Faculty Member, Institute for the Contemporary Arts
Deputy Director, PALATINE, Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Dance, Drama and Music
Thesis Title: Thinking, Making, Doing, Solving, Dreaming: conceptions of creativity in higher education
Paul Ashwin, Dept. of Educational Research, Lancaster University
About
My primary research interests are creativity in higher education (the subject of my doctoral thesis), curriculum design, and assessment in the performing and visual arts, and I am a regular presenter at conferences and seminars on those subjects. My teaching specialisms are in the areas of devised performance and site-specific performance.
I trained as a theatre designer and then worked - as a designer, director, performer, musician and writer - with a number of the leading companies in the field of Theatre-in-Education, political and community touring theatre. I combined this theatre work with work as an artist-in-residence in schools and communities, and also with occasional part-time lecturing in further and higher education. Eventually I took the plunge and became a full-time lecturer and course leader in drama and design.
In 1995 I joined the core team that created the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) and its unique interdisciplinary performing arts degree programme. I then became LIPA's first Head of Performance Design and Head of Assessment.
I joined PALATINE, the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Dance, Drama and Music in 2000. At that time it was part of the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN). PALATINE's main role is to work with individual lecturers, departments and institutions to support and enhance the learning and teaching of our disciplines.
My main responsibilities currently include strategic and operational planning, and the leadership and direction of the events programme. I represent PALATINE and the HE performing arts sector on various strategic and policy groups. Currently these include Co-Chair of the Higher Education Academy's Assessment Facilitation Group,;Steering Group member of three of the creative and performing arts Centres of Excellence for Teaching and Learning; and member of the 14-19 Diploma Development Partnership of the Sector Skills Council. I am also an external examiner for several undergraduate and post-graduate courses, and regularly sit on course validation panels. I undertake consultancy work on assessment, creativity, and curriculum design both here in the UK and internationally.
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