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I consider professional practice, teaching, and research to be equal and interrelated facets of my creativity: The experience and expertise gained from involvement in professional practice generates essential credibility for teaching, and I'm pleased to see that the importance of the practitioner is evident in the University's new mission statement. The enthusiasm for one's own work is transmitted to students through teaching. As versatile and resourceful practitioners, issues arising from both professional practice and teaching can be explored and resolved by research.
Map used for planning this lecture                     Photograph: Stuart Johnstone
For me these three activities go on simultaneously, or phase in and out at different times. The spaces in between them - the interfaces - are the most challenging and raise the most difficult questions:
How can an artist best engage with education, and vice versa? How can a student best learn from a practitioner? How should a practitioner develop teaching strategies? How can research explore and advance our teaching and learning in Art & Design? Why should our discipline engage in formal research for higher degrees? How can practitioners engage in meaningful research? How can research help us to explore and advance our practices?
These are some of the questions I have been trying to answer for the last twenty years, and although they may be insoluble with limited resources, in attempting them 'the search for iron has sometimes led to gold'.

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