We invite expressions of interest to take part in our interdisciplinary workshop on breathing. We have 9 slots available for short talks, in the pecha kucha style (approximately 5 minutes), broadly connected to the three strands of the workshop: breath practice, voice exercise, and literary engagement.

The workshop will bring together academics and artists interested in breath practices, breathing disorders, and creative engagement with breath. Through the three distinct breath approaches, we will explore our personal and cultural relationships with breath, breathlessness, and breathing. Following each of the participatory opening practices, there will be short presentations by participants on their interest in breath, which may be personal, creative, intellectual, health-related, or a mixture.

We invite those who are interested in participating to send us an expression of interest, with a 150-word summary of your interest in breath and area of expertise, and which strand your work would fit most closely with.

In our selection process, we will aim to include a variety of expertise, experience, and disciplinary areas, as well as taking into account various career stages, ensuring we include a significant number of early career researchers and practitioners. We also aim for inclusion and diversity in demography. Given the Glasgow context, we will give a certain number of spaces to those whose work and lives are predominantly based in Scotland, therefore building the specific ‘Scottish’ dimension of the network. However, the event is not restricted to Glasgow/Scotland residents.

We are able to provide some remuneration and help with travel costs for self-employed practitioners, and/or unfunded early career researchers (including PhD students). Please note there is a limited budget for this.

We seek to accommodate all access and participatory needs: if you have any queries or concerns about what exactly the workshop entails, please get in touch.

Please send expressions of interest by Monday 20th March 2023 to Dr Marie Allitt marie.allitt@ed.ac.uk. Please include:
 Maximum 150 word summary of your work and interests
 Which strand (breath, voice, or literary) you most closely align with
 Relevant employment and/or career stage information
 Request for remuneration/expenses
 Any access requirements

Network Details and Rationale:

The Scottish Breath Network was launched in 2021, with funding from Creative Scotland and support from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. It is currently managed by Professor Laura Gonzalez. The network aims to connect people in Scotland who have an interest in the breath.

This event will contribute to knowledge around breath practices, raising awareness of cultural and social attitudes to breath and breathlessness. Attention to breath has been raised in recent years due to the respiratory aspect of Covid-19, where breathlessness has been made particularly visible and palpable. Our workshop, and successive connections, will build upon this awareness, and examine how our attitudes have been influenced by such recent events. Arguably, we are all paying attention to breathing in different ways to before, and so this may be a valuable time in which to draw out the impact of breath on society. Equally prevalent and growing in significance for society is breath, protest, and human rights. The Black Lives Matter movement has grown rapidly in recent years, with the memorably tragic ‘I can’t breathe’ becoming a symbol of violence, brutality, and oppression.

We hope that this event, and subsequent expansion of the Network, will develop interdisciplinary collaboration, in particular bringing together those with expertise in breath practices with artists and academics. We believe there is the potential for rich, powerful collaboration by bringing artists and creative practitioners together with academics to develop further public engagement, impact, and publications, contributing to cultural understandings of breath.

If you have any queries, please contact Dr Marie Allitt (marie.allitt@ed.ac.uk) or Professor Laura Gonzalez (l.gonzalez@rcs.ac.uk).