This is a welcome slide which a fellow PGCerter, Sanjeev Davidson, was kind enough to forward to me and now I use it in most of my PP presentations. I like to have it as the image students see whilst waiting for the PP’s to begin.
This is a piece of collaborative art commisioned by the National Maritime Museum. The project was to encourage families and visitors to collaborate with me on thinking about an object that embodied a memory for them. I made this large-scale 3D word from recylced materials and then visitors used assorted materials to make a replica of an object which resonated with the memory of a person or place etc. I’ve included it because the NMM has a policy of reaching out to the community to encourage participation and invites discussion of the histories represented in its collection and sites. These include controversial artifacts from the enslavement and trafficking of people. They have an on-going programme of sessions with schools using handling objects relating to this history and run an annual Black History Month. The NMM also hold annual Chinese New Year and Diwali celebrations. I’ve contributed to many of these as a Freelance artist. I think there should be much more of these kinds of events throughout museums and galleries and feel that Black History Month can be tokenistic, to say the least, when our history is woven through every single thing but goes unacknowledged when it could be explored and used to enrich our understanding.
This is an image of a collaborative performance between LIFT, Phakama Arts Company and drama and arts students from Hornsea College and LCPA. We designed costumes, sculptures and performances to open LIFT’s transportable performance space – a huge collapsable marquee. I’ve included it because I co-lead sessions for two weeks and had a steep learning curve into how to engage young people. This was in 2008 so I had less experience then. Following on from this we ran a summer school to prepare costumes and props for The Thames Festival.
This is another commissioned piece for the National Maritime Museum, this time addressing polution. I was also commenting on traditional representations of historical figures and juxtaposing a formal standard depiction of famous Navy captain (Baron De Saumarez) with a plasticene figure of an Innuit person. I made huge ice-bergs with large sheets of cartridge paper and invited visitors to make objects using recycyled materials to populate the pristine ‘ice-scape’
‘Hold’ – (detail) – An installation using 2 tonnes of golden-syrup on a silver foil-covered floor. With 100 acurate depictions of various types of sailing ship.This was displayed at Thames Barrier Studios Gallery
This piece was made without the sponsorship of Tait and Lyle who have a factory directly opposite this site on the Thames. Its a very light-touch depiction of the value placed on sugar and all that the introduction of that to this country’s general consumption represents. All of the human suffering and trafficking which I feel is hidden. This piece looks beautiful but the syrup has a poisonous quality, as does aluminium.
It took me a while to find this image. I’d seen it about a year ago and wanted something which visually represents how I feel about society. I struggle to be articulate around these issues and feel intimidated in certain situations but this embodies how I think society should operate.
This post is retrospective from 14th March before the micro-teaching sessions
I’m prepping my micro-teaching session for Monday. I’m trying to find ice-breakers that are creative and will relate to my session but haven’t found anything yet that I feel confident enough in running for the first time. With the session only being 20mins long, I don’t want to have an activity that I’ve never used before and therefore can’t estimate how long it will take.
Referring to my teaching practice – In general I’m finding that students are happier with their screens off during group-sessions. It can be daunting trying to encourage them to be visible. For my technical teaching online sessions, this isn’t too much of a problem but I would really like it if I could get more rapport going so that students can contribute if they would like to and feel more ownership. I’ve had some success with asking specific students to show pieces of work that they are currently working on. This has prompted some great conversations and also has meant valuable feedback for the student on how their work is perceived by their peers.
The issue with making this an effective strategy for every lecture is that the group sessions are advertised across several pathways to students I’m not familiar with so I don’t know their work well enough to tie in with the particular technique I’m profiling. Also students are frequently watching the recordings of sessions in their own time. This is due to clashes with other time-tabled lectures etc.
I’ve been asked by BA Sculpture students this week to set up a forum for them to be able to chat about their work, to get more of a community going in lockdown. Also they would like to have more group-contact going into the summer, especially 1st and 2nd yr students. I’m thinking about the best way to encourage them to own this space, to enthuse them to get involved whilst being led by their requirements. I’ve suggested Gather Town as a potential platform: https://gather.town/ Its possible to embed films, PowerPoints and lots of other resources into this. Its versatile, Its fun, and its free currently.
I’m going to suggest that they each bring along an image of something they are working on and perhaps an example of a piece of art that really doesn’t appeal to them to prompt a discussion around taste and choices of subject matter in their own practice.
Whilst hunting for ice-breaker activities, I’ve seen a good site which suggests doing an origami design with your eyes closed. I am thinking to have origami as my micro-teaching focus object, specifically a design of a boat. Origami is already pretty tough going – its difficult to establish how to fold a piece of paper in half without then going into more complex folds. It would be a bit risky as I’ve no idea how to run this online or exactly how to relate it to what I had in mind – also I don’t know how long it will take.
I was thinking of asking people to make an origami boat because its initially very simple but with a twist: you have to virtually wreck your model for the last stage, by turning it inside out and it feels all kinds of wrong. By pushing a material to do an apparently contrary thing, participants are confronted by not trusting themselves to do it correctly because it does feel like you’re breaking the boat, and they don’t trust the facilitator, they think they’re being given the instruction incorrectly. You are asked to ‘squash-fold’ the paper and that goes against the grain when the rest of the design is so much about precision and conventional folding. I’ve delivered this to people who can get quite angry, you can hear the irritation in their voices!
Everyone ends up in the same place – its how you get there that counts as that’s where the learning is and I want to tie this in with Mumford and Honey. With origami, to begin with, there’s not much room for manoeuvre. My thought is to discuss learning styles whilst going through a real-time demonstration, asking people if they are aware of their own style. I would also ask them to think about when they last learned something and how they learned it and hopefully to get a discussion going. Most people have made paper aeroplanes or ‘chatter-boxes’ at some point so that could be a good starter question.
Quoting from the lecture: ‘Focussing on those who are on the margins of dominant systems and structures which can suppress. How can these be dismantled – its not enough to passively recognise them‘
This quote acts as a call to action rather than passive acceptance of the status quo. To challenge and assert the need to change/redesign the current structure in education and elsewhere, wherever possible. Awareness of how these repress is paramount. If the re-invention of the dominant systems and structures is to come about, then highlighting and making common knowledge of what is broken is essential. These systems have been honed and deeply held/embedded through centuries of learning – oppression on many levels has enable them to continue unchecked.
This relies on radically different perspectives being applied which are in tune with today’s society. Bringing to light the nature of this machinery will hopefully bring about fundamental change to benefit future generations. New structures should also include regular over-hauls to inhibit stagnation, making sure that evolution is taking place when and where it should. The price of peace is constant vigilance (to quote Leonard H. Courtney), the price of an equal and fair education system is regular and rigorous monitoring.
Figures who have lived on the ‘margins’ but have managed to infiltrate the bastion of learning can offer profound insights into the effects of suppression include Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964).
She was born into slavery but became an American author, educator, sociologist, speaker, Black- Liberation activist, and one of the most prominent African American scholars in United States history.
Education at that time was a chance to achieve personal liberty and security, although difficult to access. Cooper managed to learn how to engineer an educational strategy for herself, manoeuvring her way through the dominant systems and becoming familiar with the conventions of a Eurocentric education system which catered only for men.
Cooper’s thesis, from the Sorbonne, addressed attitudes on slavery and racism and how these affected rights and freedom in the Haitian and French Revolutions.
Interestingly, it sounds as if she did ultimately feel a sense of belonging and is said to have felt nurtured, sheltered and protected by her education, particularly at Oberlin College. So the system that had excluded her became her realm and she flourished in what must have seemed extremely daunting territory. This sense of belonging comes as a surprise then, but also illustrates the importance of individuality and of finding one’s own way through the learning systems. These systems are at their best when they encourage growth and adaptability with individual skill-sets and how to make use of what is on offer. How to make and use tools from the materials you are supplied with. The ideal might also centre on a nurturing but also challenging environment such as Cooper describes at Oberlin College.
McInerny writes: “The purpose of offering more access to university was to ensure that people like me, growing up in towns decimated by low employment – thanks to Conservative government decisions in the 1980s – still had something to do with our lives. The purpose was to ensure that working-class people in Britain, one of the richest countries in the world, were no longer locked out of a snobbish university culture that in 1990 educated less than 20% of people and admitted women at significantly lower rates than men”
This was also my experience. I remember reading Hardy’s: Jude The Obscure and identifying with the frustration of not getting any real sense of how to work the system even when you’ve managed to get as far as enrolling into it! For the most part this seems like a self-perpetuating well-oiled machine operated by and largely for the benefit of the wealthy and entitled.
There are many issues with the current system and there can be few people who don’t accept that rigorous de-colonising of Higher Education is essential and long overdue. It is hard to even comprehend how much of a detrimental effect this has had on generations across the years. Having worked in Museums where attempts to highlight BAME issues seem tokenistic. I always wondered at Black History Month not being Black History Year or that the resources were not made available to at least begin to address such a huge deficit in our cultural awareness. Its symptomatic of this tokenism that Boris Johnson cut funding for BHM quite early on in his leadership. This article, also from The Guardian, talks about this: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/feb/17/boris-johnson-slashes-events-funding
“Johnson was accused of “subsidising wealthy Americans” after the Guardian reported earlier this year that the development agency, the mayor’s economic arm, had allocated £75,000 to USA Day. It emerged yesterday that the mayor has agreed to top this up with a further £25,000 from the Greater London Authority (GLA), bringing the total to £100,000. Johnson has previously defended the move as part of a drive to attract more American tourists to the capital.
Other events to benefit from a cash boost include St George’s Day which increased from £100,000 to £136,000, courtesy of the GLA. Simon Woolley, director of Operation Black Vote, and recently appointed race commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the decision to cut Black History Month funding was symptomatic of Johnson’s failure to “effectively re-engage” with London’s black organisations”.
So education aimed at highlighting Britain’s history specifically, becomes a political football and in this case funding was given instead to events to boost financial connections with the US.
I find it interesting that many significant writers at the time were, through lack of funds, reliant on being heard through writing letters and papers rather than being published.
Quoting from the lecture: Its important to respond to the immediate needs of students, this is our immediate duty of care.
How am I putting this into practice in my own field?
My current post is 3 days per week working as a studio technician in Sculpture and Photography. I’m Grade 4, I don’t have any managerial responsibility but what we’ve studied so far on the PGCert makes me determined to have any impact that I can on improving UAL’s offer and to make it as accessible as it can be. I would like to focus on specifically what I can do.
Currently my working pattern looks like this: I focus on connecting with students who are new to me and on maintaining and enriching the links that I have with others with whom I’ve had tutorials/induction sessions. Writing to them individually and sending resources and research materials, I’ve also been running online practical demonstrations. These show particular skills and techniques whilst incorporating as much resource material as possible showing these in the context of work by other artists.
I also have one-to-one tutorials which allow me to get a sense of how that person’s work is developing in lockdown. My main aim being to encourage and enable students to continue to develop learning literacies, for the most part, in a domestic setting with often very limited making options. Helping them to access what is available to them online, I put them in contact with other specialist technicians and also alert them to talks and lectures. I aim to be as supportive as I can and work with them to find work-arounds for projects that they are working on during lock-down. This can relate to technical issues associated with making but also to suggest as wide a resource base as possible. I choose to show the demonstrations from a desk in a bedroom to demonstrate that we are all working with the same constraints.
I try to maintain what would normally be my role as studio technician; having daily contact – This would usually be informal as I walk around the spaces, so I try to make the tutorials quite light-touch and friendly. Talking to students face-to-face on a screen is a very different prospect to talking in front of a piece of their work so we often look at their padlets whilst I am offer as much encouragement as I can paired with critical feedback.
McInerny writes: “The purpose of offering more access to university was to ensure that people like me, growing up in towns decimated by low employment – thanks to Conservative government decisions in the 1980s – still had something to do with our lives. The purpose was to ensure that working-class people in Britain, one of the richest countries in the world, were no longer locked out of a snobbish university culture that in 1990 educated less than 20% of people and admitted women at significantly lower rates than men” This was also my experience. I remember reading Hardy’s: Jude The Obscure and identifying with the frustration of not getting any real sense of how to work the system even when you’ve managed to get as far as enrolling into it! For the most part this seems like a self-perpetuating well-oiled machine operated by and largely for the benefit of the wealthy and entitled. There are many issues with the current system and there can be few people who don’t accept that rigorous de-colonising of Higher Education is essential and long overdue. It is hard to even comprehend how much of a detrimental effect this has had on generations across the years. Having worked in Museums where attempts to highlight BAME issues seem tokenistic. I always wondered at Black History Month not being Black History Year or that the resources were not made available to at least begin to address such a huge deficit in our cultural awareness. Its symptomatic of this tokenism that Boris Johnson cut funding for BHM quite early on in his leadership. This article, also from The Guardian, talks about this: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/feb/17/boris-johnson-slashes-events-funding “Johnson was accused of “subsidising wealthy Americans” after the Guardian reported earlier this year that the development agency, the mayor’s economic arm, had allocated £75,000 to USA Day. It emerged yesterday that the mayor has agreed to top this up with a further £25,000 from the Greater London Authority (GLA), bringing the total to £100,000. Johnson has previously defended the move as part of a drive to attract more American tourists to the capital. Other events to benefit from a cash boost include St George’s Day which increased from £100,000 to £136,000, courtesy of the GLA. Simon Woolley, director of Operation Black Vote, and recently appointed race commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the decision to cut Black History Month funding was symptomatic of Johnson’s failure to “effectively re-engage” with London’s black organisations”. So education aimed at highlighting Britain’s history specifically, becomes a political football and in this case funding was given instead to events to boost financial connections with the US.
I’m not familiar with the term ‘dialectic’. On Researching the meaning of the word I found these definitions: • the art of discussing the truth of opinions. • Discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of intellectual investigation • Contradiction becomes a starting point.
I find it interesting that many significant writers at the time were, through lack of funds, reliant on being heard through writing letters and papers rather than being published. Quoting from the lecture: Its important to respond to the immediate needs of students, this is our immediate duty of care. How am I putting this into practice in my own field?
My current post is 3 days per week working as a studio technician in Sculpture and Photography. I’m Grade 4, I don’t have any managerial responsibility but what we’ve studied so far on the PGCert makes me determined to have any impact that I can on improving UAL’s offer and to make it as accessible as it can be. I would like to focus on specifically what I can do.
Currently my working pattern looks like this: I focus on connecting with students who are new to me and on maintaining and enriching the links that I have with others with whom I’ve had tutorials/induction sessions. Writing to them individually and sending resources and research materials, I’ve also been running online practical demonstrations. These show particular skills and techniques whilst incorporating as much resource material as possible showing these in the context of work by other artists.
I also have one-to-one tutorials which allow me to get a sense of how that person’s work is developing in lockdown. My main aim being to encourage and enable students to continue to develop learning literacies, for the most part, in a domestic setting with often very limited making options. Helping them to access what is available to them online, I put them in contact with other specialist technicians and also alert them to talks and lectures. I aim to be as supportive as I can and work with them to find work-arounds for projects that they are working on during lock-down. This can relate to technical issues associated with making but also to suggest as wide a resource base as possible. I choose to show the demonstrations from a desk in a bedroom to demonstrate that we are all working with the same constraints.
I try to maintain what would normally be my role as studio technician; having daily contact – This would usually be informal as I walk around the spaces, so I try to make the tutorials quite light-touch and friendly. Talking to students face-to-face on a screen is a very different prospect to talking in front of a piece of their work so we often look at their padlets whilst I am offer as much encouragement as I can paired with critical feedback.
I began by investigating and exploring many of the terms used in this excerpt from the Ethics of Play by Vilhauer.
Inclusion as a participant in the play of this text, in order to be drawn into the game and to fully engage whole-heartedly with the truth being presented, required acquiring an understanding of what are probably considered basic terms: ie: phenomenology. The definition being: the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness – the study of general and fundamental questions such as reason, existence, knowledge, values, mind and language.
These and other areas of philosophical study seeming to be posed as questions much as in the spirit of Gadamer’s text, led to my recognising research as being an on-going and open-ended process. Because the common world changes constantly, the questions consistently fall and play over ever-changing landscapes which undulate ( Bewegung ) and vary. Also, conclusions are open to interpretation seen through the lens of the times in which they emerge.
I was resistant at first to the idea of art necessarily needing to be engaged/played/danced with and I felt quite defensive about the artist having ownership of their intention. However, having read the text and through group discussion with peers on the course, I recognise the play as being the energy and driving force of creativity. The elegant way these ideas are explored in the text help me to appreciate absolutely that ideas/artworks begin to resonate when they are being interacted with. For the fragment of truth that is potentially being brought to light – the joy in the dance of interpretation is everything.
Play as depicted in the text, might represent creativity’s constant instinctive questioning of ideas and sifting of imagery, providing the catalyst and the ground on which to dance with others around grains of ‘truth’ and any resulting emergence of subject matter. This preparation for other’s interaction can be minimal or multi-layered and complex.
The restless energy that is potentially manifested by the process (or serene recognition and every other imaginable and unimaginable reaction) facilitates growth into territory unknown that can go beyond the sum of its parts. This dialogue making an encounter with art in all of its forms so compelling.
Gadamer’s analysis of the idea of play is juxtaposed with the more conventional view of art as a static object which exists independently, its meaning buried deep within it. This has elitist overtones; excluding attempts to gain access by the ‘viewer’ and never fully gaining the life that sharing might breathe into it.
I’ve explored the language in the text by attempting to use it myself here to better understand the ideas in the text. Through this process I began to see that there are parallels with teaching styles – the transmissive model and a more constructivist approach; the two contrasting modes of participation as discussed in Dall’ Alba’s text: ‘Improving teaching: Enhancing ways of being university teachers’. One similarity: art being seen as something apart and distanced to be passively viewed in isolation with the object transmitting its insight to be passively observed, would chime with a description of a style of teaching which Dall’ Alba’ calls transmission. This being teacher-centred, conventional transmission of expertise aimed at predetermined goals – students passively acquiring knowledge. It effectively exaggerates that which the teacher knows and the student doesn’t, thus shutting down the possibility of play around ideas. A constructivist approach to teaching empowers the student and honours their participation, recognising that the acquisition of knowledge is not something we possess but who we are. Because the play values what a person brings to the dance, this better facilitates growth.
I began to apply this new perspective to art pieces I’ve seen which have resonated with me. For example a video installation by Yang Zhenzhong at the Venice Bienale in 2007. Called ‘I Will Die’, the piece is minimal, consisting of a darkened corridor lined floor-to- ceiling with projections of films showing head-shots of people saying ‘I will Die’ whilst looking straight into the lens. The people in the film are diverse in their age, gender, ethnicity and are unified by this one fact that they state about themselves. For me, the power of the piece is in the play of how the mind cannot fully comprehend its own ending. This is echoed in the title of Damian Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.
Damien Hirst – The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991 2170 x 5420 x 1800 mm | 85.5 x 213.4 x 70.9 in Glass, painted steel, silicone, monofilament, shark and formaldehyde solution.
In these works, the artists lay the groundwork for the dance/play in two very different styles. Although both minimal, one is an immersive installation and the other an object. Yang Zhenzhong’s installation invites us into the dark to watch our own destiny spoken by strangers – people that we will never meet but who speak our truth.
Damien Hirst’s title brings the truth of our incomprehension of this to bare on a dead shark in a tank of formaldehyde. Hirst’s piece asks us to engage with our own incomprehension of what it means to die. Hirst’s work is playful in that although the shark is an animal and not necessarily capable of cogent thought about its own death, we identify with its condition of a life that’s now gone even though the shark’s body is still preserved.
Although these works are very different in their construction, both offer a truth and the opportunity to dance with its physical manifestation.
My playing with the pieces enjoys the idea that the human condition involves not being able to remember pain with 100% recall, never mind being able to imagine death. We can’t conjure exactly the pain of child-birth. If one could recreate that sensation completely then you would not choose to experience it again. The same could be said of the pain of losing another and the inevitable feeling of grief. Grief is the bill of love, come due (David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue). One forgets, recovers and then proceeds to embark on similar experiences. One definition of insanity is the repetition of a behaviour whilst expecting a different outcome!
To summarise – Interacting with art offers a place to play with an unimaginable array of issues and ideas which runs parallel with the most effective and fertile modes of teaching and learning where teachers and learners are like artists and art. Play is where the learning is.
I’m prepping my micro-teaching session for Monday. I’m trying to find ice-breakers that are creative and will relate to my session but haven’t found anything yet that I feel confident enough in running for the first time. With the session only being 20mins long, I don’t want to have an activity that I’ve never used before and therefore can’t estimate how long it will take.
Referring to my teaching practice – In general I’m finding that students are happier with their screens off during group-sessions. It can be daunting trying to encourage them to be visible. For my technical teaching online sessions, this isn’t too much of a problem but I would really like it if I could get more rapport going so that students can contribute if they would like to and feel more ownership. I’ve had some success with asking specific students to show pieces of work that they are currently working on. This has prompted some great conversations and also has meant valuable feedback for the student on how their work is perceived by their peers.
The issue with making this an effective strategy for every lecture is that the group sessions are advertised across several pathways to students I’m not familiar with so I don’t know their work well enough to tie in with the particular technique I’m profiling. Also students are frequently watching the recordings of sessions in their own time. This is due to clashes with other time-tabled lectures etc.
I’ve been asked by BA Sculpture students this week to set up a forum for them to be able to chat about their work, to get more of a community going in lockdown. Also they would like to have more group-contact going into the summer, especially 1st and 2nd yr students. I’m thinking about the best way to encourage them to own this space, to enthuse them to get involved whilst being led by their requirements. I’ve suggested Gather Town as a potential platform: https://gather.town/ Its possible to embed films, PowerPoints and lots of other resources into this. Its versatile, Its fun, and its free currently.
I’m going to suggest that they each bring along an image of something they are working on and perhaps an example of a piece of art that really doesn’t appeal to them to prompt a discussion around taste and choices of subject matter in their own practice.
Whilst hunting for ice-breaker activities, I’ve seen a good site which suggests doing an origami design with your eyes closed. I am thinking to have origami as my micro-teaching focus object, specifically a design of a boat. Origami is already pretty tough going – its difficult to establish how to fold a piece of paper in half without then going into more complex folds. It would be a bit risky as I’ve no idea how to run this online or exactly how to relate it to what I had in mind – also I don’t know how long it will take.
I was thinking of asking people to make an origami boat because its initially very simple but with a twist: you have to virtually wreck your model for the last stage, by turning it inside out and it feels all kinds of wrong. By pushing a material to do an apparently contrary thing, participants are confronted by not trusting themselves to do it correctly because it does feel like you’re breaking the boat, and they don’t trust the facilitator, they think they’re being given the instruction incorrectly. You are asked to ‘squash-fold’ the paper and that goes against the grain when the rest of the design is so much about precision and conventional folding. I’ve delivered this to people who can get quite angry, you can hear the irritation in their voices!
Everyone ends up in the same place – its how you get there that counts as that’s where the learning is and I want to tie this in with Mumford and Honey. With origami, to begin with, there’s not much room for manoeuvre. My thought is to discuss learning styles whilst going through a real-time demonstration, asking people if they are aware of their own style. I would also ask them to think about when they last learned something and how they learned it and hopefully to get a discussion going. Most people have made paper aeroplanes or ‘chatter-boxes’ at some point so that could be a good starter question.
I’ll look for some strong images to show in a Power Point to support the session which will also hopefully address the different learnign styles.
I’ve looked at several interpretations of Mumford and Honey and quite like this summary:
Mumford and Honey – Strengths of each Style
Activist:
Flexible and open-minded. Happy to have a go.
Happy to be exposed to new situations.
Optimistic about anything new and therefore unlikely to resist change.
Reflector:
Thorough and methodical.
Good at listening to others and assimilating information.
Rarely jump to conclusions.
Theorist:
Logical ‘vertical’ thinkers.
Rational and objective.
Good at asking probing questions.
Disciplined approach.
Pragmatist:
Keen to test things out in practice.
Practical, down to earth, realistic.
Businesslike – get straight to the point.
Technique oriented.
(Honey, P. & Mumford, A., 1992).
Weaknesses of each Style
Activist:
Tendency to take the immediately obvious action without thinking.
Often take unnecessary risks.
Tendency to do too much themselves and hog the limelight.
Rush into action without sufficient preparation.
Get bored with implementation or consolidation.
Reflector:
Tendency to hold back from direct participation.
Slow to make up their minds and reach a decision.
Tendency to be too cautious and not take enough risks.
Not assertive – they aren’t particularly forthcoming.
Theorist:
Restricted in lateral thinking.
Low tolerance for uncertainty, disorder and ambiguity.
Lásló Biró who invented the ball-point-penMagnified image of a ball-point biro pen
I’m considering using this image of Lázló Biró and his invention as my object for the micro-teaching session – Biros are miracle of engineering! I’ve also included here (below) an image of a piece of work I made of a tongue juxtaposed with an image of a ball-pen.
I became interested in the idea that your tongue is similar to the ball in a pen, with your thoughts being like ink in your mouth
So for my teaching activity, I could ask participants to draw to get the ball rolling – literally.. We could have a couple of minutes to deconstruct their pen and explore the mechanism. everyone could take theirs apart to note its components and compare what they have, some have spring mechanisms etc. – I wonder if this is too dull as an ice-breaker..?
We could also try different mark-making techniques including smudging the ink, trying to write with the alternative hand you’re used to, using them to press hard and emboss paper etc. I would have a couple of minutes to ask people to share their experiences.
So that would be the first five minutes. I’d also like to show an image of a biro’s nib to illustrate how clearly visible the ball is when magnified. I used this image to inspire a piece of my own work so I’d also include that to explain the choice of object.
I’m interested in why there are many objects named for their male inventors – Jacuzzi, Heimlich (Heimlich maneuver), Adolphe Sax (Saxophone)
Shirley Jackson, theoretical physicist
There’s also Shirley Jackson, a theoretical physicist, was the first black woman to be awarded a Ph.D. in the USA in 1973. In the 1970s and ’80s, she conducted breakthrough scientific research with subatomic particles that enabled the inventions by others, of the portable fax, touch-tone telephone, solar cells, fiber-optic cables, and the technology behind caller ID and call waiting.
So my session would aim to create a discussion about why female inventors names are not linked to their inventions.
This post is retrospective from 14th March before the micro-teaching sessions
I’m prepping my micro-teaching session for Monday. I’m trying to find ice-breakers that are creative and will relate to my session but haven’t found anything yet that I feel confident enough in running for the first time. With the session only being 20mins long, I don’t want to have an activity that I’ve never used before and therefore can’t estimate how long it will take.
Referring to my teaching practice – In general I’m finding that students are happier with their screens off during group-sessions. It can be daunting trying to encourage them to be visible. For my technical teaching online sessions, this isn’t too much of a problem but I would really like it if I could get more rapport going so that students can contribute if they would like to and feel more ownership. I’ve had some success with asking specific students to show pieces of work that they are currently working on. This has prompted some great conversations and also has meant valuable feedback for the student on how their work is perceived by their peers.
The issue with making this an effective strategy for every lecture is that the group sessions are advertised across several pathways to students I’m not familiar with so I don’t know their work well enough to tie in with the particular technique I’m profiling. Also students are frequently watching the recordings of sessions in their own time. This is due to clashes with other time-tabled lectures etc.
I’ve been asked by BA Sculpture students this week to set up a forum for them to be able to chat about their work, to get more of a community going in lockdown. Also they would like to have more group-contact going into the summer, especially 1st and 2nd yr students. I’m thinking about the best way to encourage them to own this space, to enthuse them to get involved whilst being led by their requirements. I’ve suggested Gather Town as a potential platform: https://gather.town/ Its possible to embed films, PowerPoints and lots of other resources into this. Its versatile, Its fun, and its free currently.
I’m going to suggest that they each bring along an image of something they are working on and perhaps an example of a piece of art that really doesn’t appeal to them to prompt a discussion around taste and choices of subject matter in their own practice.
Whilst hunting for ice-breaker activities, I’ve seen a good site which suggests doing an origami design with your eyes closed. I am thinking to have origami as my micro-teaching focus object, specifically a design of a boat. Origami is already pretty tough going – its difficult to establish how to fold a piece of paper in half without then going into more complex folds. It would be a bit risky as I’ve no idea how to run this online or exactly how to relate it to what I had in mind – also I don’t know how long it will take.
I was thinking of asking people to make an origami boat because its initially very simple but with a twist: you have to virtually wreck your model for the last stage, by turning it inside out and it feels all kinds of wrong. By pushing a material to do an apparently contrary thing, participants are confronted by not trusting themselves to do it correctly because it does feel like you’re breaking the boat, and they don’t trust the facilitator, they think they’re being given the instruction incorrectly. You are asked to ‘squash-fold’ the paper and that goes against the grain when the rest of the design is so much about precision and conventional folding. I’ve delivered this to people who can get quite angry, you can hear the irritation in their voices!
Everyone ends up in the same place – its how you get there that counts as that’s where the learning is and I want to tie this in with Mumford and Honey. With origami, to begin with, there’s not much room for manoeuvre. My thought is to discuss learning styles whilst going through a real-time demonstration, asking people if they are aware of their own style. I would also ask them to think about when they last learned something and how they learned it and hopefully to get a discussion going. Most people have made paper aeroplanes or ‘chatter-boxes’ at some point so that could be a good starter question.The Power-point I’m planning has lots of images of origami and its contemporary applications such as micro-robots and in rocket science.
I’m feeling apprehensive about starting the PGCert. I’ve wanted to take this course for so long and to be able to enhance my practice – this will be my 4th att As a technician I am aware that this course might not be the best fit, I feel that it might be really geared towards academics, but I’m teaching all the time, just in a different guise. As a technician, I’m giving out information on techniques and standard health & safety info. As a studio technician, which is a new post for me since last year’s technical shake-up UAL, I now have to redefine my role. It feels like there’s more of an academic aspect to this job but with enhanced technical know-how. I think in the future, the technicians may now also have some input into assessing students. I do wonder if this is a way to boost academic content on courses and to under-cut academic roles (for less money..)
With regard to my teaching practice; one aspect I’m interested in is the use of materials and how they can become a language. This has always been a key interest and I would really like to explore ways of introducing this approach as a way of engaging with subject matter. I also want to learn how to support students to the best of my ability and become better at structure which has always been an issue for me. I’ve never learned how to teach formally.
I hope that I am academic enough to be able to absorb what I need to absorb! I’m hoping for tips on ways to improve my teaching, to become more efficient and effective, to get a better understanding of current best-practice and also meet other learners. I’m excited about an intense period of study although this is tempered with the recognition of having to to work hard to make the time to fulfil the course requirements when I’m so snowed-under with other work commitments. I’m finding it tricky to gauge how long things are going to take.. we shall see!
Hi everyone, looking forward to meeting you on Friday.
I work at UAL Camberwell in Sculpture/Fine Art/Photography. I’ve been wanting to take the PGCert for several years so I’m really happy that I’ve managed to get onto the course this year.
I hope that you enjoyed last Friday’s lectures as much as I did. Both speakers were inspiring and I’ve already learned some things to take into my teaching practice this week.
