The Creative Art Journey: An artist facilitator's autoethnographic exploration of the specificities of place, culture, and tradition through workshop-led extra-curricular art learning in Wales.

Beynon, Gwenllian (2025) The Creative Art Journey: An artist facilitator's autoethnographic exploration of the specificities of place, culture, and tradition through workshop-led extra-curricular art learning in Wales. Doctoral thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

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Abstract

The thesis explores the dynamic between the artist as facilitator and participants in extracurricular art workshops. A personal perspective examines whether the Welsh context allows for more creative freedom in undertaking art workshops. The thesis emphasises the role of the artist facilitator in autoethnographic remembering the collaboration with participants in art processes and their benefits. Exploring teaching and learning both from history and contemporary practices forms a foundation from which to question the learning processes of the art workshop. Exploring language and culture focusses on the importance of these to Wales and the inclusion of these in art workshops. This research discovers that creative freedom within the learning AND teaching environment is the key process in a two-way collaboration. The theoretical framework underpinning this research utilises a mixed method qualitative approach, including focusing on the self in autoethnography, art making in practice-based research, place in psychogeography and past art workshops in reflective case studies. This is undertaken through personal narratives, making new art, and remembering. Art, culture, language, and the regional positioning of the workshop are important and reveal a vitality where the facilitator and participants develop new skills, information, a collaborative creative memory, and a changed perspective. Art both in the imagination and as artefacts, help to embed information from the past in the present and into the future. The workshop is fleeting but the impact lasts. The research demonstrates the need to examine the position of facilitator and participants in art workshops in Wales with a focus on the liberation of creativity and imagination. This thesis is presented in English, but the research process has been undertaken bilingually, and some use of Welsh is presented alongside English interpretations.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Art, Creative, Wales, Education, Welsh language, Dysgu,
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races L Education > LC Special aspects of education N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general
Divisions:	Theses and Dissertations > Doctoral Theses
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.82227/repository.uwtsd.ac.uk.00004069
Depositing User:	Gwenllian Beynon
Date Deposited:	07 Jan 2026 14:17
Last Modified:	07 Jan 2026 14:37
URI:	https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/4069

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