Aims

The AWP has a unique focus: the interrelatedness of what artists write and publish to the rest of their practice. We aim to explore that focus by enabling collaborations between artists, critics, editors, curators and collectors who have historical, theoretical and practical insights that are worth sharing.

The AWP creates a context at the University of Leeds for speculative arts practice and ambitious scholarship to together lead and enrich teaching and research at undergraduate level, taught post-graduate, PhD, Fellowship and faculty levels. With our initial and growing portfolio of partnerships, we aim to share that context with as wide an audience as possible and to create opportunities for ambitious engagements with the field of artists' writings and publications by specialists inside and outside of academia.

The Centre has four key aims: We work with a Collaborative Ethos, nurturing strategic partnerships, project-specific partnerships, enabling colleagues and students, enabling makers and audiences. We celebrate New Writing / New Publishing by equally supporting scholarly and practice-led research in conventional and experimental forms. We want to Share Knowledge across fields, form the archival and curatorial to audience-engagement and participation expertise. We Support New Thinking, offering supervision and a platform through symposia, publications, teaching, supervision, criticism and fairs. 

Specialisms

→ The founding team of the centre have particular expertise in late modern and contemporary artists' books, conceptualist art, contemporary experimental literature and artists' criticism, interviews and essays, as well as a wealth of experience as editors and curators in all of those areas.

→ We support patient, global and pluralistic view-points on the field by bringing together researchers from across the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies and from across the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures at the University more broadly.

→ In mutually-beneficial ways, the AWP works internationally and regularly beyond academia, with professionals, partner institutions and audiences who are involved in the galleries, museums, press, libraries and publishing sectors.