

The Letterbox Club, Booktrust Cymru

I was lead investigator conducting a series of interviews and analysis of data to evaluate The Letterbox Club programme which is a Booktrust initiative that gifts books to children. Letterbox Club gifts books to 'looked after children' in foster families. The books arrive through the post, addressed to them personally. I analysed conversations from several focus groups and semi-structured interviews with foster care service providers, social work and Flying Start staff across Wales. The final report can be found here: https://www.booktrust.org.uk/globalassets/resources/research/research-with-practitioners-in-wales---supporting-foster-carers-with-reading-with-their-children---final.pdf

Civic Centre Participation, with Cardiff Participatory Network and Mari Lowe.

This project looked at how the public move around and engage in the Civic Centre of Cardiff using surveys (face to face and online) and a mapping individuals routes to work and from educational establishments.

Teaching

I have been teaching in JOMEC since 2015 and am currently module coordinator for Creative and Cultural industries (3rd yr. Undergraduate module) and Red Penned (2nd yr). I am also Director of the MA, Cultural and Creative Industries.

My role involves the design and delivery of teaching and learning materials, the design of assessment, marking and second marking and student support through teaching 'face to face' and online.

My approach is pedagogically experiencial and constructivist. "Learning by Doing" and craeting the lecture theatre as a shared space for egalitarian learning is essential to my phillosophies. 

I have also taught on the following undergraduate modules.

'Understanding the Digital Society through the lens of Charlie Brookers Black Mirror' (3rd yr.)

'Issues in TV Production'(2nd yr.)

'Doing Media Research' (2nd yr.)

'Introduction to Media Audiences' (1st yr.)

'Advertising in the Consumerist Age'(1st yr.)

'Understanding Journalism'(1st yr.)

'History of Mass Communication'(1st yr.)

'Representations'(1st yr.)

Biography

As a professional artist and academic, I began my career in theatre performing Shakespeare with Glasgow Repertory Co. I then continued to be a maker of theatre, film and creative site responsive storytelling using multi-platform methods. This work saw me incorprate Theatre Found Limited, in 2007. With this company I worked internationally with other activist theatres such as Teatro di Nascosto and Belarus Free Theatre, with whom I still have strong connections.

I moved to South Wales in 2013 to complete my PhD in arts and heritage participation and have been working on various projects, with a variety of local companies since: National Museum Wales ( Museum Lates: SPACE), Creative Cardiff (Festival of Voice), Cardiff University (Wales for Peace and The Voices Project), tactileBosch (Garden of Earthly Delights, 2016; Lost Vegas Hotel 2017; Basement Borsht, 2018; Jubilee, 2018), Republic of the Imagination (Gravida, 2018); Women Representing Women, 2018), Magpies Immersive Events (Midsummer Nights Dream, 2018; Hub Festival Cabaret Caravan, 2018).

At the beginning of my career I adapted Classic, Central and East European texts for performance in contemporary multicultural Britain. This found me directing several plays (in translation) and working with Scottish Refugee Council on a number of performance projects highlighting the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees (Antigone in New York by Janusz Glowacki, 2008; The Inquisitor by Peter Arnott, 2009, The Umbilical Cord , 2010 and A View from Here ,2013.

My other intercultural work has largely been with an academic purpose. I was commissioned by the University of Glasgow to create performance based interactive training for translator based on Shaun Tan's The Arrival. This project experientially presented how power can perform ias racist with a translation setting. I also co-created the CurioUS learning programme with Glasgow Museums which enabled an increased empathy between refugees and non- refugees through the use of musuem objects.

This experience informs my pedagogic approach which is experiencial and constructivist.

Supervisions

I am interested in supervising:

Theatre and film as tools for addressing and/ or representing trauma

Participation as social and spatial justice

Safe space aethetics

Peace Journalism 

Equlaity and Diversity

Immersive creative experiences

Experience Economy

Current supervision

Feiran Song

Research student

Engagement

2024 Workshops with Middle Eastern Journalists and MEPs at EU Paliament, Brussles 

2023

Workshops and documentation of Theatre Reportage at EU Parliament.

Theatre Reportage Performance by  Valera Simonchuk at JOMEC for 3rd Year studnts on the crisis in Ukraine

Workshops with Welsh dancers, at SPARKs/SBARC on developing a language for the CODA ( Cntext Orientated Dance) Methodology with Gravida Collective.

2022

Workshop with members of the Womens Intergenerational Trauma Group of Serbia on CODA.

Launch of Mintys Gig Guide at JOMEC

2020

Creative Consultancy with Amgueddfa Cymru/ National Musuem Wales on Museum Lates Dino

2019

Awarded Clwstwr funding to research a prototype digital walking experience called Heritage Walker at National Slate Musuem. This saw a partnership with This Great Adventure, Sharon Magill and James Taylor.

Creative Consultancy with Amgueddfa Cymru / National Museum Wales on Museum Lates Space

2018

Three day conference at Temple of Peace, Cardiff called Women Representing Women

2017

Awarded Connect Studios and Nesta Fnding to develop interactive storytelling content based on research of stories from the Homelsss community of Cardiff. This was called Street Homeless Me.