Dr Loraine Leeson

Professor of Art and Social Practice

Loraine Leeson

  • School Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries

  • Department School of Arts

  • Location London

Research activities

My research focuses on the role of art in social and environmental change through bringing community-based knowledge into the public domain.

I welcome applications for PhD supervision relating to research in social practice, particularly where this is practice-led.

Recent and current projects include:

The Art of Healing follow-on: Impact and Engagement 2022-23, £79,951. Enhancing the value and benefit of previously-funded AHRC research through new interactions and knowledge exchange with user communities in conflict areas. With University of West of England and schools in Kashmir.

The Art of Engagement: Foundations for an international learning community in social practice 2022-23, £32,236. PI on AHRC networking project with The Tate Gallery (COI) and partners Queens Museum and City University New York. https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/art-of-engagement-international-learning-social-practice

Spaces of Hope: The Hidden History of Community Led Planning 2021-23, £550,538. Interdisciplinary project with Oxford Brookes University investigating the benefits of community-led planning. https://www.peoplesplans.org

The Art of Healing in Kashmir 2020-21, £125,763. Interdisciplinary project with University of West of England, artist, art therapist and school in India's Kashmir region. The project uses creative methods to support children traumatised by events in a previously militarised zone. https://artofhealing.org.uk

Active Energy 2008 – 2020, multiple funders £42,185. An intergenerational project with The Geezers seniors group and an extended interdisciplinary team to harness tidal energy from the Thames. https://www.active-energy-london.org.

JAL! Celebrating Cultures of Water in Rural Rajasthan 2018, £58,451. COI/ Lead Artist in AHRC networking project to bring the arts to bear on urgent issues of water conservation in Rajasthan’s desert regions https://rajasthanwater.weebly.com.

Hydrocitizenship 2014 -17, £1.5m. Artist consultant on AHRC funded project led by Bath Spa University. The project explored roles for the arts in investigating how citizens and communities live with each other and their environment in relation to water. https://www.hydrocitizenship.com

Lambeth Floating Marsh 2014 - 15, £24,919. Art/science collaboration addressing issues of biodiversity through construction of a floating reed bed on the River Thames with moving images of river organisms projected along the Thames embankment. https://cspace.org.uk/category/cspace-projects/lambeth-floating-marsh/https://cspace.org.uk/category/cspace-projects/lambeth-floating-marsh/

A more comprehensive account of my research and practice can be found at https://www.cspace.org.uk and in my monograph Art:Process:Change – inside a socially situated practice (Routledge, 2017/18).


Current Teaching

Teaching and Supervising

Module leader for BA Art Ecologies: Placement (current)

PhD supervision/ Director of Studies relating to research in social practice 2016-20

Programme leader for MA Art and Social Practice 2016-2018

Examining

2023 External examiner (PhD) Dept. Art History and Visual Culture, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University

2022 External examiner (PhD) Belfast School of Art, University of Ulster

2022 External examiner (PhD) School of Business & Creative Industries, University of the West of Scotland

2017-2021 External examiner for MA Art and Social Practice, University of Highlands and Islands

2020 External assessor for appointments, Department of Creative and Festival Arts, University of the West Indies

2020 External examiner (PhD) Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University

2019 External examiner (PhD) School of Creative Arts and Design, Loughborough University

2019 External examiner (PhD) Department of Art, University of Reading

2017 Member of advisory committee for appointments to the Serra Húnter Programme, Autonomous University of Barcelona.

2015 External examiner for PhD in Art History and Cultural Studies, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

2014 External examiner for PhD in Environmental Studies, York University Toronto

2013 International PhD referee/assessor, University of Catalunya

Publishing on Social Practice Pedagogy 

‘Active Energy – art practice into pedagogy’ in Provocations, Pedagogy, and Other Strategies for Teaching Ecological Art, International Ecoart Network.(2022).

Duman, A. Leeson, L. 2018, ‘Experience as Art: Fine Art Social Practice Modules at Middlesex University’.

‘Experience as Art: Fine Art Social Practice Modules at Middlesex University’ in Art as Social Action, Allworth Press, New York. (2018). Collaboration with Alberto Duman.

‘Giving More Than You Take: a conversation about the ethics, responsibilities and practicalities of facilitating student participation in community-based projects’ in The Tetley Feast, Leeds College of Art. (2015).


Biography

Dr. Loraine Leeson is a visual artist whose research focuses on the role of art in social and environmental change through bringing community-based knowledge into the public domain. Early work included photo-murals, posters, video and exhibition for the health campaigns and the Docklands Community Poster Project in the1980s. In subsequent decades work with East London communities addressed the impact of change in the urban environment on quality of life and cultural identity. This was followed by a series of online projects children and teenagers, which attracted a Media Trust Inspiring Voices award and Olympic Inspire Mark, while a public artwork The Catch involving three hundred young people in Barking was voted a London 2012 Landmark. Recent work has involved communities in addressing environmental concerns.

For two decades Loraine was director of the arts charity cSPACE, led the strategy group Arts for Labour for five years and continues as chair of the film and video production and training centre Four Corners. A retrospective exhibition celebrating thirty years of her practice toured Berlin, London, Toronto and Dublin 2005-08. 2017 saw her 1970s photomontage work in support of health campaigns exhibited at ICA London and the Routledge publication of her monograph Art:Process:Change – inside a socially situated practice. She was Fulbright Scholar in residence at University of Washington in 2011 and since that time has taught Fine Art Social Practice in the Department of Visual Arts at Middlesex University.

Research and knowledge exchange work includes Active Energy, a twelve-year initiative with seniors group The Geezers, which focused on renewable energy, while Jal! an interdisciplinary project in 2018 with artists in Rajasthan addressed issues of water shortage in desert regions. A current project The Art of Healing with creative practitioners in Kashmir is using the arts to support children who have suffered traumatic experience in militarized zones while another Spaces of Hope is investigating hidden histories of community-led planning and the role that arts can play in this. The Art of Engagement: foundations for an international learning community in social practice, in collaboration with the Tate, Queens Museum and City University New York, has been investigating how the teaching of social practice can be improved for arts practitioners through partnership between cultural and higher education institutions.

KEY EXPERTISE

Socially engaged art practice, interdisciplinary research involving the arts, placement supervision, fundraising.

AWARDS FOR KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE/IMPACT

2022 Times Higher Education Knowledge Exchange award for Active Energy

2016 Arts and Green Energy Award, RegenSW for Active Energy

2010 Olympic Inspire Mark for The Young Person’s Guide to East London

2010 Inspiring Voices Media Trust award: The Young Person’s Guide to East London

2009 Public artwork The Catch voted a London 2012 Landmark

1999 Chrisi Bailey award for digital work with young children

ORGANISATIONS AND MEMBERSHIP

Director of The cSPACE Trust https://cspace.org.ukChair of Four Corners photography and film centre https://www.fourcornersfilm.co.ukSenior Fellow of the Higher Education AcademyMember of British Scholars Fulbright Association

Member of AHRC Peer Review College

BROADCASTING

The NHS: A People's History, BBC FOUR 1st July 2018

Suite (212)- panel discussion on Cultural Democracy for Resonance FM 20th November 2017

The GLC Story – Presentation recorded by Resonance FM 15th December 2015

NuSound Radio (interview) 1st April 2010

ARCHIVES AND COLLECTIONS

• London Community Video Archive https://www.the-lcva.co.uk/interviews/594b032ebefbbb141861b98

• The GLC Story https://glcstory.co.uk/listen-to-interviews/

• National Sound Archive https://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/cat.html

• CityArts Dublin. Online archive In Conversation https://www.cityarts.ie/programme/inconversation.html

• London East Research Institute https://www.uel.ac.uk/londoneast/gallery/loraine_leeson/index.htm

• Rising East [Online] https://www.uel.ac.uk/risingeast/archive07/interviews/leeson.htm

• The Science Museum, Brought to Life, https://sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife

• Women’s Art Library https://make.gold.ac.uk

• Audio Arts, The Visual Arts in Tower Hamlets, ed. W. Furlong, Vol. 5 No.2, Pt.2 1982, cassette tape.

• Museum in Docklands, ‘New Port, New City post 1945’ gallery, London.

• Science Museum, Public Health and Hygiene Collection, London

• MAKE (previously Women’s Art Library), Goldsmiths, University of London

• Awakenings at LB Tower Hamlets town hall, Mulberry Place, London E14 2BG

• East London Health Project posters in Science Museum, Public Health and Hygiene Collection, London

Publications

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