Enriching Our Student Experience
MARCH 2023
The Peer Mentors for the School of Arts, English and Languages (AEL) ran a Build-A-Bear Workshop in March. The workshop was chosen following the success of the same activity last year. The event took place in The Great Hall and each student was given a different soft-toy animal along with stuffing and a heart. The event was a great success and was very well attended. The Peer Mentors were delighted to create a relaxing environment in which fellow students could take a break from their studies. The workshop also provided students with the chance to meet others from different degree pathways or those in a different year group. This event received praise from the students in attendance and the Peer Mentors are very thankful to those within the School of AEL without whom this event would not have been possible.
"The AEL build-a-bear workshop was not only a wonderful way to take a break from the busy semester but also a lovely time to chat to people from my school and catch up over a fun activity! The peer mentors were so kind and helpful throughout the session, making us feel very welcomed and at ease. A well-organised and thoroughly-enjoyable event for all!" - Kathy
As part of their medieval studies, postgraduates in English participated in a trip to the medieval towns of Ghent and Bruges, in Belgium. Both cities were important centres of commerce throughout the middle ages and are therefore replete with fascinating buildings, monuments and artefacts that afford a unique insight into the lives of ordinary people.
Read the full reports from Aisling Reid and Camila Montero Villamil
JANUARY 2023
In January 2023, Chilean artist and sculptor, Tere Chad,travelled to Queen’s University Belfast to take part in classes with level 2 and level 3 Spanish students and to offer a ‘Woven Hug’ workshop open to anyone in the University.
The classes in Latin American culture focus on the role of the arts in highlighting issues around the environment and sustainability, and benefited from hearing directly from a Latin American artist about how these themes impact her work and how she has engaged with colleagues and communities in Spain and Latin America to open discussions and share ideas. Inspired by the tradition of arpilleras, hessian-backed textiles from Chile, and using repurposed materials, Tere Chad’s work seeks to bring together communities through sustainable practices and promote the tradition of textile art with a particularly 21st-century dynamic.
Her workshop also engaged with the ongoing exhibition in the McClay Library that forms part of the Conflict Textiles collection curated by Roberta Bacic in collaboration with the School of Law, and with the upcoming events in the Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart, where Tere and her colleague, Mexican scholar, Cordelia Rizzo, will take part in further community textile projects.
Becca Redmond kindly agreed to reflect on how taking part in the class and workshop enhanced her experience and opened up new avenues to be explored.
A creative heart and a sustainable mind
‘As part of a combined degree, I have the joy of studying both Geography and Spanish, so I couldn’t resist from selecting Dr Fiona Clark’s ‘Recycling Cultures of Latin America’ module in my second year.
As someone with both a creative heart and a sustainable mind, it beautifully combines some of my biggest interests including environmental consciousness, climate justice, culture, and art. As an extension of the module, I had the opportunity take part in an upcycling workshop with some extraordinary Chilean Artist, Tere Chad, and arpillera curator, Roberta Bacic, which was both enjoyable and insightful.
Roberta taught us the history and importance of the Chilean arpillera; how one can not only use art to build communities, but also as a powerful, political language or tool of resistance, to protest repression, violence and uplift voices that can otherwise go unheard. Whilst Tere on the other hand, got us thinking and feeling, discussing how important it is to disconnect from screens and reconnect with the world around us, whether it be the soil under our feet, the abundance of resources at our fingertips or the relationships that are forgotten or dismissed whilst scrolling. This environmentally sustainable project of embroidery and upcycled fabrics brought together a room of contrasting personalities and backgrounds, yet in the end built a collective art piece and a community of common interests and ideas, so, I would encourage all new students to get involved.’ By Becca Redmond (level 2, Geography with Spanish)
Photos by Harry Thompson.
An ECUCFD grant enabled students taking DRA2013 Directing and Design to attend a performance of the new political musical, “Propaganda” by Conor Mitchell at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, in November 2022. Unusually, the theatre also arranged a pre-show backstage tour which was of great benefit giving the theme of this module. The Lighting Designer for the production, our own Production Assistant Mary Tumelty, also attended adding an extra level of technical detail to the tour. 20 of the 22 students taking the module took up this offer and 8 of these chose the production as the subject of their final essay.
Most of these essays highlighted the radical nature of the design. One student noted: “Mitchell’s original script has a concept based around surveillance and the use of propaganda, which the actual play realises in interesting and visually spectacular ways such as the use of searchlights, the orchestra pit, and the levelled stage, which create a meaningful and unforgettable environment for the piece’s events to take place upon”. The fact that he had previously had the opportunity to explore the backstage environment undoubtedly heightened his appreciation of this radical design approach.
Read more Read less
JANUARY 2023
“This fieldtrip to Carrickfergus formed the basis for a module-level collaboration between my MA-level Documentary Practice course and the MSc in Advanced Architectural Design and PgCert Cinematic Architecture, which are under the auspices of Dr. Gul Kacmaz Erk of QUB Architecture. The fieldtrip was the corner stone of a joint assignment between our respective modules, rooted to an ambitious regeneration project for Carrickfergus, being run by the Mid and East Antrim Borough. Students were formed into ten interdisciplinary teams, each of which was assigned a specific aspect of the regeneration plan. Their task was to collaboratively research their assigned aspect and ultimately produce a one-minute research film presenting their findings in an engaging, narrative format. The assignment requires core skills from both the Broadcast and Architecture/Planning spheres and thereby occasioned deep and sustained interdisciplinary collaboration between the students. Travelling as a group (of 52 students) to Carrickfergus enabled my students to encounter key experts involved in the project at Carrickfergus Town Hall; visit various areas involved in the regeneration (Civic Centre, Northeast Bastion, Shaftesbury Park, Railway Station, North Gate, Market Place and the Statue of King William); and initiate their team-specific research on the ground.” Dr Don Duncan, Lecturer in Broadcast Practice
Read more Read less
In November 2022, AEL Education Fund enabled us to have a Liberal Arts social, bringing together students from across all four years of the degree programme. Over pizza and drinks, students got to know each other better. This community building was continued in coffee mornings during the second semester, allowing everyone the chance to ‘check in’ with each other and with academic staff. Socials like these are particularly important in an interdisciplinary subject like Liberal Arts, bringing students together from across all disciplines and allowing for an exchange of ideas and experiences.
APRIL 2022
The corpus stylistics workshop introduced students to some free, online tools that can support research on how the English language is used by real speakers. Working through a series of exercises, using real language data and online or freely-downloadable tools, the workshop was a great success, with over 30 UG and PG students from across AEL in attendance.
Read more Read less
MARCH 2022
‘The field trip to Derry allowed students to physically and sensually experience the ‘sites of memory’ that we have been studying in our MA module ENG7365 ‘Trauma & Memory in Irish Literature’. In particular, it complemented our analysis of Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark, which is set in Derry, spanning the period from 1920s to the outbreak of the Troubles. The novel details specific sites of memory which contain the post-memory of traumatic events; these include the An Grainan fort, which we visited and, in its location, architecture and mythological resonances, it made a notable impressions on the students. Given the importance of post-memories in our curriculum and this year’s Bloody Sunday anniversary, we also visited the Museum of Free Derry, and students were able to encounter the post-memories of that important event in Northern Irish history through the materials, footage, and testimonials exhibited therein. Overall, this trip productively complemented our curriculum by offering the students important insights and understandings into post-memories of recent Northern Irish history, as reflected and represented through literature.’ Dr Stefanie Lehner, MA Module Convenor and SL in Irish Literature
Read more Read less
MARCH 2022
Final year students in Professor McCusker's Caribbean Cultures module were delighted to talk to Dr Emily Zobel Marshall @EmilyZMarshall, granddaughter of Joseph Zobel and Reader in Postcolonial Literature at Leeds Beckett. We discussed Emily's relationship with her grandfather, the importance of La Rue Cases-Nègres in Caribbean literature, and the pernicious effects of the pigmentocracy. We also reflected on the continuing legacies of slavery, all highly relevant against the backdrop of Kate and William's tour in Barbados. Thanks so very much to Emily for her fascinating insights.
MARCH 2022
A successful day out was had on the Trail with expert guides Deidre Galway (guitar), Jason O’Rourke (concertina) and Annette Collins (dancing). Deirdre is the guitarist for the well-known Belfast band Realta while Jason is a grandee of the local scene with several successful albums to his name over the years. Annette is a dancing instructor with Belfast Trad, based at the Crescent Arts Centre.
We began our trip in The Second Fiddle in the Cathedral Quarter before taking in a stop at Belfast’s Assembly Rooms (home of The Belfast Harpers’ Assembly of 1792). The guides told the students about the route of the Farset river, under High Street, which gave Belfast its name. In McHugh's Basement we had a dance demo from Annette and some of our students learned how to dance the polka set.
MARCH 2022
MA and PhD students from the Centre for Translation and Interpreting braved the weather on their way to Titanic Belfast on the 9 March 2022. Facilitated by the AEL Education Fund, the trip was designed to enable Translation and Interpreting students to learn about audio description and audiovisual translation in a real-life context.