CHANGING CONTEXTS?

1. WOMEN AND EQUALITY: Things have changed since Virginia Woolf was writing about the place of women in the 1920s. As she predicted, the opportunity for more and more women to undertake paid employment (together with their massive movement into higher education from the 1950s) has given many more women financial independence and personal freedom than in VW's day.

So, has this worked to give women greater equality in udertaking creative work and having it recognised?

2. WRITING AND OTHER CREATIVE PRACTICES: For VW, writing was essentially a private and solitary activity, where a locked room enabled the mediative working-on of experiences gleaned both from the real world and from the imagination. Other forms of creative practices (installation/art/architecture) may be more collaborative, or possible (even enjoyable) to engage in through more 'crowded' situations.

So, how relevant is a room of one's own to other creative pursuits?

3.FROM PHYSICAL TO VIRTUAL SPACES: The types of spaces we occupy (and how we occupy them) has changed since VW was writing. With the increasing ubitquity of the web and with ever-new and smaller communication devices, a room of one's own can be simultaneously separate and globally connected.

So, how does virtual space and new media technologies affect our understanding and occupation of personal/private/social/public domains?

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