StACCS Welcomes New ‘Creatively’ Theme Lead
StACCS is delighted to announce Dr Ruth Ezra, Lecturer in the School of Art History as the lead for our ‘Creatively’ theme.
This theme will consider new, imaginative approaches to understanding sustainability. Our members explore and harness the power of art, performance, and imagination as communicative tools for scientific research. The aim is to tell new stories which enable scientific perspectives to effect change through politics and cultural media.
Ruthie is a specialist in early modern art history and has published on waste and wastework in early modernity. Building on this research, she is the PI of a major impact project, Net-Zero Press: Stories from the Workshop Floor, that brings community stakeholders, educators, and practitioners across the printmaking landscape of Scotland together to “start from trash.” Tracing waste flows in print shops and telling the stories of printmaking materials from extraction to extinction, we act on these data to propose strategies for making studio spaces (from classrooms to open-access workshops) less toxic and more sustainable. At StACCS, Ruthie will grow the Net-Zero Press network and widen its purview to include arts beyond print, such as ceramics.
Planned activities for 2026–27 include:
- Net-Zero Press: Third and Fourth Editions. Practitioner-led workshops to be held in collaboration with print studios in Glasgow and Aberdeen, strengthening community relationships and continuing the conversations of the First Edition (October 2025, Dundee Contemporary Art) and Second Edition (March 2026, Edinburgh Printmakers).
- StACCS x @79 Makerspace Pop-ups. Hands-on, artist-led workshops jointly organized with the School of Art History’s @79 Makerspace, with a focus on sustainable practices in the arts and ecological approaches to art history.
- New VIP: Visualizing Waste. Brainstorming, development, and submission of a new, interdisciplinary Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) module on Visualizing Waste.
Under Ruthie’s leadership, the ‘Creatively’ theme will cultivate relationships between the arts, academic research, university staff, and the wider community, bringing the voices of local and global artists to bear on the study of environmental challenges today.