Today King’s launches a new artist in residence programme that will support academics and researchers to establish new artist residencies across the university. King’s artists has been designed to provoke debate around the role that artistic practice can play within Higher Education while showcasing the broad range of existing and past residencies hosted at King’s.

As part of the initiative, King’s will establish four innovative residencies that combine the work of its researchers with an individual’s artistic practice to benefit both parties and to support research and learning across the university.

Rolling support of up to £5,000 will be provided to the King’s artist projects during the 2016/17 and 2017/18 academic years to support ‘new and existing collaborations between an area of research at King’s and an artist’. The support will be provided to two residencies in Arts and Sciences and two residencies in the Medical Faculties.

The King’s artist programme is open to all academics across King’s and, as well as financial support, the Cultural Programming Team at King’s will provide guidance, advice and a practical toolkit to enable residencies to achieve positive research and learning outcomes for the faculty’s staff and students.

A series of 29 detailed artist in residence case studies have been published on the university’s website to showcase the broad range of existing or recent King’s artist residences and to inspire those thinking of hosting an artist in their faculty. The case studies examine the impact of the residencies both on creative practice and on the work of the university and bring together, for the first time, the wealth of artistic practice, insight and learning outcomes that King’s has fostered through artist residencies.

Examples include artist and designer Paddy Hartley’s 14 year relationship with the King’s Dental Institute. Works developed by Paddy and Ian include Bioglass Implants and Face Corsets, which examine modern cultural attitudes to fashion and beauty and resulted in the development of new techniques to produce patient-specific implants for the repair of bone injury and defects in the face.

Another case study details the work of anatomical modeller and sculptor Eleanor Crook, who has been an artist in residence at the Gordon Museum at King’s since 2007. Eleanor’s expressive work continues the tradition of Victorian anatomical sculptor Joseph Towne to create anatomically and surgically accurate sculptural works that bridge art and science. Her work is used to help train medical, dental and biomedical students at King’s and has been exhibited in medical museums across the world.