— i am a lecturer in illustration and visual media here at LCC. during this presentation i will focus on my responsibilities as a Level 4 Unit Leader, co-ordinating 129 students.
—the contextual challenges i have attempted to address throughout this project relate to facilitating meaningful creative exchange within a large and diverse student cohort — in a very awkward room, which is extremely long and narrow. addressing 129 students in this context can feel really impersonal —
—but through this project i hope to have begun to address these issues through the curriculum design, strengthening the classroom as a communal space and as a learning community.
the research question i have been working with is…
“how can illustration strategies be used to examine, interpret and describe socio-cultural narratives?”
this question has a dual application — to me as a researcher, examining the classroom, and to the students themselves, examining the role of their own socio-cultural contexts within illustration practice.
i aimed for this project to help facilitate a deeper understanding of the role of the SELF in the classroom, and to give both students and staff a wider view on the INDIVIDUALS who make up the learning community.
i believe each of these focuses can help strengthen our understanding of diversity and collectivity in the cohort
i wanted the project content to address individual selfhood directly, but also to CONSIDER AND BE OPEN TO socio-cultural INFLUENCE outside of the self.
in reading Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Mapping the Margins, and considering the inherent risks that students can experience in revealing the self and intersectional identities in the classroom, it was important that our students understand that they possess the autonomy NOT to share anything inherently personal about their identities, in order to engage with themes of individuality within the project.
it is with this in mind that i shifted the project focus towards the concept of how individual ‘taste’ is constructed in illustration practice, and what it means to share certain elements of ourSELVES through our ‘taste’, within the learning community and beyond.
so now for the action
introducing this project focus meant collaboratively re-writing the curriculum entirely
i also wanted to test A NEW and experimental format for our Formative Assessment session in the unit, which would traditionally be held in small group ‘critiques’ — as i felt that the small group format can be limiting in understanding the learning community as a whole
i’d like to briefly share 3 resources that offered rationale for
my research methods
this provocative address found in a Sports Banger zine, stating that DESIGN alone can shift the foundations of a failed system
offered rationale for methods in supporting originality in illustration practice, through courage, and risk-taking, which theorist Mireille Fauchon states as integral to the methodology of the illustrator
this slogan, taken from a guide to making newspapers, in the MayDay rooms archive
offers a rationale for the students to act as valuable resources in the classroom, creating knowledge as well as consuming it
and Emma Warren’s pamphlet, Document Your Culture
offers rationale for methods in championing and preserving everyday, untold or marginalised histories
i believe that in doing this, we should also prioritise questioning what is considered specialised discourse within our discipline, examining WHO academic ILLUSTRATION practice can and should speak to…
actioning this rationale meant offering it directly to the students in the form of questions, prompts, activities, and resources —
for example, by updating the unit reading list, to include incredible resources like Audre Lorde’s Questionnaire to Oneself
it also meant designing a new format for our Formative Assessment session THAT EMBODIED the spirit of the rationale.
IN going back to Sports Banger’s practice, his catwalk THE PEOPLE DESERVE BEAUTY, felt like a democratisation of luxury and a celebration of the spectacular in the everyday. yes that headdress is made out of fake chanel toilet seat covers. it was in this spirit that it was decided that the
Formative Assessment session could take the form of an experimental catwalk showcase, taking ownership of the shape of the room and the mob potential of our class sizes.
this felt like an ambitious and potentially risky idea — so it was again important to implement optionality within the student’s project brief.
— we offered a variety of potential formats that could offer veiling or discretion
— more familiar ways of working, such as 2d formats, were also welcomed
— and we also made ‘performing’ optional, offering students optionality of using a model, or opting out of the showcase
we made sure there was plenty of opportunities for students to get comfortable with the new format of sharing works, organising multiple workshops for testing, and all-the-while discussing the emotive impact on both the artist and audience
we also illustrated and presented detailed planning documents to the students, to help alleviate any anxieties or accidents that might have been caused through uncertainty or lack of preparation
and of course we prepared the learning environment accordingly
the methods used to get here were
PEDAGOGIC METHODS HELPED US FACILITATE EVERYTHING
LITERARY RESEARCH GUIDED THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
I ASKED THE STUDENTS FOR THEIR FEEDBACK
I ASKED MY COLLEAGUES FOR THEIR OBSERVATIONS
AND WE ASKED A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER TO DOCUMENT THE SHOWCASE
SO! here’s what happened:
gecko was the first student to take centre-stage and i will forever be grateful for their energy. we knew, from this moment on, that the session format had the potential to overcome communicative barriers in the architecture of the space.
it was interesting to observe the potential for the atmosphere to shift with a student’s presence, and the intention in what they were communicating. you could sense the focus in the room in every exhibit, like here with tanza rae’s strength
shanti-deva asked a model to walk the outcome in place of herself. this optionality felt particularly supportive where theoretical underpinnings addressed protected characteristics — the model walked down the catwalk with clarity and a sense of security. shanti-deva’s selection of the model has also evidenced a curatorial talent, which feels like an advanced skillset at Level 4.
equally, the format of the showcase was an opportunity for students to test skills in their own performative potential — paige wanted to highlight a lack of racial inclusion in the gaming world, bursting onto the catwalk like an action figure — the performance felt humorous at the same time as being deeply disconcerting, which was such a powerful mix
in all of the outcomes there was different approaches to criticality,
complexity,
history,
identity, and levels of making,
anastasia, who showcased her message THROUGH DANCING down the catwalk, amongst so many, highlighted
that while some student’s making processes did not take a typical approach to illustrative ‘craft’, again, a curatorial and theoretical rigour was communicated — in this case through lamirah’s research into barbie and femininity.
offering a level platform for these diverse skillsets felt like new ground for me in the Level 4 learning environment.
also, attendance was outstanding!
some necessary humble pie
at the beginning of the project the course leader and year leader were concerned that using an expanded definition of ‘illustration’ in the Level 4 curriculum might affect student retention rates, and asked my co-lecturer and i to delay in revealing to the students what format the final showcase would take.
this was challenging, as my confidence buckles when students feel they need more guidance from a brief and I’m not able to give it, which without the anchoring of the showcase, happened a little at first.
it was comforting to re-read these words from bell hooks, who admits having to surrender her need for immediate affirmation of successful teaching
one colleague offered some insight on the process of josie — who was completely uncertain and uncomfortable at the beginning of the project — but through having to work through that initial uncertainty through making, rather than through early guidance or limitations in format, josie came out of the project with a huge body of work, and a truly original outcome. her coaching tutor believes this outcome would not have been possible without the emphasis on exploration, originality, and experimentation inherent in the project structure.
LASTLY — throughout the catwalk i MC’ed, this was free-styled — i was generally trying to encourage support and collectivity — a kind of bez from happy mondays hype man. a co-lecturer came up with the idea afterward that we could have asked students to provide written context to their works, that could have been read out as they walked. such a good (and potentially more supportive) idea. NEXT TIME.