Artist River Jean Nash
Hosts Professor Sarah Dyer and Kerry Deacon from the University of Exeter's Education Incubator
Creative Fellowship 2021-2022
Our 2021-22 Creative Fellowship explored care and connection as levers of meaningful change in education practice. River Jean Nash - artist, fabricator, carpenter and designer - was hosted by the Education Incubator, which supports educators to innovate in their educational practice across the University and to provide others opportunities to learn from their work.
River delivered a practical workshop as part of the Education Incubator Fellows’ Writing Retreat in April 2022. They also explored themes of care, vulnerability, anti-productivity, and resistance through a series of sound-based approaches, and has summarised their learning in an online resource.
Discover more about the fellowship and how it developed in the film below.
“Both the Education Incubator and the Creative Fellowship support, create and hold space for failure. It was invited.
"I knew there were no specific outcomes required of me. Just the attempt at and sharing of creative methodologies was asked of me. I was looking at anti-productive learning and honouring process over results...
"....and yet I really struggled unlearning the belief that the value of my work should be quantified only by the quality of a final product.”
River Jean Nash
River Jean Nash is a specialist artistic fabricator, joiner, carpenter, designer, artist and educator. Their practice spans print, drawing, artist film and sonic scapes. Thematically their work explores cognitive dissonance, prejudice and the parody of queer sexuality/the trans body. They utilise their body as a site of political discourse both artistically and in daily existence.
Most recently River has been awarded Arts Council ‘Develop Your Creative Practice’ funding, to explore the theme of ‘The Workshop as a Site of Violence - De-condition the Workshop’. This theme was explored through instrument making and the generation of a cathartic soundscape within the workshop. This period of research led River to ask further questions; What potential creative methodologies are there to explore when considering de-conditioning the workshop, moving away from a site of social and capital violence toward the regenerative? How can creative approaches to technologies and social dynamics embed new cultures, particularly at a time of emerging digital technologies within the construction industry? What wider social implications could come about from embedding radical cultures of ritual and care in the workshop setting?
River extended these questions to the university setting and explored ideas of collective catharsis, ritual and care within the context of the academic institution and educational environments in collaboration with the University of Exeter's Education Incubator.
I was drawn to the creative fellowship at the University of Exeter due to the programme fostering a creative process, married with academic discipline, specifically with the intention to bring about new conversations. I'm excited by the Education Incubator's interest in challenging traditional thinking within education and delivering new approaches that could improve student and academic experience and connectivity.
The Education Incubator
The Education Incubator was established in 2017 to support educators to innovate in their education practice across the university and to provide others with opportunities to learn from their work. To date they have worked directly with over 150 educators, supporting similar numbers of students working on their projects. Their work has huge impact, both broad and deep, on student learning and experiences at Exeter. The educators and students we work with (we call them fellows too) are creating huge value across the institution. The value the Incubator creates is more than the sum of these parts.
The Incubator works through communities of practice where innovators are supported and learn from each other; in which value and visibility are created through the collective. In this way, the Incubator not only creates the best conditions for the success of the projects we support – resulting in better experiences and outcomes for our students – but also builds the capacity of educators and the education system to create and sustain meaningful change.
The opportunity to deepen our understanding of how we work – and what works – in dialogue with River is so exciting. Creativity, care, and hospitality are so often undervalued and invisible aspects of education innovation and educators’ professional development. Our focus and this approach will illuminate them.
University of Exeter
Room 153, Queen's Building
The Queen's Drive
Exeter EX4 4QH
