The goal of this project is to enhance the individual agency of research students by allowing them to reframe their work in the context of a wider cognitive-intellectual space. As well as informing their individual research, it is hoped that such an enhanced conceptual plasticity will contribute to change more broadly in both cultural and academic terms. It will help artist-researchers find new areas of commonality in a field seemingly characterised by intensely personal activities. This mirrors a need in contemporary art practices in general: to identify fundamental common issues and purpose amid an enormous variety if individual approach. In addition, the project shows a way in which teaching and learning can play a greater part in education at the most advanced level and in the most individual of contexts.
By example and experience, the project also becomes a course in successful teaching. It thus contributes to higher education more widely. The concept of ‘lifelong learning’ is not only an outreach activity; this project shows how intensive teaching can provide valuable stimulus to a group of people at varied moments in their individual trajectories.