Placemaking - (New Materialisms) by Tara Page (Paperback)

About the Book

Through embodied and material practice research, underpinned with theories of new materialism, Tara Page shows how our ways of knowing, making and learning place are entangled with embodied and material pedagogies.

Book Synopsis

Where are you from? This question often refers to someone's birthplace, childhood home or a place that holds significance. The location that is offered in response to this question is more than a means of orientation; it is a lived place that has complex meanings that identify, are learned and made. Yet, the significance of place to our lives is often overlooked. It is key to understanding who we are and how we are, both individually and collectively.
Through embodied and material practice research, underpinned with theories of new materialism, Tara Page enables us to learn and understand how our ways of knowing, making and learning place are entangled with embodied and material pedagogies. She shows how our bodily engagements in and with the material world are intra-actions of the who, with the where.
The creative and multi-dimensional approach of this book, with links to photographs-creative practices to be read with the text, brings together the global with the local, practice with theory and demonstrates the complex pedagogy between bodies, places and everyday social relations of power. Page reveals that placemaking is the very experiential fact of our existence but is also a necessary one.

From the Back Cover

Who and how you are is entangled with where you are Where are you from? This question often refers to someone's birthplace, childhood home or a place that holds significance. The location that is offered in response to this question is more than a means of orientation; it is a lived place that has complex meanings that identify, are learned and made. Yet, the significance of place to our lives is often overlooked. It is key to understanding who we are and how we are, both individually and collectively. Through embodied and material practice research, underpinned with theories of new materialism, Tara Page enables us to learn and understand how our ways of knowing, making and learning place are entangled with embodied and material pedagogies. She shows how our bodily engagements in and with the material world are intra-actions of the who, with the where. The creative and multi-dimensional approach of this book, with links to photographs-creative practices to be read with the text, brings together the global with the local, practice with theory and demonstrates the complex pedagogy between bodies, places and everyday social relations of power. Page reveals that placemaking is the very experiential fact of our existence but, is also a necessary one. Tara Page is an artist, researcher, teacher and Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Review Quotes

Placemaking is a meditation on the situated ethics of inhabiting place and space. It reveals that we cannot take for granted our seamless movement in the world. Being-in-the-world requires attentive responsiveness; that is, 'to take care and to be 'with' care.' This is a work of pedagogy for NOW.--Barb Bolt, University of Melbourne

This book is a vital contribution to learning how placemaking practices and pedagogies matter not only in who we become and how we know the world, but also in being with the world and making the world-place 'with' care.--Shiva Zarabadi "MATTER"

About the Author

Tara Page is an artist, researcher, teacher and Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is co-editor of Arts, Pedagogy and Cultural Resistance: New Materialisms (RLI, 2015). She is co-author of Teaching Through Contemporary Art: Innovative Practices in the Classroom (Tate Publishing, 2008).

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