End of Term Trip to the National Gallery and End of Term Roundup
On Monday,
myself and creative writing students took an end of term trip to the National
Gallery. Now, the NG is one of my favourite places. Not only is it a beautiful
Neo-Classical building, not only does it have a wide, well-organised and
world-class collection of fine art, but it is also free. This makes the
institution a place for pop-ins and days out, for casual dalliances and serious
study.
We started off by looking at the
use of iconography is Christian painting. We have studied Panovsky’s theory of
iconology in our lectures before and so we put this knowledge to use by going
‘Saint Hunting’ in the gallery. One saint in particular, Saint Stephen caught
our attention as he is often depicted as having rocks balancing quite awkwardly
on his head! This was because poor Stepthen was stoned to death in about 35AD…
Still, after these rather sombre
reflections, we then looked at some famous paintings to see how artists such as
Rubens, Caravaggio and Brueghel have depicted Biblical narrative. One of the
most fascinating things about the visualisation of narrative is how the static
visual form (the painting) still manages to connote and suggest a sense of
before and after. While being necessarily ‘static’, a writer can see analogies
between the writing and the image and they share a similar vocabulary, a
vocabulary that allows them to speak to one another.
Overall, a good trip where I got
the chance to speak not just about my love of writing, but also about my love
of some of my favourite paintings. Having this job really is grand.
But now I draw you reader to
some final reflections. This is the end of the first term of Creative Writing
at UCA and personally speaking, I think it has been a considerable success. ‘Of
course he’d say that!’ I hear you complain. But I think the work of students
and staff has been considerable:
-
Developed and run an original
creative writing course that balances analysis, reading, writing and
workshopping.
-
Student feedback on the course
has been resoundingly positive and student views on learning and course
structure inform the future development of the course.
-
We have been visited by writers
such Alex Garland, Hannah Vincent and Lisa Dart, with more to come next term.
-
A regular series of Writing
Sessions have taken students to galleries, archives and libraries to develop
their writing in new spaces.
-
Students took part in workshops
run by creative resident Sonia Friel. Workshops developed their experimental
writing skills and taught them about surrealism and OULIPO artists.
-
And of course an end of term
trip to the National Gallery!
Right, now for a
Christmas of marking, marking, marking…
.jpg)
Dr Craig
Jordan-Baker
Subject Leader
and Lecturer in Creative Writing
cjordan-baker@ucreative.ac.uk
