Tara explores making and learning with new materialist theories using practice and empirical methods and methodologies.
I am a researcher, artist, pedagogue and Professor of Pedagogy and Praxis. I explore the praxis entanglements of making and learning underpinned with new materialist theories using empirical, embodied and material practice research methods and methodologies. I conceive pedagogy as an open, continuously made and remade praxis that is embodied, emplaced, material, generative, emancipatory, enabling social and educational change.
Through and with practice (artistic and pedagogic) research, I bring creative philosophy together with practice and theory, advancing new ways of understanding the cultural politics of making objects and events and how materials, processes, pedagogies and theory can enable the questioning and disruption of many forms of dominance that exist in our society.
I am leading the Goldsmiths partnership with Arts Council England for the national delivery of the learning programme for the Artsmark Award.
Academic qualifications
PhD. Goldsmiths University of London. UK. 2012
MEd (Research). Queensland University of Technology. AUS. 2000
PGDip (Secondary). Queensland University of Technology. AUS. 1995
BA Visual Arts. Queensland University of Technology. AUS. 1994. 1994
Teaching and supervision
I contribute to the Goldsmiths Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, the MA Designing Education(MADE), the MA Arts and Learning (MAAL), Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE: Art and Design- Secondary-Primary), and the BA Education (BAE) programmes. I was also a teaching fellow at ArtEZ, Netherlands from 2016-2019.
I supervise and examine PhDs in the areas of practice research and empirical research, including:
Performance and aesthetics
Bodies and the sensory- embodiment
Learning communities
Placemaking and belonging
Pedagogy in formal and informal contexts
Critical and creative pedagogies
Materiality of pedagogy
My practice research, artistic-pedagogic, examines the importance of ‘where’ to who we are and how we are and also how the presence and absence of matter teaches us (Page, 2021, 2020; 2020; 2019; 2014; 2015 with Johnston and Sayers). I conceive pedagogy as an open, continuously made and remade praxis that is embodied, placed, material, generative, emancipatory, caring and enables social and educational change (Page, 2019).
Bringing together creative philosophy with practice and theory, individually and collaboratively, my research assemblages advance new ways of understanding the cultural politics of making, objects and events and how materials, processes, pedagogies and theory can enable the questioning and disruption of many forms of dominance that exist in our society (with Hickey-Moody (2015); with Coleman and Palmer (2019).
Featured publications
2021:
bruise. body with bar [image-text] This assemblage is an exploration of the intra-actions of body with the materials of lifting (weight and power) and how we learn with and are taught by materials, an embodied and material pedagogy.
2020:
Placemaking. A new materialist theory of pedagogy [book] Through embodied and arts practice, underpinned with theories of new materialism, this sole-authored monograph presents a ‘new’ new materialist theory of pedagogy that demonstrates the complex pedagog
2018:
Teaching and Learning with Matter This paper brings new materialism and critical pedagogies into conversation with one another. This work offers a paradigm shift in the framing of teaching and learning.
2015:
Arts, Pedagogy and Cultural Resistance: New Materialisms This edited collection brings to the fore a singular, new materialist theory of resistance, uniquely conceptualising matter's transformative capacities as pedagogical.
Hickey Moody, Anna and Page, Tara. 2015. Making Matter Matter. In: Anna Hickey Moody and Tara Page, eds. Arts, Pedagogy and Cultural Resistance: New Materialisms. London: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 1-20. ISBN 9781783484867
Goldsmiths, University of London is the new national delivery partner for Arts Council England’s Artsmark award. This partnership brings Goldsmiths’ expertise as a leader in teacher training, creativity, arts and culture to Artsmark: the only creative quality standard for schools and education settings, which, for over 20 years, has helped schools to deliver better creative and cultural education.
I am leading the Goldsmiths team to deliver a revised programme that will help schools and other learning settings embed culture and creativity in their work and support the Arts Council in shaping creative and cultural education across England.
Artsmark currently works with nearly 4,000 schools nationwide, providing teacher training, resources to help schools develop their arts curricula, and support and guidance from organisations in the professional cultural sector.
2019-2023 I was the Academic Director of International Development and Academic Partnerships (IDAP). I was responsible for establishing and managing Goldsmiths' domestic and transnational education (TNE) academic partnerships including validation, franchise, dual/joint degrees and partner-supported delivery of Goldsmiths' degree programmes.
I examine, assess and review:
Grant applications (Research Council of KU Leuven-Belgium and the Austrian Science Fund- 'Richter-PEEK- for arts-based research and the Swiss National Science Foundation SPARK funding scheme- to develop and test novel and unconventional scientific approaches, methods, theories and ideas)
Academic programmes (Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam)
PhD submissions (Europe, UK, Australia)
Articles (MATTER: Journal of New Materialist Research; Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Pedagogy, Culture and Society; MAI: Feminism & Visual Cultures and Social Sciences, Arts, European Journal of Philosophy in Arts Education) and
Monograph manuscripts and proposals (Routledge, Edinburgh University Press)