“…This is less the case in relation to what we might term professional services. However, Beegan and Atkinson (2008) make similar claims on the importance of the availability of low cost technologies for changes within the professional practices of design. Not only this, but they seek to give a positive reading of some of the negative synonyms of amateurism.…”
Section: Dynamics Of Professionalism and Amateurismmentioning
confidence: 90%
“…Thus my own dabbling in research from different subject areas in writing this article. The Beegan and Atkinson (2008) study points to some of the different design practices engaged in by amateurs and how these can act as models for revised professional practice. In design work, they suggest that the availability of new technologies have enabled amateurs to play a range of roles that do not emulate but serve Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 7 as critiques of and additions to professional practice.…”
Section: Dynamics Of Professionalism and Amateurismmentioning
Around the globe a great emphasis has been placed upon improving public service delivery by reforming and enhancing professionalism. The impact and significance of the associated changes have been much debated with a focus on issues of de- and re-professionalisation, and demarcations of expertise and work. Professionals and professionalism remain the central focus while service users and non-professionals still tend to be positioned as ‘other': their roles tending to be taken into account, but as additional rather than essential to service provision. By contrast, this article sets out a modest proposal to consider the relational configurations of actors involved in public services drawing upon certain dynamics of amateurism. This article suggests that the dynamics of doing something ‘for the love of it', supported by the ‘passion to learn' of autodidactism, provide the basis for rethinking some of the assumptions made and issues faced when addressing the challenges of the public services. Drawing upon historical and contemporary illustrations of the contributions of amateurism to professional practice, this article argues for the need to explore possibilities beyond existing binary of professional-amateur
“…This is less the case in relation to what we might term professional services. However, Beegan and Atkinson (2008) make similar claims on the importance of the availability of low cost technologies for changes within the professional practices of design. Not only this, but they seek to give a positive reading of some of the negative synonyms of amateurism.…”
Section: Dynamics Of Professionalism and Amateurismmentioning
confidence: 90%
“…Thus my own dabbling in research from different subject areas in writing this article. The Beegan and Atkinson (2008) study points to some of the different design practices engaged in by amateurs and how these can act as models for revised professional practice. In design work, they suggest that the availability of new technologies have enabled amateurs to play a range of roles that do not emulate but serve Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 7 as critiques of and additions to professional practice.…”
Section: Dynamics Of Professionalism and Amateurismmentioning
Around the globe a great emphasis has been placed upon improving public service delivery by reforming and enhancing professionalism. The impact and significance of the associated changes have been much debated with a focus on issues of de- and re-professionalisation, and demarcations of expertise and work. Professionals and professionalism remain the central focus while service users and non-professionals still tend to be positioned as ‘other': their roles tending to be taken into account, but as additional rather than essential to service provision. By contrast, this article sets out a modest proposal to consider the relational configurations of actors involved in public services drawing upon certain dynamics of amateurism. This article suggests that the dynamics of doing something ‘for the love of it', supported by the ‘passion to learn' of autodidactism, provide the basis for rethinking some of the assumptions made and issues faced when addressing the challenges of the public services. Drawing upon historical and contemporary illustrations of the contributions of amateurism to professional practice, this article argues for the need to explore possibilities beyond existing binary of professional-amateur
“…Within the field of design history, as early as 1992, Philip Pacey (1992) wrote an insightful article warning of the potential limitations on the discipline's area of study if it were to continue to focus solely on "professional" design activity, arguing that critical analysis of the work of non-professional designers was important; and in 2000, Judy Attfield's book Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life highlighted the topic as being worthy of serious academic attention for design history. Later, in special issues of the Journal of Design History, I addressed the diverse nature of such amateur activity and located it in relation to professional design practice (Atkinson 2006;Beegan and Atkinson 2008). In The Design of Everyday Life, Elizabeth Shove, Matthew Watson, Martin Hand, and Jack Ingram examine DIY as the consumption of craft, a manifestation of "the practicalities and processes of effecting change" (Shove et al 2007, 42).…”
Section: Do-it-yourself As An Area Of Studymentioning
The cigar box guitar has a long history in the USA, where it formed part of the culture of traditional blues music and became a popular DIY project. Despite the growth in popularity of the blues in the UK, the penchant for constructing cigar box guitars did not travel with it. This article explores the recent appearance of the instrument and the culture surrounding it in the UK as a particular form of cultural DIY activity combining individual design and production with collective performance, which has in some cases grown far beyond an amateur hobby into a professional business.
“…The first Flemish interior architecture program, originally called “domestic interior art,” is indeed one of the oldest in Europe; our consideration of it below is intended to contribute to the ongoing international debate about the professionalization of the interior discipline as well as to discussions on nomenclature and the complex relationship between professionals and amateurs . As Gerry Beegan and Paul Atkinson observe in their introduction to a thematic issue of the Journal of Design History on the tensions between professionalism and amateurism in design, “Professional practice defines itself by its distance from the unschooled practitioner … At the same time, the professional is often a categorization that the amateur designers reject, as a limitation to their creativity or originality.” This raises three questions: first, does schooling restrict designers; second, do interior architects with a degree design differently; and finally, do interior architects with a degree conform to particular stylistic conventions or ideologies? Through a historically and culturally specific case study, this article will show how different profiles, ranging from schooled interior architects to self‐made interior advisors and interior decorators, enabled practitioners to approach interiors differently and sometimes to design in different ways in Flanders. In the postwar period in Flanders, several categories of practitioners were active in the broad and dispersed fields of interior architecture, interior design, and interior decoration.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Beegan, G. & Atkinson, P. (2008). Professionalism, amateurism and the boundaries of design, Special issue: Ghosts of the profession .…”
In Western countries, the discipline of interior design has struggled to define itself from the beginning. One reason is that designing interiors is a multifaceted, layered, even interdisciplinary process. One has to deal with architectural environments as well as objects, with spaces as well as more ephemeral backdrops. Moreover, because designing interiors is not very different from certain everyday activities, interior professionals want to dissociate their activities from everyday decorating. Nomenclature has played an important role in trying to professionalize. By employing the term of "interior architect," professional practitioners have sought to insist on the distance that separates their work from everyday design practices. However, interior architecture has also wanted to avoid being seen as a subcategory of architecture. As a result, alternative terms have circulated, which have been equally question-begging. By means of a case study of one country's attempt to professionalize the practice of designing interiors, this essay will uncover how professional identities emerged and were labeled in postwar Belgian Flanders. We will show how different profiles, ranging from schooled interior architects to self-made domestic advisors and interior decorators, enabled practitioners to approach interiors differently and sometimes design in different ways. At the same time, we will investigate why the term "Interior architect" was employed by all the profiles of practitioners. The historically and culturally specific case study will be framed against the internationally ongoing process of professionalization. The road toward professionalization in Flanders runs parallel to that in a lot of Western countries. The Flemish case is remarkable, though, in that issues of nomenclature and identity formation were already heavily debated, even taken to court, from the mid-1950s until the mid-1960s. While in North American and Australian educational programs and professional contexts, the gradual adoption of descriptions such as "interior design" and "interior architecture" is of more recent vintage, this process took place in Flanders already in the 1960s. With our historically early case study-the first Flemish interior design program dates back to 1946-we want to contribute to the ongoing international debate about the professionalization of the interior discipline as well as discussions on nomenclature and the complex relationship between professionals and amateurs. Through a historically and culturally specific case study, this article will show how different profiles, ranging from schooled interior architects to self-made interior advisors and interior decorators, enabled practitioners to approach interiors differently and sometimes to design in different ways.
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