The School of English at Sussex has established strong links with creative industries, institutions and communities.
ACCA
The former Gardner Arts Centre is transforming to become the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts including performance, exhibition and teaching space in a landmark building on campus. The work of research and teaching in the School of English, as an interdisciplinary centre for the studies of text, poetics, creativity and performance, will be enhanced by partnership with the ACCA.
More information on the development and progress can be found at the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts.
Brighton Museum and Art Gallery
In October 2011 and October 2012 the Centre for Visual Fields in the School of English, organised and hosted two large public symposia. The first, ‘Exhibitionism: A Symposium on Queer Curatorial Practices’, featured presentations by curators from a variety of museums and cultural institutions, including the British Museum, the BFI, and the London Museum; a number of independent curators were also involved, including Simon Watney. The second, ‘Artists Speak Out: A Town Meeting on the Queer State-of-the-Art’, offered a forum for presentations by a number of leading LGBTQ artists working and living in the UK. Both events attracted large audiences almost entirely composed of interested local citizens. Future collaborations between the Centre and the Museum are planned, especially projects and events that will link the work of the Centre, the Museum and Brighton’s large LGBTQ and artistic communities.
Visit the Brighton Museum website
British Film Insitute (BFI)
In 2013 the Centre for Visual Fields has been instrumental in curating and organising three major events in collaboration with the British Film Insitute (BFI), all of which take place at the BFI Southbank. A ‘Study Day’ (20 April 2013) dedicated to the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini, held in conjunction with a film season of the Italian director’s work at the BFI Southbank in spring 2013 has been curated by John David Rhodes, a Pasolini scholar, working in collaboration with David Edgar at the BFI. Rhodes has also curated ‘Queer Pasolini’ (17 March 2013), which has been organised in conjunction with both the Pasolini season and the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. This event will take place in the BFI Reuben Library at BFI Southbank.
The Centre for Visual Fields will also be hosting its sixth annual Contemporary Directors Symposium at the BFI Southbank on 22 May 2013. This year the symposium focuses on the work of the New York-based experimental filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh. Ahwesh will be present at the symposium, and the symposium will be followed by a public screening (again at the BFI Southbank) of Ahwesh’s work, curated by Ahwesh and Rhodes.
Visit the BFI website
Modernist Studies Association
The fifteenth annual meeting of the Modernist Studies Association (MSA 15) is to be held at the University of Sussex, August 29 - September 1, 2013. "Everydayness and the Event" will be co-hosted by Dr Sara Crangle, University of Sussex and Dr Suzanne Hobson, Queen Mary, University of London.
Modernism radically breaks from the ordinary and the received, staking its claims on making it new. But how might modernism also engage with the ordinary, the quotidian, the mundane or the banal? What kinds of events are precipitated by this conjunction? “Everydayness and the Event” encourages the exploration of philosophical subjects such as time, space and subjectivity; political questions about private versus public; psychoanalytic issues such as emotion and habit; and aesthetic questions of ordinariness (diary-writing, reportage, lists) and novelty (performance, intervention, the newsworthy).Topics of growing significance in modernist studies, the everyday and the event might be considered together or separately to include, for example, domesticity, objects, food, fashion, waste, public engagement, responses to events of local, national and international significance, the traumatic event and modernism as itself a happening.
The University of Sussex is home to the Mass Observation archive, a record of the behaviours and habits of everyday British people from 1937 to the present, while London and the area around Sussex were the sites of iconic modernist happenings such as the performance of Futurist music at the London Coliseum in 1914, the Dreadnought Hoax perpetrated by members of the Bloomsbury Group in 1910, and the ongoing “event” of the personal and artistic entanglements at Charleston, the Sussex home of the Bloomsbury set. During the conference, delegates will have the opportunity to join organized tours to Charleston and Monk’s House, the countryside home of the Woolfs, as well as Farley Farm House, home of the photographer Lee Miller and a centre of British surrealism. Delegates will also be able to attend a poetry “event” organized in collaboration with the Archive of the Now. We hope the conference location will encourage reflection on the theme of “Everydayness and the Event” as well as self- reflection on the part of the participants on public readings and conferences such as the MSA as the spaces in which modernism happens.
The Modernist Studies Association is devoted to the study of the arts in their social, political, cultural and intellectual contexts from the later nineteenth- through the mid-twentieth century. The organization aims to develop an international and interdisciplinary forum to promote exchange among scholars in this revitalised and rapidly changing field.
Visit the conference website
Myriad Editions
Sussex English has fostered a long standing partnership with independent publisher Myriad Editions. Myriad works closely with creative writing courses such as those at Sussex in order to seek out home-grown talent and launch new writing careers. Originally founded in 1993 Myriad received Arts Council England support in 2009 to develop distinctive and diverse fiction and original graphics publishing.
There are many ties that connect us, not least that amongst the staff at Myriad are an array of Sussex alumni. MD Candida Lacey completed her DPhil in English and American studies here, fiction editor Vicky Blunden is a graduate of the doctoral programme in Creative and Critical writing and editorial assistant Holly Ainley a graduate of the English Literature BA. In addition, several members of the Sussex faculty are Myriad authors: Professor of English Nicholas Royle’s debut novel Quilt was published by Myriad in 2010 and Lecturer in Clinical and Biomedical Ethics at BSMS, Sue Eckstein, has two novels on published by Myriad. Authors Nina de la Mer, a Sussex Modern Languages graduate, Lesley Thomson (MA in English), crime writer and creative writing tutor, and graphic artist Nicola Streeten (BA in Anthropology) all share in the connection between Sussex and Myriad.
Over the course of our partnership, we have developed a series of high profile events, in which we have sought jointly to support such new and exciting talent, helping to invigorate the culture of creative writing at Sussex and contributing to national and international debates about the future both of publishing, and of literary innovation.
Quick Fictions
We run a twice yearly event, called Quick Fictions, in which established and new writers perform condensed fictions of 300 words or less. The brainchild of Nicholas Royle, this concept has now been made available on a newly patented Quick Fictions App, by both Sussex, Myriad and local business Aimer Media.
The Quick Fictions App is available on iTunes
First Fictions
Together we run a biennial festival and conference called First Fictions, the aim of which is to provide a platform for debut authors from the literary and graphic worlds, celebrating and championing new talent and engaging fresh voices in conversation with more established authors.
The 2012 festival was a resounding success with guest speakers including bestselling crime author Ian Rankin, reading from his first, as yet unpublished novel, literary editor Suzi Feay and Bloomsbury Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Pringle.
2014 is set to be even bigger, with the theme of ‘Literature and Science’, meaning new and established authors as well as figures from the scientific world will be engaged in a broad and nuanced debate about the relationship between literature and science in the 21st century, exploring themes such as cloning, prosthesis, forensics, climate change and medical ethics.
First Fictions 2014 will also see the welcome return of the innovative First Graphic Novel competition, where Myriad graphics editor Corinne Pearlman will chair a panel of judges, looking for an original and ground-breaking graphic work. Last year, cartoonist Steve Bell, honorary Doctor of the University, was a judge of the inaugural competition.
Regency Town House
The Regency Town House is a grade I Listed terraced home of the mid-1820s being developed as a heritage centre and museum to focus on the architecture and social history of Brighton & Hove - particularly, but not exclusively, between the 1780s and 1840s.
They have a number of projects underway, including programmes focused on:
1) The refurbishment of the property
2) 3D architectural ornament
3) 18th and 19th C family letters and diaries
4) Architectural drawings
5) The MyHouseMyStreet project (MHMS) - a Heritage Lottery Fund supported initiative
6) British silhouette history - a Heritage Lottery Fund supported initiative
The Regency Town House team already collaborate with a number of Sussex University faculty and students and would welcome further opportunities to do so - at this time, most especially within the IT realm, looking at aspects of Drupal and general web development. To discuss your possible involvement with any of our projects and to propose new initiatives, please contact Nick Tyson, Curator, via: nick@rth.org.uk or 01273 206306.