Recent Research
‘Working Together Well: Amplifying Group Agency and Motivation in Higher Music Education’.
Thompson-Bell, J. (2024). In Jorge Salgado Correia, Gilvano Dalagna, Helen Julia Minors and Stefan Östersjö (eds.) Teaching Music Performance in Higher Education: Exploring the Potential of Artistic Research. Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0398.
This chapter interrogates some of the foundational assumptions of student-centred learning environments (SCLEs), with a view to expanding conventional pedagogical models to account for the “distributive” agency of groups of learners assembled in a classroom. In the first part, the author proposes that learner groups be treated as distributive agential networks, braiding together intrinsic, extrinsic and intratrinsic (i.e. motivation distributed between multiple learners) forms of motivation, thereby to sustain both individual and collective forms of agency. It is argued that greater awareness of how motivation emerges across such multi-dimensional agential networks within the learning environment can enable student-teacher and student-student relationships to be established on a more flexible and equitable basis, so that inventive ways of working can be collectively imagined. In the next part, these distributive agential networks are illustrated with reference to the author’s own teaching practice, working with multidisciplinary groups of music students across conservatoire and university settings in the United Kingdom. This section takes the form of an impressionistic vignette outlining a peer-to-peer feedback session using the Critical Response Process (CRP), a group feedback framework for creative work in any media, originally developed by choreographers Liz Lerman and John Borstel. This classroom situation is then analysed as a classroom “assemblage”, to illustrate how pedagogical models such as CRP draw together the bodies and accumulated beliefs of learner groups into a distributive agential network. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how these approaches can lead to a reappraisal of such fundamental academic principles as freedom of expression and equity between learners. Ultimately, it is proposed that the pursuit of creative and expressive freedoms requires that careful attention is paid to the ways in which individual students and teachers can be assembled to form a learner collective.
Climate Hackathon - Evaluation Report
Thompson-Bell, J. (2023), Leed Conservatoire, August. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/373322642_Climate_Hackathon_-_Evaluation_Report
This report summarises and evaluates the Climate Hackathon at Leeds Conservatoire, which was organised by Jacob Thompson-Bell and Maria Rovisco, and took place at Leeds Conservatoire on 21 - 22 June 2023, supported by the UKRI Covid-19 Recovery Fund. The purpose of the hackathon was to bring together delegates from arts, social sciences and natural sciences, and to explore the potential for transdisciplinary collaboration on the interlocking crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequity. Delegates were invited to explore these issues through discussion, and to form collaborative teams to apply for seed funding for transdisciplinary projects engaging the hackathon themes. The hackathon represents a jumping off point towards establishing an active network of artists, scholars and activists interested in forging transdisciplinary alliances around ecosocial issues.
The Epistemic Case for Sci-Art: Toward a Posthuman Praxis.
Thompson-Bell, J. (2023). Leonardo, 212–218. https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02317
This article seeks to strengthen the epistemic case for sci-art by demonstrating how partnerships across paradigms can combine methodologies rooted in multiple knowledge traditions. Drawing on Robin Nelson’s multimodal conceptualization of artistic research and Bruno Latour’s model of science as a circulatory system of heterogeneous human and nonhuman phenomena, the author characterizes sci-art as a form of posthuman praxis, which opens new epistemic positions through transversal forms of inquiry, thereby revealing shared human/nonhuman cultures. Sci-art is thus proposed as a means of drawing together humans and nonhumans into more productive, empathic associations.
Artistic Citizenship: Co-Creating a Flexible Definition.
Thompson-Bell, J. (2022). Leeds Conservatoire. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.33909.86242
This report summarises and develops themes discussed at the Artistic Citizenship Forum: Co-Creating a Flexible Definition for 2022, hosted at Leeds Conservatoire, on 16 - 17 June 2022. The report expands upon delegate discussions to develop a professional development framework based around four key themes for would-be artistic citizens (p.18); and, proposes six recommendations for centres of arts practice, education or research (p.20), designed to strategically support these themes.
Student-centred strategies for higher music education: using peer-to-peer critique and practice as research methodologies to train conservatoire musicians.
Thompson-Bell, J. (2022). British Journal of Music Education, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265051722000080
This article presents some arguments in favour of a student-centred learning and teaching approach for higher music education (HME), with specific reference to conservatoire settings in the United Kingdom. In support of student-centred pedagogy, theoretical modelling is undertaken to offer a model of motivation accounting for both individual and group learning environments, thus drawing together diverse pedagogical research into learner “self-efficacy,” “distributive” classroom agency and partnership models of learning and teaching. Based on the author’s own teaching practice with MA Music students at Leeds Conservatoire, two student-centred classroom strategies are outlined: Critical Response Process (CRP) and practice as research. These strategies are evaluated via theoretical and, in the case of CRP, primary research data from a questionnaire presented to MA Music students reflecting on their experience. Finally, an overarching student-centred framework for HME course design is proposed, cross-mapping different learning activities, knowledge paradigms and forms of motivation based on the previous discussion.
‘Unusual ingredients’: Developing a cross-domain model for multisensory artistic practice linking food and music.
Thompson-Bell, J., Martin, A., & Hobkinson, C. (2021). International Journal of Food Design, 6(2), 233–261. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijfd_00032_1
This article explores linkages between sensory experiences of food and music in light of recent research from gastrophysics, 4E cognition (i.e. embodied, embedded, extended and enactive) and ecological perception theory. Drawing on these research disciplines, this article outlines a model for multisensory artistic practice, and a taxonomy of cross-domain creative strategies, based on the identification of sensory affordances between the domains of food and music. Food objects are shown to ‘afford’ cross-domain interrelationships with sound stimuli based on our capacity to sense their material characteristics, and to make sense of them through prior experience and contextual association. We propose that multisensory artistic works can themselves afford extended forms of sensory awareness by synthesizing and mediating stimuli across the selected domains, in order to form novel, or unexpected sensory linkages. These ideas are explored with reference to an ongoing artistic research project entitled ‘Unusual ingredients’, creating new music to complement and enhance the characteristics of selected food.