2017-on going
Bath Spa University
Having been a student at Bath Academy of Art in the Sixties, Clive re-established contact in 2017 with Bath Spa University (BSU) with the idea to it delivering a MA Art and Ecology course. Although that approach was unsuccessful, BSU itself organised two symposia on the subject, agreed to house CCANW’s former library and gave grants towards the cost of this Online Archive.
Image: Corsham Court is in private ownership but open to visitors. It has a notable art collection and lies in a park designed by Capability Brown.
In October 2017 Clive met with Kate Rigby, Director of the Research Centre for Environmental Humanities (RCEH) at BSU, to explore ways of working together. This was followed up in the following month when Clive and Richard Povall met with Kate and Owain Jones. With the MA Art and Ecology course being abandoned by Schumacher College in May 2017, we raised the idea of it being delivered at BSU, also that Clive’s library of art and ecology books be donated there.
In December 2018 BSU paid for Ben Parry, Leader of the MA Curatorial Practice course, to join Clive and Richard in Venice to attend the Science Walden presentation and a meeting of WAMU-NET. Discussions continued into 2019. BSU paid researcher Patricia Brien to catalogue the books and to agree which would be accepted by the library, and Clive gave a talk Nature to the Power of Art in March 2019. A student from Media Communication helped to develop our press and media database, and a symposium An Uncertain Forecast was organised by Ben at BSU in June 2019.
At the start of 2020, having written a successful application to ACE to support the exhibition and publication, Clive assisted in a personal capacity with the showing of an exhibition of the work of John Furnival (a tutor for many years at the former Bath Academy of Art) at BSU’s new Locksbrook campus.
Opening of John Furnival exhibition. Photo Clive Adams
In May 2021, a second symposium Alternatives to Crisis: Campus for Climate Action was organised by Ben at BSU, and Clive mentored a student from the BA Contemporary Arts Practice course under their MentorMe scheme.
In the same year BSU gave a grant of £1,500 to assist Clive and former CCANW staff with the preparation of this comprehensive Online Archive, and in 2024 gave a further £420 to fund a ‘Search’ facility. I am extremely grateful for the support of Professor John Strachan, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research and Enterprise), and Kate Rigby and Samantha Walton, past and present Directors of the RCEH.
Several hundred art and ecology books and catalogues from the original CCANW collection were gifted by Clive, catalogued and transferred to BSU’s Corsham Court in 2024 with the help of Ben Parry and Richard Taylor, Deputy Head of Library Services (Digital & Research).
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