Professor David Birks recently (re)joined the School of Management as Honorary Professor in our Marketing, Business and Society Division. Here, he explains how his own art studies have fed back into his thinking about management education.
“You’ll be back” – the words of Deputy Dean Professor Philip Powell rang in my ears as I left the School of Management in 2004. After 15 years at Bath, I’d taken a post at the University of Southampton to establish their new MSc Marketing Analytics course.
My new home was close to the ailing Winchester School of Art, a recent University of Southampton acquisition. Representing the University at a recruitment fair in Taiwan, I fielded enquiries about a nascent MA Design Management degree. This led to the development of a portfolio of design-led management degrees at the School of Art.
As a result, I moved to the alien academic world of art and design in 2008, starting with 30 students. Last year, these management programmes recruited 1,500 students – no longer an ailing prospect!
I grew in ways I could have never conceived by being immersed into the ways of teaching, researching and connecting to industry through the mindset of artists and designers. This gave me the skill set to move onto a new venture.
Across the city, the new University of Winchester was a values-led institution with great entrepreneurial zeal. I became their Dean of Business, Law and Sport.
In the role, I developed a strong link with the UN’s Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative – developing pioneering teaching and research projects that in 2016 led Winchester to become one of 32 PRME Global Champions.
In 2016 I retired after a total of 32 years spent at the Universities of Salford, Strathclyde, Bath, Southampton and Winchester.
Picking up printing
Going back to my Stoke-on-Trent roots and remembering working with clay at primary school, I tried to join a pottery evening class. Alas, with the success of The Great Pottery Throwdown on TV, gaining a place was more difficult than grabbing a ticket for Glastonbury.
I joined the printmaking class as consolation and loved it. I wanted to learn more about the art of printing but also wanted to explore my passion of ‘crafts’ – the world of crafters, their materials, their tools, their making.
I followed the course with evening classes in drawing and then enrolled onto a University of Arts London Foundation Programme in Art and Design – adding to my world of printing and drawing by exploring the joys of photography, sculpture and painting.
To develop as an artist and to use my research training, I returned to Winchester School of Art in 2022, this time as a MA Fine Art student. In my class of 11 students, I became the class representative, majored in sculpture and earned a distinction.
And now, after 20 years, just as predicted by Professor Philip Powell, I am back. In May 2024, I was invited by Professor Phil Tomlinson to deliver a Centre for Governance Regulation & Industrial Strategy seminar – ‘The Art of Conducting Business Research’ – including examples and explanations of my work.
My aim was to argue that art and design making, thinking and research have much to offer to research and teaching agendas in management schools.
My use of action research and the possibilities of grounded theory in making art have resonated with a number of the School’s researchers, and I have already followed up with some to share ideas on visual data analysis and curation.
Theory and practice
I could see the possibilities of my work having value to the School, and the School simultaneously offering ideas and support to my development as an artist. Shortly after the seminar, I applied for a practice-based PhD in Sculpture at Winchester School of Art. My title is ‘Thinking Hands: An Exploration of Touch in the Art and Craft of Sculpting a Home’.
I’m delighted to be working with Professor Sarah Glozer and the Marketing, Business and Society Division – and playing any part in the School’s PRME journey will be very rewarding.
Having once been Director of Studies for Postgraduate Research in the School, I’m happy that my new thinking and practice can add to my old world of complex surveys and multivariate data analyses – connections to be explored, approaches to be shared.
I know how healing and fulfilling the making of art can be and look forward to working with individuals or groups on projects or in delivering workshops.
Art, design and curation can help enormously in sharing and amplifying the findings, values and impact of any form of research – there are multi- and interdisciplinary connections to be explored.
Connecting to the School of Management as Honorary Professor offers me a unique way of being an artist. I’m happy to share that journey with others who recognise the joys that art can bring to their work and life.
All images courtesy of David Birks. From top: 'Work Without Art Is Brutality' photo collage; 'Show Home' sculpture; 'Smokey Pots' screen-printed wallpaper.
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