Sound + Synthesis Expanded Study | Workshop Designer

Monthly Subscription: $750 (3-month minimum subscription)

I offer creative, academic, and professional mentorship to artists, curators, and scholars through a customized ‘Expanded Study’ platform, which takes place remotely, as well as in-person, when possible. The platform extends from the teaching dynamics of my university course and film production intensive, Sound + Synthesis, which won the faculty-wide Dean’s Teaching Fellow Award from Queen’s University in 2023 for “enriching student learning with high-impact activities and curriculum design.” As is the case with the original course, the Expanded Study platform is meant to activate new forms of production and thinking through the use of sound, while at the same time nurturing commitment to one’s own experimental practice. This is done in the platform by providing frequent prompts and regular in-depth feedback on production work, which enhance the development of technical skills and push adventurous conceptual thinking.

Different from the undergraduate course, the increased level of one-on-one interaction that is possible in the Expanded Study platform means that participating artists, curators, and scholars are able to more capably customize their production goals. Over the course of a minimum 3-month period, we identify clear aims for the engagement – whether that is the completion of a sound-related artwork or film, the development of an artistic portfolio, advancing a writerly practice, mastering a technical skill, making a public presentation of a project, etc. – and find ways to reach those goals together through a customized workshop structure.

This mentorship platform is not affiliated with Queen’s University and does not result in course credits.

Mentorship Style | My teaching and mentorship style is highly engaged, communicative, and generous. I apply my sensibilities and background as an artist, filmmaker, curator, organizer, and educator to build and sustain energizing environments of intellectual and creative support with students, in ways that always seek to place their own unique capabilities and interests at the centre. Students I have taught have described me as a compassionate and collaborative teacher, and have expressed finding great joy in the learning environments that I create with them.

Group Engagement | When I am mentoring more than one artist, curator, or scholar through the Expanded Study platform, there is the option to have monthly group meetings and workshops with the group as a whole, in addition to conducting individual meetings. These peer-to-peer environments provide a context for students to share their work and knowledge with one another, multiplying the impact of the platform while create a community of support.

The monthly subscription of $750 covers:

• bi-weekly check-in meetings (online, or in person when possible);
• unlimited email communication and written feedback on projects;
• when it is relevant to the participant’s goals, originally designed production assignments, customized specifically for the participant and including detailed feedback;
• tutorials and workshops on technical and conceptual skills relevant to the participant’s goals, such as audio and video editing, exhibition design strategies, writing an artist statement, assembling an artistic portfolio, applying to a production grant, etc.;
• assistance in researching opportunities related to student’s goals, such as academic programs, exhibition / presentation opportunities, artist residency programs, etc.
• access to special digital content from the Sound + Synthesis Open Educational Resource, including interviews by Neven Lochhead with sound artists.

To inquire, please contact me at neven.lochhead@gmail.com and arrange for a free initial meeting.

Mentor Bio | Neven Lochhead, PhD, is an artist, filmmaker, curator, and educator from Kingston, Ontario. He received his PhD from Queen’s University in May 2024 for his book-length dissertation and portfolio, An Artist’s Almanac to Research, Organization, Education, and Bookings, which was subsequently nominated for the the Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal by the Department of Film and Media. From 2016-2020, he was Director of Programming at SAW Video Media Art Centre in Ottawa, where he launched and operated the immersive exhibition venue Knot Project Space, and mounted a city-wide urban video projection exhibition, Imagining Publics. His co-curated exhibition at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, a guest + a host = a ghost, won exhibition of the year at the 2022 GOG Awards. In 2023, he received the faculty-wide Dean’s Teaching Fellow Award at Queen’s, acknowledging the “exceptional commitment to teaching” in his original course, Sound + Synthesis. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in University of British Columbia’s School of Music, where he has been commissioned to make a feature length documentary and related exhibition examining the carceral logics of museum collections and the repatriation of Indigenous cultural belongings and ancestors to their communities of origin. His solo and collaborative artistic and film work has been shown across North America and Europe and he has attended international residencies such as Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Maine, 2015) and the Fondazione Antonio Ratti (Lake Como, 2014).