University of Worcester – Invisible Mirrors

January 15, 2026

Therapeutic Landscapes II: Call for Papers

I’m very excited to announce the call for papers for ‘Therapeutic Landscapes II: Ritual, Folklore and Wellbeing’, a symposium and exhibition that will take place at The Art House at the University of Worcester on June 12th and 13th 2026.

We invite artists, creative practitioners, health practitioners, cultural historians, public health workers and curators who, both formally and informally, are investigating the intersections of ritual, folklore, magic and physical environments and their implications for emotional health and wellbeing to present their work around (but not limited to) the following themes:

• Creative placemaking through storytelling

• Artistic engagement with local knowledge, know-how and skills held in place

• Intentional embodiment in transformative practices

• Creative work that addresses class within folk cultures

• Communal creative interventions in the landscape

• Participatory archaeology/ experimental archaeology

• More than human entanglements

• The Imagined Village: speculative fiction informed by folklore

• Creative interpretation of folk objects held in museums and collections

• Public health arts-based initiatives that are informed by Folklore and folk beliefs

• Ritual as therapeutic creative practice

• Craft practices that investigate connections between making, materiality and emotional wellbeing

• Material practices exploring magic and the supernatural

• Folk customs, ritual games, and community wellbeing

• Mortality, ancestors and commemoration

• Right to roam: communities of dissent

• Mayhem mischief and misrule

• Creative interpretations of places associated with healing

• Pilgrimage, procession and pageantry

• Combatting rural loneliness and isolation through Creative Health interventions

• Local Artists and artist-led co-ops in rural places

• Nature based approaches to radical self-care

Paper Presentations

Please send 250 word abstract for a 20 minute presentation to therapeutic_landscapes@worc.ac.uk

Performances and Workshops

Proposals for longer performances and workshops are also welcome. Please send a short 250 word outline of your proposed activity.

Exhibition

Please send a short 250 word artist statement and up to 6 images of your work for consideration for the exhibition.

Deadline for proposals : 1st March 2026

Presenters and participants will be notified 14th March 2026.

Email: therapeutic_landscapes@worc.ac.uk

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/folk.cultures.research/

October 10, 2023

Therapeutic Landscapes: Call for Papers

Below is the call for papers for Therapeutic Landscapes: Ritual, Folklore and Wellbeing, a two-day event taking place at the Art House in Worcester on the 9th and 10th of March 2024. It has been organised by Desdemona McCannon of the Folk Cultures Special Interest Group at the University of Worcester and myself as leader of the Arts and Health Research Group there. It will be accompanied by an exhibition at the Art House and a publication.

300 word proposals for 20 minute presentations should be sent to therapeutic_landscapes@worc.ac.uk by December 1st.

Please share the call with your networks.

July 12, 2023

AI/Midjourney Presentation

Below is the documentation of a presentation I gave at the ‘Challenges and Opportunities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Creative Educators’ event, the Art House, University of Worcester June 7th 2023, organised by my colleague Desdemona McCannon.

My talk has the rather formal title ‘Using Midjourney to Explore Relations Between Word and Image with Level 4 Fine Art Students’. Before I get to that, I take a detour through some of my PKD-related work.

July 24, 2020July 28, 2020

The Disintegrating Chronotope of Philip K. Dick (Redux)

I am reposting this transcription of a lecture I gave to MA Fine Art students at Chelsea College of Art and Design in Winter 2008. It will give some context to a forthcoming series of blog posts related to the BC Time-Slip project and to a program of lectures I will be giving for Fine Art and Psychology students at the University of Worcester in the forthcoming academic year. The first of these – ‘Beware the Boa Constructor! Freud, Modern Art and the Riddle of Interpretation’ – is in the pipeline.

The Disintegrating Chronotope of Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982)

Part One

Introduction

‘Artists are replicants who have found the secret of their obsolescence’ – Brian Massumi ‘The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari’ (1987)

The term replicant here is a reference to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), the name he gave to the androids in his film version of Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968). The plot of Dick’s novel revolves around a number of highly ‘evolved’ robots who are seeking to have the date of their in-built obsolescence postponed indefinitely. It is the blade runner’s job to hunt down and prematurely terminate the rebellious androids. Although Blade Runner lacks much of the narrative content and philosophical themes of Dick’s original novel, the film brought Dick the mainstream attention he had sought throughout his 25 years of science fiction writing. Sadly, in characteristically tragi-cosmic fashion, he did not live long enough to enjoy his new found fame.

The broader context for this lecture are the themes of historical and temporal consciousness we have been exploring in relation to the shift from modern to postmodern thought, aesthetics and cultural theory, and in particular the ‘materialist’ conception of history addressed by Benjamin in the ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ and throughout Illuminations.

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