Research Skills for Visual Artists with Cherie Driver

Research Skills for Visual Artists with Cherie Driver

Thursday 21 April , 2011 (10.30 - 16.30)

Fee: £15  / £10 for members of VAI, BX, CAF or DAS

This session is aimed at visual artists who wish to develop a more organised approach to seeking creative work opportunities.

Register for this event

It will examine how to: research and identify suitable funding, training and work opportunities as a visual artist; seek out opportunities and supports in a focused way whether in relation to studio practice or other work opportunities; develop coherent concepts for public, gallery of engaged projects. 

It may also discuss art practices which employ research methodologies and approaches when working with site specific contexts and with groups.

Dr Chérie Driver studied Fine Art in Waterford Institute of Technology and worked as an events organizer and arts facilitator in Dublin. In 1998 she came to live in Belfast to undertake a Degree in Fine Art (Painting) at the University of Ulster. From 2001-2005 she studied for a Masters in Social Anthropology at Queens University Belfast and worked on a full-text PhD at the University of Ulster under the supervision of Prof. Hilary Robinson while working with a number of arts organizations in Belfast including Orchid Studios, Queen street Studios and Catalyst Arts where she was a co-director. In 2007 she worked as a Research Associate in Interface with a team of researchers under Professor Declan McGonigle on a DSD commissioned report on A Public Arts Strategy for West Belfast and the Greater Shankill Area and then on a project for the ARTS Research Group, consisting of academics across the Faculty of Art, Design and the Built Environment and titled, Your Space or Mine? Realising Integrated Sustainable Communities in Deconstructed Interface Environments, a research project that concerns the neighbourhood communities that live near the Fountain and Bishop Street Interface in the city of Derry/Londonderry. Currently she is she is a member of the Healthy Urban Planning Working Group of Belfast Healthy Cities and is working collaboratively with two artists form Glasgow School of Art, Peter McCaughey and Roderick Buchanan, on the Art and Regeneration Program for Derry City Council in the Hazelbank area of the city.  She lectures in Art Theory at Art & Design Research Institute, University of Ulster, Belfast.