CKP has regular reading groups. To find out more, or to join the group, click here.

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CKP panel presenting at Performance Studies International Conference 18, Leeds, June 2012. The Theme of the conference is Performance, Culture, Industry and the CKP panel is entitled 'What Price Participation?: Agency, Ethics, Aesthetics and Impact in Participatory Performance'.
The panel responds in various ways to Claire Bishop's statement regarding collaborative art: 'The task facing us today is to analyse how contemporary art addresses the viewer and to assess the quality of the audience relations it produces'.

Five members of CKP will present three papers: Professor Robert Shaughnessy, 'Immersive Shakespeare and the Emancipated Spectator, ' Nicola Shaughnessy and Melissa Trimingham, 'Autism Affects' and Rosemary Klich and Pablo Pakula, 'Participate or Else.'

A Shift entitled 'Autism Affects' will also be presented at the conference involving members of the AHRC funded project team demonstrating their research.

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Nicola Shaughnessy reviews 'Moving on Up' for Birmingham Hippodrome. For more information please see: http://movingonupsymposium.wordpress.com/

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Rosie Klich's book on Multimedia Performance is published: http://www.amazon.com/Multimedia-Performance-Edward-Scheer/dp/023057467X

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Congratulations to Roanna Mitchell and Deborah Leveroy for passing their PhD upgrades this term.

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Walking in Motion: Torsten Blume, Director of the Dessau Bauhaus Stage Workshop, a workshop and performance hosted by CKP (University  of Kent’s Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthesia and Performance)

 

Westgate Towers Canterbury: Thursday 22 September 20.00-22.00

Click here for more information

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Nicki Shaughnessy and Melissa Trimingham win Innovative Project Award at University of Kent's ICE (Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise) Awards.

 

 

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£429,000 AHRC Grant awarded to Nicki Shaughnessy and Melissa Trimingham

Imagining autism: Drama, Performance and Intermediality as Interventions for Autistic Spectrum Condition will investigate how drama-based activities may hold the key to helping autistic children communicate, socialise and play imaginatively.

Researchers from CKP will investigate how children with autism can benefit from a range of drama interventions centring on live, interactive performance using puppetry, light, sound and digital media. The study will also include psychology experts from the University and Kent’s Tizard Centre who will evaluate the impact of the drama interventions on 18 children during the 30-month project. Results from the research study could to lead to a full-scale trial and may also prompt changes in approaches to other communication disorders in children.

Principal researcher Dr Nicola Shaughnessy, of the University’s School of Arts, said: ‘Autism affects as many as one in 100 people in the UK but there is no cure and no single effectivpert Dr Julie Beadle-Brown, of the Tizard Centre, and cognitive psychologist David Wilkinson, of the School of Psychology.

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Nicki Shaughnessy and Melissa Trimingham win Innovative Project Award at University of Kent's ICE (Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise) Awards.

e intervention. ‘Our aim in this research will be to test the hypothesis that many aspects of autism can be ameliorated through participation in drama based activities, specifically live, interactive performance. There are three main impairments in autism each of which have a close relationship with drama: imagination, interaction and communication. We think that participating in a multi sensory, live and immersive drama environment can create an opening into the autistic child’s world.’

Senior lecturers in Drama, Dr Shaughnessy and Dr Melissa Trimingham will lead the project together with autism ex

The award was given for their autism project which uses drama, puppetry and play within a programme of interventions to facilitate communication and social interaction in children with difficulties in this area. The project has now been awarded a £429,000 AHRC Grant for further research in the area.

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Visit and Lecture by Professor Bruce McConachie

Tuesday May 24th, 5pm, Jarman Studio 7
Studio 1, Jarman Building,
University of Kent, Canterbury
http://www.kent.ac.uk/maps/canterbury/maps.html

The Center for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance (www.c4ckp.org) at the University of Kent / Drama & Theatre Studies is delighted to welcome the distinguished Professor Bruce McConachie, Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, University of Pittsburgh. All are welcome to attend. For more information please click here.

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CKP at PSi International Conference, Camillo 2.0 Technology, Memory, Experience, Utrecht 25-29 May 2011

 ‘I feel your pain: caring not curing’: joint  shift from CKP (Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance), University of Kent and S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts and Media), Ghent University.

Nicki Shaughnessy and Melissa Trimingham will be presenting their research into autism as part of a shift. The shift emerges from a research dialogue between the University of  Kent, UK and the University of Ghent, Belgium. Colleagues from Ghent will be contributing their research on trauma, violence and posttraumatic theatre. The  panel discussion is preceded by the audience experiencing documentation of immersive installation/performances undertaken with autistic children by CKP. The documentation is intended to provide stimulus for the panel discussion, perhaps  posing the  question as to  how far the documentation itself is ‘affective’ of emotion, memory, desire and understanding within the unpredictable, precarious and ’affective’ encounter it records. For a full abstract click here.

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Symposium on Documentation and Archiving - TaPRA Documenting Performance Working Group Interim Symposium

On Saturday May 7th, CKP, as part of the Drama Department at University of Kent hosted a national symposium on documentation and archiving. This symposium was part of the TaPRA working group on Documenting Performance. For a full schedule of papers and presentations please click here.

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University of Exeter, 27-28 April 2011

Caring or Curing? Kinesthetic Empathy and Autism

Nicki Shaughnessy and Melissa Trimingham presented a paper based on their on-going research into autism at the Centre for Cognition Kinesthetics and Performance. They discuseds a project which has developed affective ‘interventions’  through the creation of immersive interactive environments, using a range of  ‘intermedial’ methods such as puppetry, light, sound,  projection and live feed. On Wednesday 27 April, working in conjunction with one of Kent’s Graduate Theatre Companies, ‘Bright Shadow’ (http://www.brightshadow.org.uk) Katie Hirst and Rhiannon Lane collaborated with Nicki Shaughnessy, Melissa Trimingham and Helen Brooks in a re-constructed immersive environment for delegates. For a full abstract click here.

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New Chapter on Kinesthetic Empathy by Nicki Shaughnessy

Nicki Shaughnessy's essay 'Knowing Me, Knowing You: Cognition, Kinesthetic Empathy and Applied Performance' will appear in the forthcoming book Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices ed. by Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason (Intellect). The book is due in print in December 2011 and explores innovative and critical perspectives in topics ranging from art to sport.

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Virginia Pitts secures US film premier for her film, 'Beat'.

With sponsorship from Inside Track and funding from the School of Arts Exceptional Research Fund, Virginia Pitts completed a practice-as research film, 'Beat', exploring the potential for kinesthetic and affective engagement with the idea of dialogism. The film screened in competition at the Cinesonika Film Festival in Canada and was selected for the New Zealand International and the Raglan Film Festival (NZ) where the young lead won 'Best Actor'. Following this 'Beat' will have its US premiere in April at the Chicago International Movies and Music Festival, where it has been selected to screen in competition. Drawing on the languages of music, narrative, dance and cinema, 'Beat' explores the challenges of bringing together a diverse group of individuals without quashing their differences.

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Torsten Blume, Director of the Dessau Bauhaus Stage Workshop, to run workshop & performance hosted by CKP

Torsten Blume, the Director of the Dessau Bauhaus, visited Kent in April 2011 to beginning planning a workshop and performance which will be presented in the Autumn term 2011-2012. Melissa Trimingham is leading the project and the workshop is part of a collaboration with the Department of Architecture. It will use the full interior of the School of Art's new Jarman Building, seen opposite.

 

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New Book Published

The Theatre of the Bauhaus: The Modern and Postmodern Stage of Oskar Schlemmer by Melissa Trimingham (Routledge 2010)

The Bauhaus in Germany, the most famous art school between the wars, cradle of Modernist architecture, source of almost every art and design course undertaken in the Western world in the second half of the twentieth century, had an active theatre stage which was central to its curriculum at Dessau. Yet the phrase 'the theatre of the Bauhaus' provokes surprise, curiosity and even downright disbelief, even though by the 1970s performance was well established in art schools and had become an accepted part of the visual arts. The extant black and white 1920s stage photographs puzzle and provoke more than they illuminate: padded masked figures play with sticks and hoops, light and shadow, scale and contrast. These are 'dances' with little movement, theatre with little content: even in the new millennium, their strangeness challenges our notions about what theatre- and dance- could be.

Focusing on the work of painter, choreographer and scenic designer Oskar Schlemmer, the 'Master Magician' and leader of the Theatre Workshop, this book explains this 'theatre of high modernism' and its historical role in design and performance studies; further, it connects the Bauhaus exploration of space with contemporary stages and contemporary ethics, aethetics and society.

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Nicki Shaughnessy speaks at Kinesthetic Empathy Conference

Kinesthetic Empathy across Disciplines: Thursday 03 February 5pm – 6.30pm

What is Kinesthetic Empathy and how does it illuminate research and practice across different disciplines? The AHRC-funded project Watching Dance: Kinesthetic Empathy presents a panel chaired by Prof Dee Reynolds (Manchester – SLLC), with Karen Wood (Manchester – SLLC), Dr Matthew Reason (York – Theatre and Performance), Tal-Chen Rabinowitch (Cambridge - Musicology) and Nicola Shaughnessy (Kent - Performance Theory). Panel topics included screen dance, creative writing, musical group interaction and applied theatre

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