Name: Mark Boyden
Course: MA in Art, Psyche and the Creative Imagination
Thrilled by life and the natural world, I’ve enjoyed a long career in Environmental Education & Activism (https://streamscapes.ie/), working with communities throughout Ireland and abroad to identify and refine methodologies aimed at achieving greater human awareness of, and integration with, nature. The TUS MA in ‘Art, Psyche, and the Creative Imagination’ provided me with a supported reflective space to consider the personal and societal origins and implications of my vocation, and assisted me in envisioning future possibilities for this work. With a grounding in Jungian depth psychology, the course further considers our urge towards art, symbol-creation, and meaning-making; for my thesis I was particularly drawn towards Jung’s concept of the Visionary Artist and the disruptor, and of the values which these roles confer upon the wider community. The possibilities of the ‘Arts-Based Research’ component of the MA enabled me to explore my themes through a parallel ceramics apprenticeship which facilitated a deeper divination of the compelling leitmotifs that are calling me. We were blessed with exceptional tutors as well as the rich experience that fellow students brought to our studies. The resulting thesis, ‘The Black Salmon goes her own way…instances of creative aberrancy in symbol, soul, and society’, has been transposed into a monograph and may be viewed or downloaded at: https://streamscapes.ie/blacksalmon/. Finally, I’m probably a bit of a poster boy for ‘lifelong learning’ as I’m in my mid-seventies.