Georges Perec – Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
“Who am I”? What is my role as a teacher within the context of the higher education sector and the ever-shifting landscape of the creative industries? How open am I to the requiring changes in my identity and worldview as I re-encounter myself as a learner? How both my own teaching practice and creative practice interrelate and connect my experience with that of the students as they embark on their year-out-in-industry? An optional, experiential work-based learning opportunity where students can test, develop, and exchange knowledge and skills in a professional context for one academic cycle. As a Diploma in Professional Studies tutor I facilitate the space between second and final year study for the CSM BA Jewellery Design and BA Textile Design students to reflect on real-life experience, contextualise placement learning as appropriate to their creative practices, meet the learning outcomes and assessment criteria of their DPS year before they resume and complete their BA degrees; a dialogic space, created to elicit student perceptions on their creative practice, aptitude, diverse background and life experience as well as to allow professional practice norms, industry ethical and sustainability approaches to be challenged, reinterpreted and reevaluated.
Yet how do I reevaluate my teaching practice embedded in the context of real-world relationships, opportunities and constraints (Mckie, 2022)? As I progress through the PgCert academic practice programme I`m provided the space to reflect on my professional identity, familiarise with new to me language of higher education literature, teaching philosophies and theory, pedagogic methods and techniques applicable to my local context of teaching; being provided with the initial framework for reflection to be enabled to try out ideas in a safe space that I can ‘mess up’ if necessary (Mckie, 2022).
The online session from the TPP Event Series led by Annamarie McKie: Reflect on this..or that? Enabling space for reflection on the creative arts outlined different contexts for reflection and strategies to set up safe spaces to deconstruct teaching terms, experiment with educative technology and un-learn practices. How lecturers are enabled to derive ideas from their disciplinary practices to put a fresh perspective on their reflections as educators.
Strategies for developing critically reflective practice? ‘The insights from talking to creative arts lecturers encourage building in dialogic reflective prompts for reflecting on teaching, to encourage academics to reflect on their teaching through their own lenses as practitioners, subject experts and research.’ (McKie, 2022: 133)
The prep reading for the session: The Critically Reflective Practitioner (chapter 3, Contexts for Reflection, pages 55–69) cover the concepts of Personal Reflective Space and Dyadic Reflective Space (Thompson & Thompson, 2008) and refer to David Clutterbuck’s comments on reflective space at three levels: personal (quiet thinking, time on one`s own); dyadic (one-to-one); and as a group or team (1998, p.15). Notions of philosophical thought and Friedrich Nietzsche`s work and the school of existentialist thought of being a free spirit is consistent with the philosophy of critically reflective practice as opposed of being bound by mindless acceptance of teaching habits that may need adjustment; being immersed into day-to-day workload pressures I often find myself losing sight of my own role as a university teacher but also of my own disciplinary practice in the process and I may suppress learning opportunities presented through critically reflective practice and some valuable aspects of academic identity work.
Brookfield’s (1995) 4 critical lenses (own perspective, students, link to theory, colleagues)
Ben Miller on his paper Brookfield’s Four Lenses: Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher (2010) argues: “The most important aspect to excellent critical practice involves going beyond the collection of feedback (from self, student, peer or scholarly lenses) by altering teaching methods and goals, documenting those changes and any progress toward goals, and becoming a student-centred, flexible and innovative teacher. Overall, Brookfield argues that excellent teachers, in a deliberate and sustained way, continually attempt to shape teaching and learning environments into democratic spaces of knowledge exchange (Brookfield, 1995).
Intervention and Reflective Report: Design an intervention to enact intersectional social justice in your context.
Introduction, Context, and Proposed Intervention
Following on from the Microteaching Task: Object-based Learning along with relevant resources in the TPP and IP Units, this intervention proposal synthesises my reflections on intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1990) from Blog task 1: Disability, Blog task 2:Faith, religion, and belief and Blog task 3: Race. Drawing from Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (a spatial autobiography), I probe Perec’s yearning for “An idealised scene. Space as reassurance.” For the student transitioning from the university culture into the industry landscape, however, the corporate creative sector can be a space of alienation rather than reassurance.
In my role as a Diploma in Professional Studies (DPS) Placement tutor supporting BA Jewellery and Textile Design placement students at Central Saint Martins (CSM), I often encounter how physical objects and digital spaces mirror student and staff intersecting identities. For example, my own tutorial gym ball (disability), the student prayer mat (faith, religion, and belief), and the role-switching function on UAL Moodle (Race) may serve as live case studies of how ordinary objects and virtual learning spaces operate as nuanced material metaphors of identity, care, and embodied defiance. This proposal merges Foucault’s spatial heterotopias with Gaston Bachelard’s poetics of space, transforming abstract accommodations into physical and digital sites of intersectional negotiation to navigate real-world workplace scenarios.
Georges Perec – Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
To enact this in practice, the proposed intervention takes the form of a cross-cohort workshop that holistically evolves into a shared teaching and learning resource, titled ‘Space as Reassurance: Navigating Identity and Access Needs in Creative Workplaces’. Designed for BA Jewellery and Textile Design students undertaking the Diploma in Professional Studies (DPS) across the CSM JTM programme, it utilises Object-Based Learning (OBL) to scaffold the ambiguous, liminal passage from university into industry as a threshold concept (Meyer and Land, 2005). Shifting away from conventional, individualised CV tutorials, this small-group intervention brings multiple cohorts together – integrating first-year, second-year, DPS, and final-year students to open up a dialectic space where returning placement students share lived counter-narratives with incoming learners, potentially shaping a preliminal community of practice and support network.
Inviting participants to select an everyday artifact anchoring their complex, intersecting identities, the workshop applies Judy Willcocks’s exercise on the ’emotional or extra-rational reading of an object’. Through collective inquiry, students draft a literal ‘Curriculum Vitae of an Object’ that echoes their own spatial autobiographies within future workplaces and intersectional access requirements. By analysing how physical objects are ‘rendered employable’, participants are encouraged to bring their full selves into a shared, intersectional space to potentially demystify their workplace rights and protections under the UK Equality Act 2010. The intervention is logistically feasible as the workshop repurposes existing briefing sessions. It also draws upon the CSM Museum and Study Collection, rendering a static archive as a living, post-workshop resource for independent student research and continuous peer network development.
Inclusive learning and Rational:
Operating through an intersectional framework, this intervention synthesises invisible disability, faith, social class, and race. My positionality fundamentally drives this focus, informed by the intersections of social class, migration, chronic illness, and family caregiving. Coming from a working-class background and migrating from Greece to the UK in my 30s, I have firsthand experience navigating unfamiliar, elite institutional norms without inherited social capital. This outsider perspective is entwined with a lifelong proximity to disability; I have intimately witnessed how ableist societal structures pathologise and marginalise families.
Students from marginalised backgrounds frequently confront career precarity and covert institutional barriers, creating intense pressure to “save face”. This material precarity is grounded in the university’s own UAL Ethnic Representation Index (2023), which explicitly documents how minoritised students continuously fall behind their white peers in relation to institutional belonging and university experience. Whether masking a chronic illness, concealing religious beliefs, or navigating socioeconomic vulnerability to conform to dominant corporate norms, students internalise these unequal structures as a personal and professional failure rather than a systemic gap. This intervention aims to voice these silent challenges, moving learners away from professional masking and the fear of academic or professional pathologisation.
Drawing from Alison Shreeve’s (2008) framework of “pedagogy as art practice,” I integrate my role as a DPS Placement Tutor with my identity as an artist. My creative practice explores how repurposed, fragmented, and ordinary found objects are never neutral; they hold memory, witness loss, and carry living narratives. This pedagogical lens, rooted in my previous Microteaching Task: Object-based Learning, directly informs how I experience this systemic precarity, designed to address the silent challenge of non-disclosure and the deep fear of losing employment opportunities.
To scaffold this liminal transition, I use my own lived experience as an embodied pedagogical tool. Due to a chronic musculoskeletal condition, I bring a gym ball to CSM tutorials as a direct replacement for rigid institutional seating, actively normalising reasonable adjustments. By openly disrupting ableist university structures, I physically show students that claiming space is a fundamental right, not a personal or professional failure.
Reflection and Action:
Building on Daniel Miller’s premise that “things make people as much as people make things” (Miller, 2010), the workshop functions as an active, theatrical dialectic space. Integrating Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy with Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, students use their chosen identity objects as physical props to role-play workplace scenarios. Enacting these scripts as active “spect-actors,” students shift from passive subjects of the industry hidden curriculum into collective agents of change.
This framework proposed for the initial intervention proposal task generated highly constructive feedback from my tutor and peers. While validating the object-led approach, questions were also raised in relation to student vulnerability, tangible takeaways, and ongoing community support. These prompts directly support the intervention proposal design:
Are the objects always related to identity, and what if students do not want to share personal details?
To safeguard student protected characteristics and minimise emotional exposure, the workshop design focuses on setting personal boundaries. Building a pedagogical safety valve, the choice of object is dissociated from identity disclosure. In the workshop briefing, participants are encouraged to: “Select an object that represents a boundary you want to maintain, a routine that keeps you grounded, or a reasonable adjustment you require.” By framing the activity around ordinary, mundane artifacts – such as a tool, a pen, a water bottle, or a digital interface – this approach creates an impetus for participants to explore workplace adjustments not as an imposition or transactional favor, but rather as a lived physical practice and human right.
What do the students take away, and how are they supported to prepare for their placements?
To address what students can potentially take away to navigate industry thresholds, the workshop experience translates the premise of the ‘Curriculum Vitae of an Object’ into a tangible, physical ‘Placement Access Rider’. This takeaway document is derived by the real-world Access Docs for Artists framework. Rather than leaving empty-handed, students project their object’s material needs onto real-world workplace scenarios. For example, requesting time and private space for prayer during intense project deadlines is not an abstract idea. In these fast-paced creative environments, the essence of religious accommodation is rarely a given, but rather something that must be actively negotiated by the individual student. If a student’s prayer mat requires a quiet space, their physical Rider can equip the student with the professional language to request that space from a Placement Host, turning a theatrical metaphor into a practical self-advocacy tool.
Is there community building and support network development?
To foster authentic community building, the small-group workshop could evolve into a continuous, cross-cohort support network. To sustain this connection across the physical distance of the placement year, this network could possibly extend into an online archive via UAL digital interfaces, such as Padlet, a UAL Blog, or Moodle site. While away from the university undertaking industry placements, students can document and upload photos of their objects in situ at the Creative Workplaces – such as the student with the prayer mat – shaping a one-off workshop session into a living, cross-cohort peer network.
Evaluation of Process and Conclusion:
“Question your tea spoons… How are we to speak of these ‘common things’, how to track them down rather, how to flush them out, rescue them from the mire in which they remain stuck, how to give them a tongue, to bring them to speak of what is, of what we are.” — Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
What I have learned through this process is that inclusive teaching practice is an ongoing discourse in itself. Reflecting on my challenges within my role as a placement tutor is not enough; the reality of social inequality is objectively overwhelming without tools to identify small actions not as a fixed outcome, but as an ongoing, unstable, interactional process. Simple next steps grounded in daily practices and mundane, micro-space interactions to create the conditions for actual change. Facilitating equitable learning spaces calls for continuous experiential unlearning and mutual creative unsettling, where students and educators act as critical learning partners.
Enacting social justice within my teaching context through an object-based study intervention is dialectical rather than propositional. It is a living, continuous process focusing on how participants with intersecting identities can elicit invisible barriers and explore how systemic power affects their work and creative identity. This invites participants to challenge structures of inequity and recognise material culture as a powerful tool to play out the hidden power dynamics of both educational environments and future creative workplaces.
The scope of exploring Object CVs to be rendered employable keeps the intervention in a constant state of flux – surprising, unpredictable, creating the value base for new potentialities, future practice, the “not-yet.” It invites participants to embrace certainty as uncertainty, leaning into an open-ended query – and a pedagogy of discomfort (Boler, 1999): “I wonder what would happen if…?” The intervention functions as an active, theatrical dialectic space echoing Samuel Beckett’s ethos: Try again, fail again, fail better.
Progressing into the final PgCert Unit 3: Action Research Project (ARP), my intent is to turn the infra-ordinary learning space into a stage to see what happens when counter-storytelling unfolds, document and experiment with methods new to me – such as narrative enquiry and role play.
Activating the UAL Moodle function: “Switch a role to get an idea of how someone with that rolewill see this course” as a physical practice of critical empathy, mutual co-learning, and researcher positionality.
Beckett, S. (1983) Worstward Ho. London: John Calder.
Bhabha, H.K. (2008) ‘Foreword: Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition’, in Fanon, F. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by C.L. Markmann. London: Pluto Press, pp. vii–xxvi.
Boal, A. (1974) Theater of the oppressed. London: Pluto Press.
Boler, M. (1999) Feeling Power: Emotions and Education. New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1984) ‘Of other spaces, heterotopias’, translated by J. Miskowiec, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, (5), pp. 46–49.
Foucault M. (1988) Technologies of the Self.Technologies of the Self, a Seminar with Michel Foucault, pp 16-49. The University of Massachusets Press.
Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin Random House UK.
Gordon, L. (1977) Reading Godot. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.
‘Heterotopia (space)’ (2024) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotopia_(space) (Accessed: 4 June 2026).
Land, R., Cousin, G., Meyer, J.H.F. and Davies, P. (2005) ‘Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (3): implications for course design and evaluation’, in Rust, C. (ed.) Improving student learning: diversity and inclusivity. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, pp. 53–64.
‘Liminality’ (2024) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality (Accessed: 4 June 2026).
McNiff, J. and Whitehead, J. (2002) Action Research: Principles and Practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Miller, D. (2010) Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Osmond, J.and Tovey, M., 2015.The Threshold of Uncertainty in Teaching Design. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 20 (2), pp. 32-45.
Perec, G. (1974) Species of spaces and other pieces. London: Penguin Books.
Shreeve, A. (2008) Transitions: variation in tutors’ experience of practice and teaching relations in art and design. PhD thesis. Lancaster University.
University of the Arts London (2023) UAL Ethnic Representation Index 2023. London: University of the Arts London.
Willcocks, J. (2018) Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection: object-based learning and the modern art school curriculum. Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo (Accessed: 4 June 2026).
Willcocks, J. (2021) Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection: emotional responses to objects. Available at: https://arts.ac.libguides.com/c.php?g=686452&p=4906489 (Accessed: 4 June 2026).
Willcocks, J. and Barton, (2017) ‘Object-led self-reflection’, in Chatterjee, H.J. and Hannan, L. (eds.) Engaging the senses: object-based learning in higher education. London: Routledge, pp. 43–56.
In this third blog task you will consider various approaches to addressing racism:
Addressing racism within Higher Education learning spaces through an anti-racist lens exposes the fraught tension between the institutional rhetoric of equity and the reality of exclusion. To explore inclusivity within art institutions is to admit exclusivity: Drabble and Gridneff’s (2025) spatial analysis frames art schools not as neutral, but as physical environments with race, class, and gender affiliations fundamentally interwoven with colonial extraction legacies and dominant Eurocentric, social, and political norms. Drawing upon a Lacanian framework, Drabble and Gridneff argue that art institutions function as a direct extension of the self and identities of students, intersecting interior emotions, the unconscious, or creative drive with physical space. This spatial organisation creates a profound systemic paradox: while no other discipline promotes raw self-expression and identity exploration to the same extent as the creative arts, the underlying built environment, educational policy design, and institutional infrastructures simultaneously operate as exclusionary spaces that inhibit true equity, rendering initiatives such as widening participation, freedom of speech, and decolonising the curriculum tokenistic.
At the heart of this paradox sits educational policy. Drawing on Stephen Ball’s policy sociology and Foucault’s notion of discourse, Bradbury (2020) frames policy-making not as an outcome, but as an ongoing, unstable, and interactional process. This discourse establishes its “own specific rationalities,” making the Eurocentric operation of power and its subsequent undercurrents of unrecognised racial inequality appear as “common sense” and “true” from early childhood. In practice, this process further disadvantages bilingual or EAL learners and lower-income students by pathologising them as problematic, forcing them to navigate unchanged, systemic barriers that estrange minoritised children from the fantasy of an idealised white norm. School cultures inbuilt within institutional whiteness driven by ‘colourblind’ ideologies, frequently cause children to view their underprivileged backgrounds and languages as ‘inferior, undesirable or illicit’ (Welply, 2017). This systemic omission of authentic self-expression sets in motion lifelong educational and career trajectories of spatial precarity, directly undermining what Garrett (2024) delineates as the ‘imagined futures’ of racialised minority PhDs as they transition through higher education.
To disrupt this normalisation requires tools that transcend performative diversity checklists. Intersectionality and Critical Race Theory (CRT) frame white organisational spaces not as an objective truth, but as a social construct maintained through daily, mundane interactions. Garrett (2024) draws on Frantz Fanon to remind us that race itself operates as an imagination of colonial minds designed to preserve Western authority as a collective psychosis.
Addressing these tensions, Orr (2022) argues that the ‘Freedom of Speech Act’ stands in contrast to anti-racist, structural critiques, which he describes as ideological indoctrination. However, within my own teaching context as a DPS placement tutor, my PgCert tutor’s formal feedback evaluating my recorded progress tutorials within the TTP Unit 1 Record of Observation (ROT) directly exposes the flaw in this abstract defence of expression. The true barrier to a student’s voice is the systemic conditioning of the hidden curriculum that forces marginalised, working-class learners into a precarious psychological state of “saving face.” To demonstrate they are coping with full-time unpaid placements alongside part-time employment, students mask their exhaustion during tutorials and internally suppress their discomfort. Authentic freedom of speech is therefore often impeded by structural silence. True equity cannot be realised through mere optical representation; it requires cultivating critical thinking within supportive dialectic spaces that empower students to challenge institutional barriers and advocate for themselves both in the university and in real-life professional settings.
Facilitating inclusionary spaces demands what Asif Sadiq (2023) defines as continuous, experiential unlearning, where educators and students act as co-learners becoming “comfortable with being uncomfortable.” The potency of this experiential unsettling is exemplified by The School That Tried to End Racism (Channel 4, 2020), where children experienced an active awakening only when they physically encountered inequality and the reality of white privilege during a sprint race. Translating this into true anti-racist, equitable educational spaces entails this mutual, creative unsettling that allows students to navigate industry thresholds as ‘spatial transitions’.
By centering student counter-narratives and lived experience to expose the non-neutral structures of higher education and industry norms, creative education can foster a democratic learning environment where intersecting identities are safely integrated, valued, and made visible. Challenging the unrealistic rhetoric of sudden systemic transformation, Garrett (2024) argues that significant moments in career trajectories and the potency of ‘imagined futures’ stem from mundane, everyday interactions in institutional spaces. By actively playing out the power dynamics within these micro-spaces, staff and students can genuinely envisage new realities and creative practices suitable for now.
Activating the UAL Moodle function: “Switch a role to get an idea of how someone with that rolewill see this course” as a physical practice of critical empathy, mutual co-learning, and researcher positionality.
Reference List:
Bradbury, A. 2020. A critical race theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England. Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), pp.241-260.
Drabble, N. and Gridneff, R. (2025) Architectures of art and design education: an exploration of UK and international design schools. London: Routledge.
Garrett, R. (2024). Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp.1–15.
Drawing from Georges Perec’s book Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (a spatial autobiography), I probe Perec`s yearning for “An idealised scene. Space as reassurance.” For the student transitioning from the university culture into the industry landscape, however, the corporate creative sector can be a space of alienation rather than reassurance.
The tutorial gym ball (disability) and the student prayer mat (faith, religion, and belief) may serve as case studies of how ordinary objects operate as nuanced material manifestations of identity, care, and embodied defiance. This proposal merges Foucault’s spatial heterotopias with Gaston Bachelard’s poetics of space, transforming abstract accommodations into physical sites of intersectional negotiation to navigate real-world workplace scenarios.
Georges Perec – Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
The Proposed Intervention & Feasibility
This intervention takes the form of a pre-placement workshop that holistically evolves into a teaching and learning resource, titled ‘Space as Reassurance: Navigating Identity and Access Needs in Creative Workplaces ‘.
Designed for BA Jewellery and Textile Design students undertaking the Diploma in Professional Studies (DPS) at the CSM JTM programme, it utilises Object-Based Learning (OBL) to scaffold the anxious, liminal passage from university into industry (Meyer and Land, 2005).
Shifting away from conventional, individualised CV tutorials, this small-group intervention invites students to select an everyday artifact—such as a gym ball or a prayer mat—anchoring their complex, intersecting identities. By applying Judy Willcocks’s (Head of Museum and Study Collection at CSM) exercise on the’emotional or extra-rational reading of an object’, students will draft a literal ‘Curriculum Vitae of an object’ that echoes their own spatial autobiographies within their future workplaces and intersectional access requirements. By analysing how these objects are ‘rendered employable’, students bring their full selves into a shared, intersectional space to actively demystify their workplace rights and protections under the UK Equality Act 2010.
The intervention is logistically feasible as the workshop repurposes existing DPS briefing sessions. It also draws upon the CSM Museum and Study Collection, rendering a static archive as a living, post-workshop resource for independent student research.
Positionality and Intersectional Lens
Operating through an intersectional framework, this intervention synthesises invisible disability, faith, social class, and race. My positionality fundamentally drives this focus. My lens is informed by the intersections of social class, migration, chronic illness, and family caregiving. Coming from a working-class background and migrating from Greece to the UK in my 30s, I have firsthand experience navigating unfamiliar, elite institutional norms without inherited social capital. This outsider perspective is entwined with a lifelong proximity to disability; as a long-term carer for my brother, who lives with a severe mental health condition, and an active support system for my autistic niece, I have intimately witnessed how ableist societal structures pathologise and marginalise families.
Students from marginalised backgrounds frequently confront career precarity and covert institutional barriers, creating intense pressure to “save face.” Whether masking chronic illness, concealing religious or spiritual beliefs, or navigating racialised vulnerability to conform to dominant corporate norms, students internalise access needs as private impositions. This intervention aims to voice these silent challenges, moving students away from professional masking and the fear of academic or professional pathologisation.
Links to Practice
Drawing from Alison Shreeve’s (2008) framework of “pedagogy as art practice,” I integrate my role as a DPS Placement Tutor with my identity as an artist. My creative practice explores how repurposed, fragmented, and ordinary found objects are never neutral; they hold memory, witness loss, and carry living narratives – Microteaching Task: Object-based Learning
This pedagogical lens directly informs how I experience the complex, liminal transition from an educational space into the competitive real world of practice. Addressing this precarity as a Threshold Concept (Osmond, 2009), this intervention is explicitly designed to voice the silent challenge of non-disclosure due to the intense pressure to “save face” and a deep fear of losing employment opportunities – forcing a heavy burden of professional masking.
To scaffold this liminal transition and address this precarity as a Threshold Concept (Osmond, 2009), I use my own lived experience as an embodied pedagogical tool. Due to a chronic musculoskeletal condition, I bring a gym ball to CSM tutorials as a direct replacement for rigid institutional seating, actively normalising reasonable adjustments. By openly disrupting ableist university structures, I physically show students that claiming space is a fundamental right, not a personal or professional failure.
Building on Daniel Miller’s premise that “things make people as much as people make things” (Miller, 2010), the workshop functions as an active, theatrical dialectic space. Integrating Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy with Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, students use their chosen identity objects as physical props to role-play workplace scenarios. Enacting these scripts as active “spect-actors,” students shift from passive subjects of the industry hidden curriculum into collective agents of change.
Through this intervention, the ‘Curriculum Vitae of an object’ transitions from a simple definition of material properties into a mirror for the students themselves – empowering them to navigate the hidden power dynamics of both educational environments and future creative workplaces, whilst repurposing themselves not as professional failures, but as complex individuals holding rich, living narratives that need a safe space to be integrated and made visible.
References and Further Reading:
Bachelard, G. (1958) The poetics of space. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Bhabha, H.K. (2008) ‘Foreword: Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche and the Colonial Condition’, in Fanon, F. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by C.L. Markmann. London: Pluto Press, pp. vii–xxvi.
Boal, A. (1974) Theater of the oppressed. London: Pluto Press.
Foucault, M. (1984) ‘Of other spaces, heterotopias’, translated by J. Miskowiec, Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, (5), pp. 46–49.
Foucault M. (1988) Technologies of the Self.Technologies of the Self, a Seminar with Michel Foucault, pp 16-49. The University of Massachusets Press.
Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin Random House UK.
‘Heterotopia (space)’ (2024) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotopia_(space) (Accessed: 4 June 2026).
Land, R., Cousin, G., Meyer, J.H.F. and Davies, P. (2005) ‘Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (3): implications for course design and evaluation’, in Rust, C. (ed.) Improving student learning: diversity and inclusivity. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, pp. 53–64.
‘Liminality’ (2024) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality (Accessed: 4 June 2026).
Miller, D. (2010) Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Osmond, J.and Tovey, M., 2015.The Threshold of Uncertainty in Teaching Design. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 20 (2), pp. 32-45.
Perec, G. (1974) Species of spaces and other pieces. London: Penguin Books.
Shreeve, A. (2008) Transitions: variation in tutors’ experience of practice and teaching relations in art and design. PhD thesis. Lancaster University.
Willcocks, J. (2018) Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection: object-based learning and the modern art school curriculum. Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo (Accessed: 4 June 2026).
Willcocks, J. (2021) Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection: emotional responses to objects. Available at: https://arts.ac.libguides.com/c.php?g=686452&p=4906489 (Accessed: 4 June 2026).
Willcocks, J. and Barton, (2017) ‘Object-led self-reflection’, in Chatterjee, H.J. and Hannan, L. (eds.) Engaging the senses: object-based learning in higher education. London: Routledge, pp. 43–56.
In this second blog task you will use Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality to analyse how faith intersects with other identity factors.
Faith is a deeply personal dimension of identity that rarely exists in isolation, yet current social institutions, including UK Higher Education settings, commonly reduce it to a rigid, homogenous classification of different ethnic groups such as BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) in data collection. As explored in Workshops 1B and 2B: Intersectional Identities, alongside relevant resources, a profound tension exists between religious and secular identities within dominant Western culture and values, driven by a failure of institutional religious literacy. When Higher Education spaces look at faith through a single lens, they fail to see how a person’s belief system is inextricably bound to their race, gender, class and religious background. By actively applying Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality, we can unmask how prevailing institutional practices perpetuate disparities in educational outcomes by denying how overlapping identities shape the human condition. Without this nuanced framework and supportive resources, policymakers and educators risk stripping individuals of their complexity, reducing them instead to alienated entities.
This reductive alienation is taken to its logical extreme in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1959 satirical sci-fi novel, The Sirens of Titan. Drawing from his lived experience as a World War II veteran, Vonnegut explores the absurdity of human history and the illusion of free will against a backdrop of space travel and interplanetary conflict. Winston Niles Rumfoord, a god-like figure, manipulates history and constructs “The Church of the Utterly Indifferent” to unify a traumatised human race, noting:
“Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people’s blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.”
Kurt Vonnegut—The Sirens of Titan (1959). Orion Publishing Group
Rumfoord utters this line to justify orchestrating a catastrophic war, using the aftermath to introduce a pacifying religion to the repentant masses. Vonnegut presents religion as an elite-engineered tool designed to exploit faith, treating communities as passive vessels while dismissing the innate human need for belonging and meaning-making as a core of religious life.
How far removed is this science-fiction scenario from the reality of creedal religion? This elite manipulation mirrors the rigid, Western doctrines that British-Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah critiques in his TED Talk, “Is Religion Good or Bad? This Is a Trick Question.” Appiah argues that evaluating religion as inherently “good” or “bad” is a false premise; religion does not exist in a vacuum, but is instead a fluid social construct. When a faith tradition is stripped of its everyday practice, charity, community, and meaning-making – and reduced strictly to a rigid creed – it can produce terrible harm, including systemic violence and oppression.
To counteract authoritarian, organised systems of belief and enforced fidelity, Appiah uses the Asante akrafokonmu (soul discs) to convey that religion is something deeply personal, a lived physical practice, an interpretive, embodied experience rather than a static creed dictated from above. The akrafokonmu is not a mere prop used to express an abstract theological idea about the king’s soul; rather, it represents the sense of belonging to the Asante kingdom as integral to both the spiritual world and the Asante social order. This aligns with anthropologist Daniel Miller’s arguments in his book, Stuff (2010) that “things make people as much as people make things.” Miller posits that humanity is inherently articulated through material culture; objects are not detached, secondary things, but are the very mediums through which humans express their connection to the world and construct social reality (Miller, 2010). Thus, human beings naturally project their inner landscapes into physical artifacts – whether traditional Asanteakrafokonmu (soul discs) or modern garments like headcoverings, the turban and hijab – to anchor their place within a community.
While the turban and hijab provide deep community belonging (Appiah, 2014; Miller, 2010), Jaclyn Rekis (2023) highlights the darker dimension of epistemic injustice. When the dominant culture views public material displays of faith, it often harms individuals by reducing complex identities into flat stereotypes. The object is no longer allowed to speak its true language; instead, the dominant system misinterprets the wearer’s lived experience.
This dynamic is illuminated by turban-wearing scholar Dr Simran Jeet Singh (Trinity University, 2016). His material faith marker renders him hypervisible to secular prejudices, yet he actively uses the classroom to challenge these frameworks through empathy. This mirrors the experiences of visible Muslim women in sport (Jawad, 2022), where material garments force a constant, active reclamation of restrictive public spaces. By entering secular classrooms and sports courts with their material faith markers, they disrupt these spaces and force the dominant culture to confront its biases. The garment here is transformed from a target of prejudice into a multi-dimensional tool of education and empathy; it becomes a powerful symbol of negotiating a place in the world.
This intersectional negotiation is a daily reality within my specific teaching contextas a DPS Placement Tutor for the Diploma in Professional Studies. In this role I facilitate processes related to pre-placement briefings that prepare a diverse student body for their industry year. DPS represents the ultimate liminal state (Meyer & Land, 2005) – a precarious transition zone where students leave the protective, progressive culture of the university to navigate real-world creative sectors.
My pedagogical responsibility is to act as a pastoral bridge during students` industry immersion, but also scaffold their critical thinking as I respond to student-led reflective journals during their industry year and assess their final placement reports (before they return to the university to complete their final year study). It is through reading these reflections that the hidden curriculum of the creative industries becomes visible.
When UAL’s diverse student body (where over 45% identify as Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnic, and 29% practice a religion or faith enters industry), their faith considerations collide directly with dominant secular norms, systemic barriers, and contradictory social expectations. Wearing a turban or hijab in a high-fashion workplace, or requesting time and private space for prayer during intense project deadlines, are not abstract ideas; they are lived, bodily negotiations of space.
In these fast-paced creative environments, the essence of religious accommodation is rarely an institutional given, but rather something that must be actively negotiated by the individual student. This reality was captured profoundly by a student from an ethnically diverse background in their final DPS reflective report, which I evaluated during the assessment cycle:”My sanctuary in this world is on my prayer mat, and being allowed as much time as I need for prayer breaks is something I am grateful for from all my placements.”
“My sanctuary in this world is on my prayer mat, and being allowed as much time as I need for prayer breaks is something I am grateful for from all my placements.”
The student’s reflection highlights how a simple material practice (the prayer mat) acts as a physical site of grounding within a secular corporate environment, directly reflecting Miller’s ideas on material culture and sense of belonging. However, the fact that the student expresses gratitude for being allowed this time exposes an underlying power dynamic at play; the industry space still views religious accommodation as a transactional favor rather than a fundamental right, highlighting the ongoing epistemic injustice that students must navigate.
The student’s experience also exposes that while we successfully prepare students for the technical and creative demands of industry, we under-prepare them for the intersectional, bodily realities of navigating secular corporate spaces. However, disrupting systemic power dynamics that are deeply rooted in social institutions and cultural norms comes with clear limitations within my individual teaching context and influence as an educator. Equipping students with the agency to negotiate religious accommodations – such as holy day observances or physical prayer spaces – cannot rest solely on the individual tutor. Effectively addressing these barriers entails structural interventions, such as introducing dedicated sessions on religious literacy and workplace rights under the UK Equality Act 2010. This shift necessitates the involvement of diverse policymakers who bring lived experience, institutional backing, and empathy.
Reference List
Appiah, K. A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). Available at: youtube.com
Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review, 43, pp. 1241–1299. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039?seq=1
Meyer, J. H. F. and Land, R. (2005) ‘Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning’, Higher Education, pp. 373–388.
In your first blog task you will use Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality to analyse how disability intersects with other identity factors:
Workshops 1A & 1B: Key Concepts in Inclusive Practices (Equality Act, Intersectionality, Positionality, Disability, UAL data) and guest lecture, “Frameworks for Disability Equity in HE” with Carys Kennedy, provided the resources to develop an understanding of disability and learning differences. Through literature regarding frameworks such as the social model of disability (Oliver, 1990) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1990), I was introduced to their implications for disabling structures in Higher Education. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality exemplifies how disability is not a monolithic experience, but rather one that intersects with factors like race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic status to create unique, compounded experiences of discrimination or privilege. This theory serves as an intersectional, disability-justice analytical tool for understanding how systems such as ableism, racism, and sexism simultaneously act upon individuals and impact their sense of belonging, thus preventing disabled people from participating fully in society.
At the heart of the resources and short films, the recurring theme is that what disables individuals is not their impairments, but rather the structural barriers deeply embedded in society – whether environmental, attitudinal or procedural. Drawing from the social model of disability (Oliver, 1990) – which acts as a solution-oriented conceptual framework and a practical tool to shift the focus from an individual’s impairment to the barriers imposed by society to realise personal and collective emancipation – all three interviewees provided context about societal challenges, covert discrimination, and systemic oppression. They powerfully brought into view how their disabilities intersect with multilayered dimensions of identity, such as race, socioeconomic status, and gender.
More specifically, British-Nigerian Paralympian and wheelchair user Ade Adepitan exemplifies this intersection. He brings into focus both overt historical and modern-day covert racism, exposing the relation between the intersection of race and disability – as echoed by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement – and the need for meaningful systemic change and intersectional equality beyond surface-level diversity.
Within the context of education, it is important to recognise that disabled students with intersectional identities face compounded discrimination compared to those with a single marginalised identity, creating unique obstacles in learning spaces. In my teaching context – the Diploma in Professional Studies (DPS), which centers on real-world industry experience outside the university culture – students navigate a complex, in-between stage of their studies. Drawing on UAL data and my own experience, it is clear that disability considerations in this space are heavily influenced by ableism and neoliberal norms.
The intersections of disability, neoliberalism, and industry placements often produce tensions that can compromise the student learning experience, including:
A shift of responsibility for adjustments from the institution or employer to the individual student, requiring them to disclose or negotiate their own access.
Under-resourced disability support, which often creates complex Human Resources barriers to securing reasonable adjustments in the workplace.
A focus on employability and high performance in industry placements, which can disadvantage students who work at different paces or require alternative learning environments.
The in-between space of DPS can also amplify tensions related to disability considerations:
Operating outside the main university campus for a year places students in a liminal space, where they may lack the immediate access to university support, such as the UAL’s Disability Service.
A disconnect between the university’s commitment to the social model of disability and the realities of industry employers, who may hold traditional or medicalised views of disability.
The pressure on students to align with ableist norms of constant productivity, causing them to hide or downplay their access needs to seem more employable.
Based on my experience in supporting students in this in-between space of DPS – where they are balancing professional demands with personal access needs – it is vital to implement relational, care-focused approaches over ableist, market-driven ones. This presents clear challenges, as students face additional pressures stemming from an extra year of debt and the cost-of-living crisis, which interrelate with complex social and academic barriers. Framing the discomfort of navigating an uncertain, precarious new territory (such as a year in industry) as a “threshold concept” (Osmond, 2009) allows us to co-create ways to scaffold this transition.
Valuable peer feedback regarding the transition from UAL into industry, the differences in institutional support, and how students cope with this shift brought into discussion the need to address the silent challenge of non-disclosure.
Reflecting on my experience supporting placement students, it is clear that the vast majority of those with invisible disabilities actively choose non-disclosure. This challenge goes far beyond a structural gap between university policy and industry practice; it is driven by an intense pressure to “save face” and a deep fear of compromising future career opportunities. This dynamic forces students to view their access needs as an imposition, creating a heavy burden of professional masking that many carry throughout their working lives.
To scaffold this liminal transition, I use my own lived experience as a teaching tool. Due to a chronic musculoskeletal condition, I cannot sit on standard chairs. Instead, I bring a gym ball to tutorials as a seating substitute to accommodate my physical needs at the workplace (CSM), as shown in the image above. This visible accommodation actively normalises reasonable adjustments for DPS students preparing to enter professional environments. By openly disrupting ableist university structures, I offer an example that can demystify self-advocacy and show students that claiming space for our bodies is a fundamental right, rather than professional failure.
References:
Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review, 43, pp. 1241–1299. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039?seq=1
Chapter 2/ The Social Model in Action: if I had a hammer Mike Oliver (In ‘Implementing the Social Model of Disability: Theory and Research’ edited by Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer (2004); Leeds: The Disability Press, pp. 18-31).
Disabled Students Campaign – Social Model of Disability with Mike Oliver, National Union of Students UK (2018). Youtube [Online]. 22 Nov. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDO6U0-uaoM
Orr S. & Shreeve A. (2017) Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum. Routledge Research in Education.
Further reading/resources:
Rust C. (2005) Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (3)*: Implications for Course Design and Evaluation, Improving Student Learning Diversity and Inclusivity. Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, pp 53–63
Meyer, J. H. F. and Land, R. (2005) ‘Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning’, Higher Education, pp. 373–388.
One of the supplementary readings from Workshop 1 (Social Justice & Education) that has been key in my perception of structural racism within the UK university structures and superficial attempts to address it, is Disaggregating the Black Student experience (Broadhead, 2022). It brought into view the inefficiency of developing a range of policies under the UK Equality Act 2010 that placed legal responsibilities on universities to prevent discrimination through varied compulsory staff awareness and development training programmes adhered to the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) agenda. In my experience completing antiracism e-learning modules or attending antiracism workshops to evidence that my teaching practice is aligned with the social objective of the UAL Performance, Review and Appraisal (PRA) process (Inclusion of an EDI anti-racism objective is mandatory) doesn`t address structural racism in any meaningful way. Broadhead sees this approach as tokenistic and touches upon the complexity of the UK university structures in terms of the lack of diversity and poor representation in anti-racism educational leadership to drive change forward.
What makes this argument coherent is the obvious; the ironic perversity of denying the involvement of those with lived experience in driving changes is in itself racism. Broadhead brings into a discussion South African-born professor Randall Whittaker, pro-vice-chancellor at Leeds Arts University and board member of AdvanceHE to offer his view on the reasons why previous policies have failed to close participation, non-continuation and awarding gaps between black and white students. He also argues for the disaggregation of the homogenous classification of different ethnic groups such as BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) and BME (black and minority ethnic) in data collection to unmask educational inequality.
[…] use and abuse of the homogenous classification of ‘black, Asian and minority ethnic’ (BAME) or similarly ‘black and minority ethnic’ (BME) in policy documents, research articles and reports (Whittaker, 2021). The excuse often given for this is the data related to the field of BAME and BME is required by regulators such as Office of Standards in Education (ofsted) and OfS. Use of the acronyms can be criticised as they disguise issues of intersectionality and obscure different levels of disadvantage. Singh (2011) describes the categories BME and BAME as broad and unstable because they operate in a ‘super-diverse’ world where people have multiple complex identities (Vertovec, 2006). In addition, self-described ethnic identity is not fixed and is socially constructed. Davis and Garrett (2012) argued that the BAME categorisation is flawed and black, Asian and minority ethnic students are not a homogeneous group (Broadhead, 2022)
Whittaker being one of the few senior managers from a minority ethnic background in the UK university context reflects on the importance of lived experience and empathy in higher education policy development and decision making. He recalls his own journey growing up during apartheid in South Africa as a creative overcoming many obstacles before schools were open to people of colour and led him to university so he could leave South Africa to pursue opportunities abroad. Whittaker epitomises how leadership structures need people with lived experience of belonging to marginalised social groups because they bring knowledge, insight and motivation to make changes. When students can relate to you and understand that you have some idea of their experience I think you are able to help them (Whittaker, 2022).
Students come to university with a unique set of experiences and cultural/spiritual nuances, which will ultimately impact on their perception of the university as an institution along with its staff, practices and norms (Singh, 2011). The arts in the UK have been influenced by the canon of western arts for centuries excluding a variety of cultural practices and perspectives inhibiting therefore progress to really explore indigenous arts and creativity (Whittaker, 2022). Students’ sense of belonging at the institution is threatened by exclusionary practices, which in turn contributes to a reluctance to stay and finish their courses (Singh, 2011). Whittaker calls for strategies to disrupt conventional art pedagogies and curricula that have been prevalent in the arts since the 1950s highlighting that academic teaching staff should be supported to develop arts pedagogies suitable for now.
UAL’s Visiting Professor of Race and Education Dr Gurnam Singh (in Collingwood et al., 2018, p. 1) wrote that, “the project of decolonisation is less about seeking out authentic culture as such but more about the opening up of creative spaces to facilitate the production of culture informed by indigenous thinking and doing. Thus, decolonisation should extend beyond adding names of under-represented scholars and creatives to reading lists, but entail a more radical opening up of institutional structures so that artistic knowledge can be co-constructed by people from a diverse range of backgrounds (Broadhead, 2022)
To instigate change the assumption that the HE institutions and those who work in them are less disposed to discriminate should be challenged; there is a clear role here for leadership and management in empowering staff to be active in addressing their own assumptions, practices, fears and biases. Students should also be challenged to think from a cultural capital point of view as the outcome of an arts education is often seen to be the finished work rather than the critical, reflective learning that it has been undertaken in producing that work (Broadhead, 2022).
Both Broadhead and Whittaker argue that the conservatism of arts education needs to be recognised and critically analysed, rather than assuming the sector is inevitably innovative and inclusive. Within my teaching context it is pertinent this assumption to be challenged in order to make changes in my own academic practice and facilitate learning spaces that are more inclusive. The prospect of progressing into the PgCert Inclusive Practices unit necessitates recognition that racist structures underpin all institutions, and that it is the responsibility of everyone to combat this in their own professional context and life practices (Inclusive Practices unit brief, 2024).
[…] A key objective is personal change through identity work (Brown 2022) – Inclusive Practices unit brief
References:
Broadhead, S. (2022) Disaggregating the Black Student Experience, Access and Widening Participation in Arts Higher Education: Practice and Research, Springer International Publishing, pp 51–68. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central
Freire P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Random House UK
Savage P. (2023) The New Life: Mozambican Art Students in the USSR, and the Aesthetic Epistemologies of Anti-Colonial Solidarity. Art History Volume 45, Issue 5: Red Networks: Post war Art Exchange, pp 928-1150. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8365.12692
Case Study 1:Knowing and responding to your students` diverse needs.
Contextual Background
The Diploma in Professional Studies at UAL is an optional form of study that asks students to spend at least 100 days in a work placement or series of work placements and to reflect on this experience between the second and final year of their BA studies. As a DPS tutor, I start working across the CSM BA Jewellery Design and BA Textile Design courses during stage 2 study to help students prepare for the out-in-industry year (approx. 80-120 students initially express interest undertaking the diploma with the option to opt out and progress into stage 3). During this time students are struggling to start thinking of how to approach professional practice, place themselves within industry and get the confidence to apply for placements.
Evaluation
To meet the students` diverse needs and lay the groundwork for understanding the nature and regulations of the diploma, preparatory tutorials and college briefing sessions on Careers & Employability, Health & Safety in the workplace, Disability Service, Student Funding, and Visas are set in place between the Spring and Summer terms of their stage 2 study. I offer 1-to-1 tutorials to facilitate space for dialogue about student placement plans with a focus on communicating their skills and creative ability through portfolios, CVs and Cover Letters to potential placement providers. Interrelated aspects I encounter as particularly challenging during these sessions for students are:
consolidate their creative, practical and transferable skills gained through stage 1 and stage 2, so they can contextualise speculative placement applications;
gain confidence and take ownership of their learning despite their learning differences and/or cultural background;
accepting that the transition between academic study and real-life-experience is an integral part of the student journey and comes with challenges.
Moving Forward
Helping students to consolidate their creative, practical and transferable skills gained through stage 1 and stage 2, so they can contextualise speculative placement applications so far sign-up individual tutorials along with relevant sessions (CV, Portfolios, Cover Letters, Interview Advise) delivered by the UAL Careers and Employability service that I also join are in place. But having to juggle Year 2 main study demands and project submission deadlines with experiential professional practice learning opportunities is an additional pressure. As a result there is a poor turn up to these key sessions and tutorials, and even if students attend, not always benefit. This combined with the lack of well-defined paid internship roles that students could simply apply without the need of sending speculative applications have been ongoing challenges since I was appointed to this teaching job 5 years ago.
The difference however between before I started the PgCert and now is the way I view student difficulty to reflect on their existing creative abilities and how their personal experience, insights and evolution throughout their studies are already relevant to industry more than they think at the first stages of preparation to the year-in-industry and future professional development; to bring this into the student awareness the Microteaching Task: Object-based Learning and relevant content (i.e. theOBL session delivered by Judy Willcocks and context on the multi-sensory aspects in object-based sessions and instinctive reactions to objects as a key part of experiential learning in art/design context that can enhance learning awareness, encourage object analysis and critical reflection) could be applicable to my teaching context.
Looking back although I had no indication of my peers` teaching contexts the task to prepare and deliver a 20-minute learning activity based around an object brought to light how they approach OBL from a wider perspective, an opportunity to experience a rich variety of ways of teaching with objects.
One of the ways to taking this idea forward and experimenting with a new strategy would be apart from the 1-to-1 sessions to also deliver small group sessions and give the option to the students to either bring to these sessions their CVs and portfolios or an object or objects that can relate to. It could be anything, an outcome from the BA Jewellery and Textile design courses` project briefs, process, a tool they use, a material, a drawing, something they own, purchased, or even local currency, an object that reminds them of home and gives them sense of space and belonging. Part of the task could be a brief Curriculum Vitae of the object(s) and brief portfolio that illustrates/echoes the objects` background to bring it to life and render it employable. Interacting with their peers during the session is a opportunity for students to utilise a variety of already existing transferable skills including communication, team working, research and analysis as essential to any professional practice context.
My desired aims are students to step out from main study briefly and reflect from the perspective of their life-experience (e.g. cultural background, identity, learning differences) on how they make aesthetic decisions, form their understanding of key concepts (i.e. branding, style, ethics), relate to materials, see objects beyond their disciplinary training and more rooted in themselves, engage with objects more deeply and recognise what excites them most in the creative process. An exercise not to lose sight of the obvious and mundane, how their practices can actively link to who they are, how their past experiences can impact on their present learning experience as a continuum (Dewey 1938).
This way of engagement as a learning activity although it comes with limitations, it has the potential to start shaping an enquiry-based approach towards professional practice that often is alien to students, and a massive trigger of insecurity that relates to future employment within the creative industries. Yet, within my teaching context and remit what I can influence is the conditions for students to gain confidence and take ownership of their learning by facilitating space for reflection and providing the tools for the students to customise each of these learning opportunities to serve their immediate (e.g how to place themselves within industry and start applying for placements) but also their future professional goals upon graduation and beyond. This type of OBL activities could also be an attempt to enter the students` emotional worlds so that I can get some sense on how they are reaching to learning and offer more constructive guidance to approach industry in a way that is relevant, individualised and meaningful to them.
Through re-encountering myself as a learner I identify the terror students associate with learning something new and difficult. Students studying art and design in higher education are on a journey that involves identity transformation. As Kinniburgh (2014) points out in the context of design, students are developing dual identities as students and professionals from the moment they embark on their studies (Orr and Shreeve, 2017). Identifying the discomfort that arises from the uncertainty of a new territory (e.g. a year-in-industry) as a threshold concept (Osmond, 2009) is to look at ways working with students to scaffold transition and to potentially come close accepting that the transition between academic study and real-life-experience is an integral part of the student journey and comes with challenges.
“Initiation ritual of boys in Malawi. The ritual marks the passage from child to adult male, a liminal stage in their context of their lives. In anthropology, liminality (from Latinlīmen ‘a threshold’) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete.[2] During a rite’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way (which completing the rite establishes).” (Wikipedia Entry 2024)
Case Study 2: Planning and teaching for effective learning
Contextual Background
The Diploma in Professional Studies is an optional form of study that asks BA Jewellery Design and BA Textile Design students to spend at least 100 days in a work placement or series of work placements and to reflect on this experience between the second and final year of their BA studies. When students progress into the diploma year and are in professional placements, I support their progress (approx. 60-80 students) through a structure that enables the cohort to navigate challenges within diverse professional settings, meet the requirements to qualify for the diploma and successfully complete the year.
Evaluation
My main teaching format is online compulsory 1-to-1 progress tutorials (one each term or more depending on student individual circumstances). These sessions are tailored to the students` individual needs with a focus placed on sustaining an enquiring attitude towards industry learning. My aim is to keep students engaged from the beginning of the academic cycle to enhance placement learning awareness in reference to the different levels of student commitment, suitability of placement activity and response to real-life-experience that is significantly differentiated from the college culture.
Discussions with students within the context of professional practice are never straightforward and inevitably tend to be intimate at times; keeping track of student progress, fostering a safe space to elicit student perception on the inevitable shift in their creative identity that industry learning entails and ultimately involves a repositioning of self in relation to their subject of study and worldview are ongoing concerns about the effectiveness of my teaching approach developed so far.
Moving Forward
One of the strategies already developed to provide active support to students during the 1-to-1 sessions persisting through difficulties they encounter and make connections between new knowledge and existing understanding of their discipline as well as ensuring they submit assessment points for the final reflective summative placement report is diary-keeping.
The diary is a tool for students to gradually compile information for their placement report and it is not assessed however, students are asked to submit extracts from their diaries periodically throughout the year; these submissions help me to build a picture of student engagement with both their placements and their ongoing professional research and development. The diary extract submissions are also revealing difficulties students may encounter (i.e. welfare, terms/conditions of placement activity, ISA adjustments) which allow me to detect, openly address during progress tutorials and offer guidance.
It is a pedagogic challenge to empower students and encourage the practice of diary-keeping to play up aspects of placement learning that drives their creative potential whist they are often struggling to cope with the demands and resentments of unpaid full-time work. This dissonance between meaningful learning and actual world of practice and its constrains comes with ethical contradictions involved in performing an inclusive agenda and offering a cohesive student-centered learning experience. An affirmation on the effectiveness of the diary-keeping as a pedagogic tool to offer a more individualized and thorough support to the students is literature about the framework informed by the work of Michel Foucault.
Mark Barrow`s article on Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect is concerned with the productive effects of educational processes such as assessment regimes in shaping students individuality by using methods like supplementary material (learning diary or journal), facilitating in this way self-reflection and self-examination to play out power relations inculcated in teacher-centered approach to learning. Drawing on Foucault`s Technologies of the Self, rooted in the historical constitution of the self – a genealogical investigation of moral practices outlined as epimelesthai sautou, “to take care of oneself”, a precept which permits individuals to effect by the own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies, souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being (Foucault, 1982), the article exemplifies how diary-keeping as a confessional tool (considering the practice of confession is at the heart of Foucault`s ethical study) enables students to confront their self, monitor their development as designers and consider their being in relation to the truth game of their discipline.
As a chronological record, the learning diary exposes the developing character of the student in relation to the real world dynamics and the rules for the production of truth in their discipline that mirrors the discovery of the truth concerning oneself which with guidance influences the conditions to support students to set their own rules of conduct and foster in themselves the potential to be better able to care for the self.
In my teaching context encouraging more actively placement students to disclose themselves in an individualised process of learning requires the students to sustain a coherent narrative about their working practices, their thoughts and feelings about their developing course specific skills in respect to their own being as experience. In this process students are constantly updating and revisiting the narrative through ongoing analysis of placement activity in reference to their developing character. With emphasis placed on the application of discipline focused theoretical understanding to real situations as they are gaining experience of the workplace students could better integrate industry learning into a coherent personal argument which in return assists the students in dealing with the real power relations of the world of work.
Diary Exact Submission example / Placement with a London based textile development studio: “Day 34; in the afternoon I filled in gaps of sewing on the d i o r lion blanket by extending sections of colour. Where the loin moves and stitched in the machine it created gaps that need to be filled. Day 35; today I helped Jenny (placement supervisor) a bit more but also worked more on the lion which I enjoy…“
Case Study 3: Assessing learning and exchanging feedback
Contextual Background
To meet the learning outcomes and assessment criteria of the Diploma in Professional Studies, students need to evidence 100 days minimum of placement activity and a 3,000-4,000-word Placement Report, describing and evaluating their learning and experiences, skills/employability enhancement and career development which leads to a pass or fail outcome.
As students are reaching the end of the year in industry before they return to college to resume their main study, ensuring they can contextualise placement learning and submit their final reflective summative placement report in reference to the transfer of disciplinary knowledge to actual world of practice and then back to academic study has been a key challenge.
Evaluation
As described in case study 2 Planning and teaching for effective learning my main teaching format already developed to offer active support to students throughout the year are online 1-to-1 progress tutorials. These session are driven by student individual circumstances and also provide context about the diary and placement report project brief. Since the outcomes of the placement year are evaluated on a holistic pass/fail assessment with no grading scale to measure the level of performance, assessing learning and exchanging feedback needs to be explicit to clearly indicate how well the learning outcomes are achieved and what the higher expectations aligned with meaningful learning are. As the nature of the diploma is defined by experiential work-based highly individualised learning conditions, it is essential to build in possibilities for dialogue early in the year to negotiate educational objectives and evaluative criteria that echo the student motivation/need, changing circumstances and shift in their creative identity that industry learning involves.
Keep developing a strategy to best facilitate a dialectic space that constitutes a fair, outcome-led assessment process enabling both teacher and student to track the development of learning and capture the whole learning experience as well as demonstrating that the objectives of the year are met has its complexities and limitations.
In my teaching context that falls into experiential/industry learning constituted outside the university culture for a year (yet still embedded into an in-between stage of the main subject of study), tolerating uncertainty is part of the learning outcomes; ambiguity and uncertainty are positive conditions and prerequisite for creativity and a creative pedagogy in higher education. To thrive in uncertain and unknown futures, students require resilience and an ability to manage ambiguity and uncertainty (Orr and Shreeve, 2017). The tension then between the real world dynamics and creative educational context needs to be at play as a driving force not to be resolved or overcome but explored and considered as a determinant of the quality of outcomes of student learning. It is in the process of continuous self-examination, self-reflection (as detailed in case study 2 through diary keeping) evaluation, synthesis and analysis of the real-world relationships, opportunities and constraints and/or apparently unrewarding experiences of placement activity that students are provided the potential becoming empowered to consider and conceptualise their discipline and its limits in reference to an assessment regime that “maps onto the world rather being defined by itself” (Davis, 2001).
Aiming for an assessment experience that has utility beyond creative education and promotes a deep approach to learning means enabling students to make their own judgements about their performance and how they develop their disciplinary knowledge, work ethic, core attitudes, beliefs and values about their subject of study and the professional world for which they are preparing. In my local context of teaching a deep approach to learning also means preparing students for uncertain times; to use assessment as an authentic educative experience and not as a one-off, isolated event requires opening up space for genuine reflection allowing students to disclose their emotional world, the development of mind and character and breadth of their experience. This provides me some sense about the methods and intellectual processes on how students are reaching to the learning outcomes so that I can offer more constructive and individualised feedback and guidance to approach new forms of experience and the next act of production in their final year. Attached the project brief and a specific example of a placement report and assessment feedback as a reference.
Barrow, M. (2006). Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect. Studies in Higher Education, 31(3), 357–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600680869
Foucault M. (1988) Technologies of the Self.Technologies of the Self, a Seminar with Michel Foucault, pp 16-49. The University of Massachusets Press
Orr S. & Shreeve A. (2017) Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum. Routledge Research in Education
Willcocks J. (2018) Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection: Object-based learning and the modern art school curriculum. Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo
The idea of threshold concepts developed by Meyer and Land (2003) in the context of the ETL (Enhancing Teaching Learning environments) project, Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (3): implications for course design and evaluation paper (Rust, 2005) introduced me to concepts embodied as akin to a portal opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking, representing a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. Threshold concepts defined as potentially transformative points in the student`s learning experience can also entail a shift in the student`s identity. The result may be that students remain stuck in an ‘in-between’ state termed as a state of ‘liminality’, from the Latin meaning within the threshold. Threshold concepts as crucial gateways to mastering a discipline require learners to accept the loss of earlier the security of a previously held conceptual stance to enter less familiar and sometimes disconcerting new territory.
Savin-Baden`s work (2005) on the notion of disjunction in problem-based learning (PBL) would seem to point to something similar to the notion of a threshold conception: ‘Disjunction’ can be seen as a kind of place that students might reach after they have encountered a threshold concept that they have not managed to breach. Many staff and students have described ‘disjunction’ as being a little like hitting a brick wall in learning and they have used various strategies to try to deal with it (Savin-Baden 2005). If the portal appears bricked up then clearly the threshold of a new transformative understanding is not visible to the student (Rust 2005)
Encountering Jannis Kounellis`s installation, a physical blockage of a threshold (currently on display at the Tate Modern) resonated with me notions of the troublesome learning space that students reach within the context of professional practice and the relativity of their own discipline/subject of study to the real-world relationships, opportunities and constraints. Opting for an experiential work-based additional year between 2nd and final year study the portal from academic study to the year-in-industry often appears bricked up rendering this transition unsettling and disorienting. The complexities of the transformation that students undergo is particularly evident within this stage of liminality as they are stepping out of main study and experiencing a shift in their creative identity and positionality that active learning and professional practice entail.
Jannis Kounellis, Untitled 1969 (stone) Every time this work is displayed it is always installed in a doorway, performing the same physical blockage of the threshold. The artist`s instruction are to use stones that are sourced locally from the place where the work is exhibited. The way is executed in a simple masonry style using blocks of irregular sizes, often seen in a farmland walls, and appears out of place in a gallery interior.
Kounellis`s instructions to use stones that are sourced locally from the place where the work every time is exhibited brings the real, natural life into the gallery setting. Reminiscent of farmland walls, the work interrelates with the specificity of the location the stones are originated from as a one-off event that in itself is in a perpetual state of becoming, never fixed but ever shifted and reconfigured since the first time was conceived and exhibited in 1969. Each stone block, a living entity colonised by invisible yet active micro-organisms, is telling when you look closely; discoloration, irregularities, erosion, moss and algae build up, all the physical attributes of a material that speaks of the topography, the endless interactions that support life, the natural and man-made features of the place that the work is displayed. Open to interpretation, what constitutes this physical blockage of the threshold is the tension between choice and non-choice, resolution and irresolution, permanence and impermanence bringing into play a reality effect that echoes the human experience and collective memory, a metaphor of liminality, a middle stage of a rite of initiation to enter a new territory, a way of thinking, a state of being continuously subject to chance and change. An embodiment of ‘the passage of human history, of the changing of the human self and its products’ (Thomas McEvilley, 1986).
Similarly, in my teaching context it is that troublesome learning space and blockage of the threshold that can influence powerful transformative points in the student experience and positioning of self in relation to their subject of study and worldview. Helping students to develop genuine understanding of a troublesome concept means to also prompt students to engage with personal knowledge to restore continuity between their discipline and the everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognised to constitute experience. It is imperative therefore the learning environment to facilitate the connections between lived experience and world of practice opening up a field of possibilities that the creative activity as an ongoing process of becoming and future learning can take place.
“Consideration of threshold concepts to some extent rattles the cage of a linear approach to curriculum design that assumes standard and homogenised outcomes. Lather (1998:492)offers a counter-narrative rejecting ‘the rhetorical position of ‘the one who knows’ in favour of ‘a praxis of not being so sure’. A ‘praxis of stuck places’ might tolerate ‘discrepancies, repetitions, hesitations, and uncertainties, always beginning again’ (491). What it refuses is ‘the privileging of containment over excess, thought over affect, structure over speed, linear causality over complexity, and intention over aggregate capacities’ (Rust, 2005)
Apart from the need of integrative learning environments and opportunities for active student engagement, structured guidance, application and discussion, to help students accept the troublesome nature of a threshold concept as an essential part of the learning process also necessitates deep listening. ‘This requires to cultivating third ear that listens not for what the student knows (discrete packages of knowledge) but for the terms that shape a student`s knowledge, her not knowing, her forgetting, her circles of stuck places and resistances’ (Ellsworth1997:71). Addison adds, there has been much discussion of the importance of ‘not knowing’ within art education; ‘a kind of liminal space where not knowing is not only not overcome, but sought, explored and savoured; where failure, boredom, frustration and getting lost are constructively deployed alongside wonder, secrets and play‘. A set of productive dialectic practices, highlighting the difficulties and delights of learning through continuous making, a process of never quite reaching goals (Addison, 2014).
Gaston Bachelard – The Poetics of Space (from The Dialectics of Inside and Outside: ‘The door scents me, it hesitates’ by Jean Pellerin). ‘But why not take the poets verse a small element of spontaneous mythology? Why not sense that incarnated in the door, there is a little threshold god? And there is no need to return to a distant past that is no longer our own, to find sacred properties attributed to the threshold. In the 3rd century Porphyrus wrote: A threshold is a sacred thing.
References
Bachelard G. (1958) The Poetics of Space. Boston, Massachussets: Beacon Press, pp 223
Mcevilley T. (1986) Essay: Mutual Prophecies: The Art of Jannis Kounellis, Jannis Kounellis, Exhibition Organized by Mary Jane Jacob. Publisher: Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art
Rust C. (2005) Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (3)*: Implications for Course Design and Evaluation, Improving Student Learning Diversity and Inclusivity. Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, pp 53–63
Further References/Reading:
Baudrillard J. (1968) The System of Objects. London: Verso
Christov-Bakargiev C. (1999) Arte-Povera. London: Phaidon Press
Dewey J. (1934) Art as Experience. New York: Penguin Group
Dewey J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York: Free Press
Hanh T.N. (2013) The Art of Communicating. London: Penguin Random House UK
Hunt J.D. (2022) Genius Loci: An Essay on the Meanings of Place. London: Reaktion Books
Meyer JHF and Land R (2005) Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (2) – Epistemological Considerations and a Conceptual Framework for Teaching and Learning, Source: Higher Education, Vol. 49, No3, Issues in Teaching ad Learning from a Student Learning Perspective : A Tribute to Noel Entwistle, pp. 373–388
Steward S. (2019) The Ruins Lessons. Meaning and Material in Western Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
The reading activities in preparation to workshop 3 & 4, The Learning Outcome Debate introduced new to me concepts about principles of constructive alignment (Biggs 1996), teaching/learning activities and assessment tasks and how such systems enable programme teams to design intended learning outcomes based on a functional model for fair frameworks for assessment. Nicholas Addison in Doubting Outcomes in Higher Education Contexts: from Performativity towards Emergence and Negotiation, states that these systems can be appropriate for some disciplines, in Art & Design education however, given its complexity and multifaceted contexts limit and inhibit students` input, particularly as students move towards self-initiated activities and objectives LOs discourage difference, close potential and homogenise learning identities.
Reasons why learning outcomes are so important, the benefits/opportunities, challenges and limitations of outcome-based learning have started resonating with me but how to best adapt an evidence-informed approach within the UK Professional Standards Framework ‘areas of activity’, ‘core knowledge’ and ‘values’ expected of HE teachers are not explicit to me neither how applicable can be to my local context of teaching. Alan Davies`s document Writing Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria in Art and Design outlines the purposes of outcome-led learning in art and design and identifies misconceptions about the purpose and significance of setting learning outcomes and assessment criteria as an opportunity for the students to define the approach they take to learning and clearly understand how and at what level they are expected to achieve these learning outcomes (and ultimately meet the assessment criteria) but also for universities to establish how to move forwards to a learning paradigm which supports autonomous learning.
Davies presents the challenge to articulate learning outcomes promoting both cognitive attributes and measurable achievement within the ambiguous terms associated with art and design such as creativity, imagination and originality. Implications involved with teaching and assessing only those outcomes that can be easily measured by dis-aggregating what is to be understood into more measurable entities, itemising processes and learning in parts; a surface approach that can lead to far too many generated outcomes so the students are not concerned about overall intention but about developing a strategic approach to meet only the basic requirements to pass stages without delving into the most important aspects of the subject of study.
“LOs are often written with an emphasis on convergent rather than divergent thinking processes. Convergent thinking involves solving problems that have a particular unique answer. This kind of thinking is focused or ‘closed’. Divergent thinking is to do with generating alternatives, where the notion of correct gives way to broader assessments of value such as creativity, imagination and originality (Biggs 1999). How can we encourage students to take risks and challenge orthodoxy in the form of the LOs that encourages only one way of thinking? How do we write LOs which encourage students to develop a divergent approach as well as a convergent one, and how do we recognise the quality of the outcome? What would be the evidence?” (Davies, 2001)
This inevitably compromises a holistic and integrated understanding by the students which is more consistent with a deep approach determined by criterion-referenced and student-centred assessment schemes that encourage students to become more independent as learners, to develop a more sophisticated conception of the discipline they are studying that map onto the world rather being closed and defined in terms of itself. The extent to which as argued by Mark Barrow in the article Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect (2006) assessment might incite students to reflect on themselves, on their normality or deviance as an act of ‘deliberate aesthetic and ethical self-forming’ (Bleakley, 2000, p.417), and thus on their progress towards meeting the transformative goals of higher education and towards being expert in their chosen discipline.
So instead of manoeuvring students into correct and functional form of thinking it should be inculcated in the students an attitude of personal inquiry and learning achievement resulting from engagement in not only pre-specified set tasks by programme teams and intended learning outcomes. Davis states, that as students advance through their course they may be responsible for setting their own learning outcomes. These can be referred to as negotiated learning outcomes.
Learners amass treasure not just diamonds (Biggs J 1996)
But how the assessment regime in art & design can encourage students to take ownership of their learning and explore the boundaries of their discipline, enabling them to discover for themselves where their values lie in terms of their approach to learning and the nature of their subject? How assessment can give students a structure, not to cling to but to negotiate with?
“Cultural, Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), routed in Vygotskian theory as a framework with focus on mediation in deploying cultural tools to aid the subject (learner) in addressing their object (motivation or purpose); CHAT accepts that learning is not an isolated event but has an impact on communities outside the educational institution recognising the wider social implications of learning. For Vygotsky creativity is the basis for perpetual change, imagination its engine. Humans are cultural tools (affective, mechanical semiotic) to reconfigure materials so as to transform the social environment.” (Addison, 2014)
‘LO systems dismantle the affective relations that underpin the sociality of learning, the give and take of human interaction. Rather, if a degree of trust were opened up to allow teachers to design programmes with the use of open frameworks (e.g. CHAT), learning could be negotiated to meet student motivation, disciplinary imperatives and social need, enabling teachers and learners to assess meaningful activity.” (Addison, 2014)
Barrow, M. (2006). Assessment and student transformation: linking character and intellect. Studies in Higher Education, 31(3), 357–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600680869
