Art In Action

Research into KT Practice Seminar
June 2009

Poetry, artistry in medicine and artists in the laboratory - subjects that provided for interesting discussion at the second Research into Practice seminar.

Run by the Institute of Knowledge Transfer on 4 June, the event was well attended by academics and knowledge transfer professionals. Its interactive nature enabled open discussion and the opportunity to share challenges and opportunities and agree common goals.

"This event was focused on the arts and humanities to ensure the IKT is catering for all areas of knowledge transfer," says IKT's Head of Membership Services, Linda Baines MInstKT, who has spearheaded the Institute's Research into Practice activities. "The feedback from the event was that it had been incredibly useful and that the interactive format was refreshing - it's something we'll look to encourage in our future events."

The seminar kicked off with a keynote address from Clare Morgan who runs Oxford's renowned M.A. in Creative Writing. Clare led an interactive session on 'Poetry Workout - Thinking Beyond the Facts', showing what poetry can offer business leaders by exploring alternative approaches to think about what people do and the decisions they make.

Other speakers included Penny Gordon of the Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and the University of Winchester who spoke about artistry in medicine and how the visual arts can influence medical education. Penny's presentation can be seen here.

Andrew Linn's presentation (available here) from the University of Sheffield and Philip Morris' from the University of York looked at how arts and humanities can engage with knowledge exchange/knowledge transfer, and the issues and challenges that these raise. And from Huddersfield, Derek Hales, Research Director and co-founder of the Digital Research Unit spoke about the artist in the laboratory, and the interplay between digital media, artists and scientists.

"Primarily, these events are about getting KT practitioners and KT theorists thinking, talking and collaborating. This was the second Research into Practice event, both of which have laid some strong foundations for greater discussion between these two groups," says Linda Baines.

This was the second of a series of research seminars to be organised by the IKT for academic researchers, knowledge transfer practitioners and business to explore research into approaches into developing a better understanding of KT by considering particular themes or topics in depth.