The CAW PGR “Phestive Social” at The Waste House – 12th December 2025

by Jennifer Jones

 

CAW Postgraduate Researchers were invited to celebrate the season together and reflect on the progress of their PhD through the medium of the following “Phestive” activities:

  • ‘Lucky Dip Academic Bran Tub’
  • ‘Stationery Tombola’
  • ‘Self-Reflective Seasonal Cardmaking’

 

Initial feedback to inquiry via the CAW WhatsApp group re: CAW PGR activities included questions about:

 

  • Impact in the arts and exhibition context
  • Creating more activity amongst the CAW PGRs
  • Rewilding

 

The CAW PGRs began by delving into the Academic Bran Tub: an archaic vessel they’d never heard of. It held cut-up, handwritten PhD notes, from which they plucked out “golden prompts” (cards backed by the sweet wrappers of Werthers Originals) to answer questions and try out practice-based research techniques such as ‘the trigger method’. (Skains, 2024). This was mind mapping of a different order: the only rules being PhD exploration within the visual metaphor of a Phestive card to the self.

 

With the question of “Impact” on our minds, we spoke of exhibitions… tainted by the commercial. What emerged through the cardmaking was the PhD as a fairy tale, conjuring visual metaphors for the PhD experience.

 

A piece of art comprised of various bits of red, white, pink, and light green paper. It's reminiscent of Santa Claus.

Santa as Stranger

Here’s a portrait of the stranger Santa, totally unfamiliar to Chinese CAW PGR’s, one who portrayed him as ‘cute’.

 

A blue scrapbook with a cutout of santa claus and various questions. Q: When was the last time you checked in with your RATIONALE!!! Q. WHat's the biggest problem you face in your PhD? Q. Do you post your PhD lists where you can see them? Where?!

When did you last read your rationale?

On another page he’s seen looking perplexed, with a question looming over his head:  He reads his scroll with his sack of PhD ideas-baggage behind him. Meaning is chased across pages within the card, making it zine-like: with folds, ribbons, red rick-rack and bows bringing warmth, energy and hearty joy.

 

A homemade Christmas card made of various other christmas card cutouts and bits of material. It reads 'Season's Greetings'. A large Christmas tree cutout is on the front.

What is your archive?

This response produced play with 3d folded effects that brought a stark graphic black and white scene of a conifer into the bright colours of a homely feeling.

 

Various cartoon gingerbread houses on paper cut out and spread across a table. The background is a gameboard of 'rooms' and a piece of art made up of coloured flowers.

Who are three people you talk about your PhD to?

The windows of cards open onto the process of the PhD. A map, a layout …maybe of a gallery?  Of the PhD? Of mind? Process? It’s the multivalent properties of visual imagery that allows for creative communication about a subject – and enhances and reaches the (unconscious, affective) parts in a different way to speaking and words. Cut out images were sprinkled across the card to show meetings with friends in coffee shops: calendars, clocks… the clockmaker… Cinderella having to be home by midnight…

 

A homemade card with various things stuck to the front; an illustrated medieval building, an eel, some small birds, a Werther's Original wrapper. An illustrated eel is at the front, with the caption 'My PhD is slippery...'

What’s the first thing you’ll do for your PhD in 2026?

The high walled edifice of the PhD appears impenetrable like Rapunzel’s castle… the eel: her hair or a snake with no ladder. An eel’s u-turn contains unknowing…the slipperiness of procrastination… This allowed for a discussion with self: “I don’t like planning” / “I can’t plan” / “I’m going to find out why I don’t like planning” …became “I will plan” and “Look!  here’s a readymade calendar for 2026 I ‘won’ in the Phestive Stationery Tombola!”

A person with pink sleeves reaching into a cardboard tube held by someone else.

Stationery Tombola

The ‘prizes’ were items from the everyday world of the researcher. A: second-hand hole punch from the Open Market’s Freegle shop; handwarmers for Tiny Tim or a frugal student. Discussions followed about the merits of physical stationery items… thin strips of colourful transparent highlighter paper for when you can’t underline in books…rendering ideas clearer and easier to find.

 

Two people holding a chain of colourful paper links.

Padlock!

Stars, asterisks and arrows point the way to a hastily scribbled self-portrait of one new PhD researcher with the journey ahead of her, her hair curling, stretching outwards in “confusionality”.  In response to background chat about ‘Padlet’, she began to create a visual version: “Padlock!” Paper chains with links of varying sizes led in different directions.

 

Two hands holding a blue ring of paper with gold writing, which reads 'Peace on Earth'

Peace on Earth

We linked our own reflective ‘chain making’ process, bringing us all together. Heidegger’s name appears inside one link, with a reference to Barad: “halfway around the world”. “Peace on Earth” appeared on another chain, taken from a card.

A piece of white card with the word 'IMPACT' written on it, covered in bits of green paper in the shape of U, and a gold sparkly bobble.

Impact

Being practice-based art PhD researchers, we were speaking the same visual language differently, individually. We appreciated the space to meet visually with opportunities to respond to and bounce visual ideas off one another in a chaotic free flow of visual information. Signifying in unexpected, pleasing ways: we captured affective dimensions of possibilities and supported one another with jumping-off points for further ideas, that lead endlessly to forms of knowledge.

 

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