A Collaborative PhD Research Project

PhD candidate Benedetta D’Ettorre is three years into her collaborative PhD research project. Developing concurrently to the Guild Program itself, Benedetta’s research engages with the themes and aims of Guild, Including how the program contributes to the development of sustainable artist-led spaces and their value and impact on the national cultural landscape. This PhD will research how the Guild Programme supports artists and their spaces through learning programmes that focus on; developing innovative operating models, embedding organisations into localities, and work directly with and as decision/policy-makers.

This opportunity represents an exciting opportunity for East Street Arts to continue developing its existing collaborative doctoral partnerships model, this time with a direct focus on the projects East Street Arts initiates and delivers. Leading to a deeper understanding of how academic research and organisational project planning/delivery can coalesce to strengthen each other’s outputs. This model is one East Street Arts would like to continue developing to support growth throughout the artist-led sector by ensuring the sector is recognised and researched within academic frameworks.

Benedetta’s Research interests are:

• Artist-run spaces and their impacts on the urban context
• Alternative business models for arts organisation
• The role of the audiences’ active participation in managing arts organisations
• Sustainability and sus

To find out more about Benedetta’s curation in the sector: https://www.antoniabeard.com/rca-18

To listen to Benedetta talk more about her research alongside other collaborators:

https://www.rca.ac.uk/students/benedetta-dettorre/

In 2020, she was awarded ESRC Impact Acceleration funding for a placement to study how arts organisations can support community resilient responses after environmental disasters. Benedetta is engaged in teaching at the University and has been accredited Associate Fellowship by the HEA, outside of academia she writes on contemporary art and works as a freelance curator.