Mavernie Cunningham (MA RCA, SFHEA) is the Head of Art within the School of Art Design and Architecture. She manages a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, including Fine Art, Photography, Fashion Photography, Graphic Design, Illustration and Animation, Theatre Arts, Creative Writing and Public Art and Performative Practices.
Mavernie Cunningham
As Head of Art, Mavernie is responsible for a range of undergraduate and postgraduate course to include Fine Art, Photography, Fashion Photography, Graphic Design, Illustration and Animation, Theatre Arts, Creative Writing and Public Art and Performative Practices.
Mavernie has held extensive leadership and management responsibilities in Higher Education. She is committed to championing the transformative power of art education for all students regardless of age, race, sex, gender, religion or belief, disability, sexual orientation or neuro-diversity. She believes that the right balance of community, student voice, academic support and challenge is integral in delivering a strong student experience.
Mavernie has the experience of over 30 years in teaching and managing in Further and Higher Education, previously working at a Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Kent, after which she undertook the role of Programme Director for Fine Art at University of the Creative Arts (UCA), where she led a team of 14 academics across BA and MA programmes with over 200 students.
At UCA she led an academic team on Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), working across the disciplines of Fine Art and Photography, Visual Communication and Crafts with the aim to devise a toolkit for academics to enable greater pedagogic inclusivity and diversity.
Mavernie teaches on the following courses:
- Fine Art
- Creative Digital and Professional Writing
- Public Art and Performative Practices
Mavernie’s research and art practice explores the relationship between the beauty of historical cultural artefacts and the fact that these were created within a culture that also encompassed slavery. It centres on myths and narratives that support contemporary black identity, drawing on personal history in an auto-ethnographic process that examines memories of childhood, stories from Jamaica and Mavernie’s family’s migrations.
The over-arching aim of her research is to draw attention to the relationships between an historical culture which was built on the back of slaves and the cultural politics around black (female) identity.
Mavernie is currently Principal Investigator for the collaborative research project 'Mapping Afropolitan Imaginaries' at London Met.
2021 - ‘Fogged Mirror’ Collaborative film and performance, Estuary Festival
2019 - ‘Dark Light’ Collaborative film and performance, Free Range, Canterbury
2018 - ‘Dark Light’ Collaborative film and performance, Whitstable Biennale Satellite
2018 - lead artist in Stour Valley Creative Partnership’s project ‘Woods to Where Else’. This project sought to address the lack of a cultural presence in the area of Ashford (Kent). Mavernie led a symposium at UCA and c-authored the publication, ‘Woods to Where Else’
2017 - ‘Home ‘ Collaborative film installation, Art and Sound Symposium, De Montfort University, Leicester
2017 - Vocal improvisation with musical collective Miserichords at ‘Oscillate’, The Turner Contemporary, Margate
2016 – ‘Song of Songs’, Collaborative film and performance, Whitstable Biennale Satellite
2015 – Vocal improvisation with musical collective Miserichords in response to - Carlos Amorales’ ‘We Will See How Everything Reverberates’ The Turner Contemporary, Margate
2013 - Group exhibition, World Trade Centre Amsterdam
2012 – ‘Critical Perspectives’ Group exhibition, Habitat Centre New Delhi – India
2012 - chapter articles on Frantz Fanon’s ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ (1967) and Didi-Huberman’s ‘Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art’ (2004), for ‘Fifty Key Texts in Art History’ (2012) ed. Pooke and Newell, London: Routledge.
Mavernie Cunningham
Head of Art
Email to Mavernie: m.cunningham@londonmet.ac.uk