Paul Harper
My background is in furniture design and making, though my career has embraced a wide range of activity in the arts, including management, curation, mentoring, teaching, research and writing. I am currently interested in cross-disciplinary dialogue and in exploring the conditions in which an open and inclusive dialogue can take place.
I am writing a PhD, which is concerned with exploring the potential of digital video as a methodological tool to aid the understanding of practice, by which aspects of craft practice can be more roundly externalized for research, reflective and curatorial purposes..
I have worked with a number of alias groups in a variety of situations and over the last year have organised and chaired a series of symposia called practice and reflection. The series aims to foster a critical community in which makers feel comfortable, in which they can engage positively with critical debate about craft and in which they are encouraged to articulate their practice.