Enterprising Mind of the Year Award Winners 2019
The Enterprising Mind of the Year Award 2019 was won by Alexandra Stephenson and Zoe Berkeley. Based on their studies in AH2002 Art, Culture and Politics from 1900 to Now, Alexandra and Zoe co-founded and organised a lecture series with the title Alternative Art Histories. Lectures are hosted on a monthly basis in an informal pub setting and address art that is often marginalised within the Art History canon. The judging panel were impressed with how Alex and Zoe were able to take their passion for the subject and start-up an accessible series of talks which brings like-minded people together. Runners-up this year were Charlotte Evans and Millie Sutton. Inspired by the module GG1002 World in Crisis? Lottie and Millie have taken the opportunity to develop, with the help of the Environment team and others, a Moodle module for students on Training in Good Environment Practice (TGEP) together with an eco-lifestyle app, ROOTS. The judging panel were impressed by their vision and their commitment and determination to make this idea come to fruition.
Alex Stephenson and Zoe Berkeley
This application for the Enterprising Mind of the Year Award 2019/20 is written on behalf of and submitted by Alex Stephenson and Zoë Berkeley (Class of 2021), who are making this application together for their joint venture – ‘Alternative Art Histories.’
In April of 2019, we co-founded Alternative Art Histories, a lecture series that aims to respond to the issues raised by lecturers in AH2002 Art, Culture and Politics from 1900 to Now, regarding how, as historians, we mediate and respond to the changing direction of Art Historical practice.We are both students engaged with the debate surrounding the diversification of the curriculum in and outside of class, having regularly attended Athena Swan and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion meetings. We felt that there was interest in the St Andrews community for a curriculum to highlight art that is usually excluded from or marginalised within the Western canon of Art History. In AH2002 Art, Culture and Practice from 1900 to Now, we discussed how the Western canon frequently dominates the teaching and perception of the subject and the pressing need to diversify the canon and explore Art History’s relevance to current issues. It remains a challenge to incorporate this material into the current structures of the Art History department, thus ‘Alternative Art Histories’ aims to provide the platform for change by calling attention to alternative, under-represented art histories.
We have a programmed lecture series arranged that takes place in an informal pub setting to facilitate an interactive, discursive environment and to promote the accessibility of Art History for everyone. Lectures are free to attend, last approximately 30-40 mins in length, and are followed by a Q&A discussion with the speaker. Since beginning the lecture series in April 2019, we have begun hosting the lectures on a monthly basis, and the below list details the lecturers and topics that have been featured:
Dr Jeremey Howard, April 2019 - Firing the Canon, Questioning the Forces: Broaching the Boundaries of (West) Europeanist Art History
Dr Camilla Mork-Rostvik, September 2019 – The Painters Are In’: The Visual Culture of Menstruation since 1970
Dr Alistair Rider, October 2019 – Doing Art History in the Age of Climate Emergency
Dr Natalia Sassu Suarez Ferri, November 2019 – Kinetic Art in the Time of Political Migration: “Since they can’t put Venezuela in their suitcases, they take the mosaic tiles from the airport”
Dr Marika Knowles, February 2020 – Makeup & #MeToo: Feminism and Art History
Upcoming:
Dr Luke Gartlan, March 2020 – Japan (title tbc)
Dr Kate Cowcher, April 2020 – African European collections (title tbc)
We have been overwhelmed with the response from both students and the department of Art History to the Alternative Art Histories series. Our most recent event, hosted in February with Dr Marika Knowles, attracted over 350 interested participants on our Facebook event. Every one of our lectures has been well attended, and the feedback from students is unanimously positive – demonstrating the demand for curriculum change in St Andrews.
Currently, we can only host speakers from the University of St Andrews department of Art History who speak on a volunteer basis. With funding from the award, we could put this towards inviting external speakers to travel to St Andrews, bringing new and diverse voices to our university town and pushing us further towards our goal of diversifying art historical teaching and practice.
We have attached some of the event graphics which we created for the production and marketing of our lecture series. We hope that these give you a sense of the creativity and atmosphere of innovation that we hope the lectures foster. Thank you for your time and we hope that our joint application with Alternative Art Histories will be considered for the Enterprising Mind of the Year Award 2019/20.