Marathon n°6 • Lisa Stansbie

The school dates back to 1846 and is well known for pioneering art and design education. Carnegie School of Sport at Leeds Beckett University is also one of the largest providers of sport education in UK. Higher Education and home to world-leading experts and decades of successful graduates. In 2020 Leeds Beckett opened a new £45m sports building featuring human movement research labatories, environmental chambers and a 60M indoor intelligent running track. In 2021 the £95M Leeds School of Art Building opens featuring state of the art performances, film and music spaces with 184 seat theatre and 220 seat cinema amongst other facilities.

Following the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Lisa worked with a group of colleagues from Universities across the U.K (notably Professor Johnathan Long and Doug Sandle from Leeds Beckett) on Fields of Vision, an AHRC funded national network created to encourage dialogue between art and sports organisations. The Fields of Vision manifesto was developed to foster collaborations across arts and sport and asked arts and sports organisations in the U.K to become signatories.

Lisa discusses how she began making artwork about sport. Until she finished her PhD in 2010 she kept both the worlds of art and sport apart - one as an academic and practicing artist and the other as a sportsperson. Lisa was offered a sabbatical and began making work about the endurance sport of Channel swimming (Swimming from the U.K to France) and the rituals around this practice. As well as being a relay Channel swimmer Lisa is also a triathlete and runner and her research and art practice is currently focused on this. In a recent project Lisa used the sports GPS system Strava to explore running as a method of drawing in the environment.

The Leeds School of Arts is a partner on an Erasmus + Strategic Partnership bid led by the art-sport network and Lisa has generously supported the network since its inception. She is the esteemed author of many articles and books on the subject of art and sport (see links below) and has plans to write a monograph surveilling art-sport (as soon as she has the time!).

• L.Stansbie (2019) Arts and Sport Communities Methods of Practice in The Athens Journal of Sport Volume 6: Issue 4 https://www.athensjournals.gr/sports/2019-6-4-1-Stansbie.pdf
• L.Stansbie (2015) The Archive of Unrealised Devices Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, 7 (3). pp.447 - 457. ISSN 17535190
• L.Stansbie (2014) The Performance of the Channel Swimmer: Time based Rituals and Technology Chapter in Buccieri, K Body Tensions: Reflecting, Resisting, Transforming Time andSpace Oxford, U.K: InterDisciplinary Press. . ISBN 9781848882867
• L.Stansbie (2013) Extreme Exposures: The Practice and Narratives of Channel Swimming as a Methodology for the Creation of Contemporary Art pp.131 - 146 in Sandle, D. Long, J, Parry, J & Spracklen, K (Eds.) Fields of Vision: The Arts in Sport LSA Publications. ISBN 978 1 90536943 0

Lisa Stansbie Artworks and exhibitions

Fields of Visions website

Fields of Visions manifesto