Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
F=[feminist research group]
Leeds School of Arts
Recent contemporary activism such as the #MeToo movement and Equal Pay Day, as well as conversations in popular culture like ‘The Guilty Feminist’ podcast and live show by Deborah Frances-White, demonstrate the ongoing need for feminist debate and activism. By drawing on practice-as-research methodologies including live performance, graphic arts, photography, illustration and fine art; revisiting feminist archives such as the Feminist Archive North at The Brotherton Library, University of Leeds; and conducting new interviews with significant figures from the feminist movement, The F= [Feminist Research Group] aims to stimulate non-didactic conversations around feminist issues with both students and the public. Their work has attracted support from Arts Council England, Leeds Inspired, and SEEDBED.
The F= [Feminist Research Group] focuses on the following key strands:
- Humour and the absurd in feminist practice-as-research
- Action and the archive in contemporary feminist art practice
- Art for social change
- Play
F=[Feminist Research Group] Members
Jo is a member of feminist art collective, F=. Working collaboratively and with students and wider communities in the design and delivery of public events, using spectacle and humour to query, disrupt and explore mechanisms for social and political engagement and change making. This model of practice has helped shape both the curriculum and the student experience and community participation at a local level and nationally and internationally across art and design, feminist practices and educational fields of practice.
Casey is currently investigating the lives of women and young people through photographic portraiture. The themes running through the bodies of work include feminism, the female gaze, interconnectedness; migration; autobiography; invisibility; the annihilation of time and space; nature and wildness; lines and borders. Her projects have diverse outputs including print and publications, exhibitions, conference presentations, lectures and photo essays.
Dr Stirling is a founder member of the feminist art collective F= based at Leeds Beckett University. F= embrace humour and playfulness in engaging people in debate around social issues, using spectacle as an invitation for collective action; ritual, public acts, burnings of symbolic objects, exhibitions, performances and disruptive moments.
F=[Feminist Research Group] Collaborators
Helen Clarke is a practising artist and lecturer. F= worked with Clarke during a residency at the Feminist Archive North, based in Special Collections at the University of Leeds.
