'Failure' Surgery (Sara Jones, Christina Williams, Bethany Lamont) (part of doing together 25)

'Failure' Surgery7th April 2025We sometimes gloss over the things that go wrong in our creative practice, research projects and/or life.This was a collective, supportive space to share examples and feelings about our experience of 'failure' and reflect on how this has been a productive part of our process and learning. Whether it's a 'poorly-shot' participatory media project, a pile of rejection letters from a publisher, or a research film that has abandoned its original premise, what can we learn from our perceived 'mistakes'? How can we acknowledge, overcome or rethink the negative associations of 'failure' and move on?doing together 25doing together is a yearly two-day making and sharing practice symposium at Locksbrook Campus, hosted by the Art Research Centre (Bath School of Art, Film and Media) in collaboration with Bath School of Design and the Centre of Cultural and Creative Industries.doing together is a platform to connect staff, students, and the community through making, collaboration and experimentation.Workshops, delivered by staff and PGR students from across the University, share practice-based research methods and a broad range of approaches to practice. doing together is proposed as a generous space to make/do/share and discuss practice with colleagues from a range of different Schools.Throughout the symposium, facilitators – alongside participants – test out ways of doing together in an effort to make their practice-based research explicit, rather than simply describe it.