Back at University: It may not be what you think

The Art School degree shows are a real highlight at De Montfort University and The Manchester Metropolitan University . ?I enjoyed them enormously and would often mutter “I wish I’d gone to Art School” as I was looking around. ?

The fact is, I did. I was about 14 at the time and on Saturday mornings would catch the bus into Harrogate to attend jewellery-making classes at the Art School.? I made a few pieces for my mum and sister, and for myself an articulated metal Womble (Tobermory I think it was) and, more secretively, a penknife. ??Years later I designed some pieces for Dr Samar Betmouni and had them made by renowned jeweller Nicholas Wylde in Bath.

My main creative interest was woodwork, but the school timetable forbade it for budding doctors needing to study “all the sciences”.? To compensate, my mum and dad bought me a coping saw and I was taken shopping for a vice by the indefatigable Grandma Greene (it seems that during the war the Nazi’s were so worried about her ability to “dig for victory” that they dropped a bomb on her vegetable patch). ?

Once at medical school, I set up a small workshop in my study-bedroom and made a few pieces of furniture to sell.? As a junior doctor I lived in a wing of the Nurses Home at Westminster Hospital. ??This address caused a few problems - one company refusing to send me a circular saw because they had misread the address as “nursing home” and thought the item too dangerous for that environment.

Over the years I have made a lot of furniture for our home and for family and friends. I have been to a lot of shows - watching and learning - and tried to emulate the work of James Krenov in particular.? I met the late David Binnington Savage, whose inspirational book The Intelligent Hand I enjoyed reading over the summer.

At work I sought out projects that required me to make things – buildings, teaching aids and bits for microscopes, and, less obviously, managerial structures and processes.? Much of my research had a creative aspect in the sense of developing new ideas and I enjoyed creating new ways of explaining difficult concepts to my students.?

Our two sons, Isaac Greene and Joshua Greene are particularly creative and they have both followed those instincts into work.? I am proud of their refusal to be pigeon-holed into any one narrow area.? They range wherever their ideas take them and don’t really recognise disciplinary boundaries as such.

It’s harder to do that in medicine than it was because of the demise of generalists and the strength of structures that promote individual specialisms.? There are benefits to specialising of course but, without wishing to stoke what I recall from my MBA is a heated debate about the nature of innovation, there also needs to be cross-fertilization of ideas from one area to another – to create new things or find new applications for existing things.? That requires some form of free movement of ideas, experiences, people, facilities and capital within and between departments, institutions and disciplines.

In this regard, universities that can harness the approaches bred in the more overtly creative subjects could be at an advantage.? It isn’t easy.? Outside of specialist institutions there are relatively few creatives in senior leadership positions.? I’m not sure why that should be, perhaps it’s the values placed on specific skills and the infrequency of finding them in supposedly ideal combinations.?

When I was a research fellow in Oxford, I received a very furtive approach from a recruitment agency.? It wasn’t a tap on the shoulder from the security services - although this Panama hat I wore when Samar and I toured Andalusia recently did make me look like a character from a spy novel!

Rather it was a promise of great riches from an un-named investment bank.? It was in the mid 1990s shortly after currency speculators had forced the UK out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.? They felt that the banking sector was short of the skills needed to deal with a similar crisis and thought that the combination found in a “highly numerate medic” might be the solution.? The numeracy part was obvious, and they reasoned that a medic would bring skills in recognising when an emergency had arisen (they used a different phrase) and a willingness to act urgently even if all of the desirable facts weren’t available. ?

I think this is a little different to an academic mindset where there is always another experiment to do, or report to commission, before a decision can be made or action taken.? The situation is perhaps exacerbated by what I see as a relatively poor understanding of finances across the academy and a regrettable acceptance of that position - Universities have suites of mandatory training courses but I have never seen one focussed on understanding the money.? Financial transparency is necessary for colleagues to appreciate, and help address, the challenges that senior teams face in keeping their institutions afloat but it can’t be achieved if people aren’t confident talking about the numbers they have been shown.?

One of the things that drives Isaac and Josh in their pursuit of creative excellence is what Josh described to me as the taste-skill curve.? That’s the arms race between your ability to envisage something tasteful and your skills to make it.? Hopefully, after one improves, and you get over the frustration of a new mismatch, the other is forced to respond positively.?

I had an inkling that I might have reached a respectable position on that curve when a pair of my bedside cabinets were chosen for the gallery section of the prestigious American magazine Fine Woodworking.? I tested the premise by writing a full article, under my official first name of John, about an elm coffer I made for Samar during lockdown.? When Furniture and Cabinet Making magazine accepted it, I felt the same sense of excitement I did when some of the work I did with Adrian Mason and Sue Totterdell about the electrophysiological and anatomical characteristics of neurones in the subiculum was published in The Journal of Comparative Neurology back in 1998.? That paper is still gaining new citations over 25 years later, which is a stark contrast to the ephemeral nature of some of my outputs as a DVC.

I enjoyed my time at DMU, especially when we were driving up the quality of teaching and research.? I think I did some good work - leading the development of a new campus in London; reconfiguring the strategic planning process and directorate; encouraging the faculty deans - but things weren’t quite right.? In our fourth decade together, neither Samar nor I liked living apart during the week.? I wanted to be closer to my parents back in Yorkshire and I missed having constant access to my workshop to stimulate and test ideas.

I literally had an epiphany one morning and realised that there was no real reason why I couldn’t go back to Art School – inspired in part by my mum who left school at 15 and graduated from The Open University in her 50s.? We, Samar being as supportive as ever, made an anonymous visit to an open day.? I felt at home and quickly knew that this was the right thing for me to do. I resigned shortly before Christmas and made a determined commitment to finish as much as possible before leaving. ?We spent the holiday photographing my furniture and asking friends to do the same for bits I had sent them.? I put together a portfolio, which Isaac improved for me, filled in the forms and submitted an application.? Then, between chairing meetings in Leicester, I dashed up for an interview - arriving alarmingly overdressed and carrying a bag full of my more portable endeavours. ?I was delighted and, having resigned without a place, a bit relieved to be made an unconditional offer.

At the end of April, colleagues at De Montfort gave me a wonderful send-off including the present of a beautiful hand plane that I will keep in my apron.? Since then, as they say at the end of Great British Bake Off and similar shows, we have done a bit of travelling and enjoyed some great family time. I have built some bookcases, including this one for under the stairs, read a lot and tried to brush up on a few basic skills.?

David Savage makes the point that somebody is going to pay a great deal of money for a piece of bespoke furniture and you, the maker, are going to spend a significant portion of the rest of your life making it – so it’s best to get the design as close to perfect as possible before you start. ?Hitherto that hasn’t been my approach.? I have tended to work out a rough concept, find some nice wood and start making.? Then modify the design if better ideas emerge or mistakes need covering up.? Sometimes, finding the wood comes first and its characteristics determine what is made. ?Sometimes it’s a desire to try out new tools or techniques that provides the motivation. ?This way of doing things has provided plenty of fun and furnished a lot of the house, but I don’t think it will move me much further along the taste-skill curve.? The time has come to really challenge myself in a professional environment.

So now to the crux of this article, I have just started the process of developing a more sophisticated approach by enrolling as a part-time student on the Master of Arts in 3D Design course at Leeds Beckett University . Today was my first day at Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University with Programme Director Lauren Moriarty and it was very exciting.

Alongside my studies, Samar and I are going to remodel our small garden into a cross between a Moorish palace and a nature reserve. I hope to finish writing a book about photographing dragonflies – like these two Migrant Hawkers I spotted over the road from what was Harry Ramsden’s – Yorkshire’s world-famous fish and chip shop.? And to further repay some of what I owe to the natural world for years of enjoyment and mental stimulation, I have become a trustee of the British Dragonfly Society , where I will have responsibility for developing links with academia – please get in touch if you would like to know more.?

Thanks for reading.

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