With the publication of this article in the International Journal of Art and Design Education my various worlds have fused together. In a good way, that is. But fused together all the same. It's taking some getting used to.
You see I wrote the article about this world, our world - art and design blogland - a world I've been part of since 2007. But I wrote it as an article for publication in an academic journal. Because, and you might not know this, academia is the other world I inhabit. So in a funny way this has been coming for a while now - the two worlds I am part of fusing, melding, joining together.
So what's the article about? Well friends, stringent copyright rules prevent me from giving too much away here. The abstract tells you a little. I titled it 'Art and design blogs: a socially-wise approach to creativity'. So that tells you something also. I used an ethnographic approach to writing it, as someone who has been in this community, our community, for a long time now. I wrote about what I observed over many years by being a blogger in the world of art and design. Over the years I've noticed some really amazing things about the art and design blogging community and I wanted to share this with an academic audience. I wrote about how social it is, how practice is shared (not secreted or hidden away), the support that exists for each others' creative practice, the kind of generosity that flows on a daily basis and the sense of community that has developed over the years as a result of all of this. I also wrote about creativity and the approaches to it that I have witnessed in our community. And I observed all this specifically through 25 blogs that I have read closely for many years. These particular blogs were at the heart of my ethnographic study (blog names were not mentioned in the article of course).
Why am I telling you about the article? Why not just read it? Well yes, you could, of course, if you have access to a university library and therefore can download it for free. Otherwise you will have to pay for a copy via the journal itself because frustratingly, that's the way the academic publishing world works at the moment.
So if you do get to read it I hope you enjoy it. I also hope the academic audience I wrote it for will learn a lot more about our community, because let's face it, what's not to love?
UPDATE. Good news: I've just discovered the journal publishers have an online library where at the moment, you can access my article for free. Click here to go to the library. My article is the 4th one down the list under 'original articles'. Love to hear your thoughts on it.
