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…

Dr Craig Jordan-Baker

Subject Leader and Lecturer in Creative Writing

cjordan-baker@ucreative.ac.uk