Facilitator biography

John McCann is a two-time Scotsman Fringe First Award winning playwright, performer, community theatre artist and director who lives in Tayport, Fife. Since May 2018 John has hosted Dundee’s only playwriting scratch night: SCRIEVE. SCRIEVE contributed to Cooper Gallery DJCAD’s 12 Hour Non-State Parade | International Symposium (2019) and Ambiguous Becoming (2020). John’s recent productions include COME OUT FROM AMONG THEM, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, (Ambergris); DUPed (Ambergris); SPOILING (Traverse Theatre); FAMLA (Tinderbox Theatre Company); DANCING AT THE DISCO AT THE END OF THE WORLD (Replay Theatre Company).

Funding support

The Ignorant Art School at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland and Henry Moore Foundation.

Speakers' biographies

Felicity Allen is an artist, educator, and writer working across the studio, the social and the institutional. Recent work includes her sixth series of Dialogic Portraits with the research project People Like You: Contemporary Figures of Personalisation; and developing the concept of the Disoeuvre, which questions the dominant concept of the artist’s oeuvre as progressive and studio-based (for instance in The Disoeuvre, Ma Bibliothèque, 2019). She is the editor of Education (Documents of Contemporary Art, Whitechapel/MIT, 2011) and led the public engagement programmes in the Hayward Gallery and Tate Britain (1999-2010). A founder member of the Women's Art Library, Allen has held lecturing positions at various leading art schools and was a guest scholar at the Getty Research Institute (2011-2012). felicityallen.co.uk

Ruth Ewan is an internationally celebrated artist whose research-led and critically engaged practice has drawn attention within contemporary art and socio-political history. Engaging with the circulation of radical ideas and social movements, her work explores the processes by which ideas take form and spread from individuals to society.

Ewan’s work is recognised internationally and she has shown extensively at major venues including; Edinburgh Art Festival (2018 & 2020); Pitzhanger Gallery (2020); Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2019); CAPC, Bordeux (2019); Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris (2019); Victoria and Albert Museum (2018); 32nd São Paulo Biennial (2016); Camden Arts Centre, London (2015); Tate Britain (2009 & 2014); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Glasgow International (2012); Dundee Contemporary Arts and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla (2011); The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk (2010); the New Museum, New York (2009). She has realised projects for The High Line, New York (2019); Glasgow Women’s Library (2018); Create, London (2012); Art on the Underground (2011); Frieze Projects (2009) and Artangel (2007&2013). In 2016 she was awarded the Arts Foundation Yoma Sasburg Award for Art in Urban Space. ruthewan.com

Image credit

Photography by Sarah Smart

Funding support

The Ignorant Art School at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland and the Henry Moore Foundation.