20 March 2009

University events to celebrate creativity

Photo opportunities:

• Cynthia Rogerson will be at Craigie High at 12noon.
• Experimental projects at College Hall, University of Dundee from 2-5pm.
• Drinks reception and readings at D’arcy Thompson Museum from 5pm onwards.

Award-wining author Cynthia Rogerson will visit Craigie High School on Monday as part of a day of events promoting creative writing organised by the University of Dundee.

A group of 5th and 6th Year pupils will take part in a fiction workshop, with Cynthia helping them to hone their story-writing skills ahead of their Highers in May.

The Craigie High session will be followed by an afternoon of experimental creativity projects at College Hall on the University's main campus, inspired by the pioneering programmes run Black Mountain College in the US during the 1950s.

Black Mountain was a liberal arts college that took an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to education. Painters, literature students and film-makers will combine to create a work that is an amalgam of text, film and art.

Drawing on the cutting-edge creativity of the University’s students, the session will honour Black Mountain’s progressive education approach, and members of the public are invited to come along and witness - or even take part in - the process.

Artist Merran Gunn will gift some of her paintings to the University during the event, which will be filmed by Jonathan Robertson from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.

A drinks reception will be held at the D’Arcy Thomson Museum at 5pm, followed by readings to celebrate the life and work of the biologist, mathematician and writer whose name the museum bears.

D'Arcy Thompson was the first Chair of Biology at what was then University College Dundee in 1885, and his research into the mathematical principles of nature would culminate in 1917 in the publication of his landmark book On Growth & Form.

The reception and readings mark the beginning of a number of events taking place this year celebrating his work with Dundee.

For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk