SON Website

I find the SON website particularly notable for its huge scope.  There is so much!  The richness of this resource changes the way that it might be used in my mind.  This is  a library, an alternative library,  with a specific progressive remit,  to present a range of new and less heard voices in a dynamic and provocative format.  Rather than presenting this to students as a particular narrow resource I would rather make this  a standard go-to resource for any inquiry. “I should see what’s on SON about ……..”.   

I am reminded of Yinka Shonibare’s work “the British Library”  installation which contains thousands of books featuring names and voices of immigrants to Britain who have shaped the cultural fabric.  Among other things, this work seems to remind us that there is a whole catalogue of cultural influences that needs to be a part of the establishment as they are crucially relevant to contemporary British life.  It seems that  SON is doing something similar

Reading into the website I dug into the photography section.  There is an interesting article entitled “the Shirley Card”  by Shannyce Adamson discussing the bias built into color photography processing of different skin tones.  The Shirley cards were reference photos used to achieve pleasing skin tones by adjusting equipment.  White faces were used for years until relatively recently and the result is a bias toward naturalistic white skin tones in photographic and video equipment.  More contemporary reference cards feature black, brown and white faces enabling and encouraging better callibration for all skin tones.  

I feel that the intellectual/creative resources that we access need to have a more balanced cultural reference like the modern “Shirley Cards”.  SON is playing a part in doing that.

A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment 

Aaron J. Hahn Tapper 

This  portion of a chapter mentions some of the bedrock concepts of Social justice education. 

I was particularly interested in the “Contact Hypothesis” and “Social Identity Theory” as these seem to relate specifically to the development of inclusive learning environments. I thought particularly of the contact hypothesis regarding a student from this past term who seemed creatively inspired and energised but completely isolated from her peers.  I had the sense that she was from a very different socioeconomic and educational background.  Despite some effort on my part she seemed unwilling or uninterested in collaborating.  I feel that this isolation restricted the students educational benefit as she did not have the enrichment that comes from peer learning and had to rely only on herself. I wonder if I should have done more to encourage the student to connect with peers but I felt that I would have been overstepping in my role as a technician.  Also as an older white middle-class man perhaps I could not understand the stresses and anxieties that may have been keeping her working on her own.

Josephine Kwhali’s Witness Video  reinforces what we have learned about critical race theory.  Her evident frustration seems to be telling us that there is something more going on here than unconscious bias.  She implies that this really is about wilful ignorance rather than something beyond the conscious control of people like me who have the jobs, money, power, and education.

Retention and attainment in the disciplines :Art and Design

Terry Finnegan and Aisha Richards

A revealing presentation of  (somewhat dated) statistics related to retention and attainment particularly related to marginalized groups.  I would be curious to know more about the effect on attainment that poverty has. Although, there is a brief mention of the attainment differencial between first quintile socioeconomic group and others but it would be interesting to have a more detailed breakdown.  Also would be interesting to hear about intersectional effects of race and socioeconomic group.  I can’t help but feel that UAL has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to poverty.  It doesn’t seem to be very high  on the agenda  when speaking about inclusion.

Religion, Belief and Faith identities website

I find that this website deals with faith in a largely academic and conceptual way.  I am a technician so interact on a more practical, physical level with students and ,as such, I feel I would have a hard time integrating this material into my work with students.  However, there are students who choose to create work with content related to faith and issues surrounding Faith.  The website could be a useful source of information to which to refer them.  

I liked the pragmatism of the “Pen Portraits” case study.  Angela Drisdale Gordon’s down-to-earth and open approach to discussions of faith with her students appeals to me.  I can imagine having informal discussions with students regarding  faith-related content of their work.  The simple acknowledgement of the content as a legitimate area for discussion with a technician would perhaps help to insure that it is taken as an  acceptable topic in an art-school context and among peers.

I do feel that while the esoteric content of the website is valuable, that it would be useful to have some slightly more pragmatic content.  Perhaps a section related to the challenges of combining Faith and arts education as a student.  Just last week I witnessed a student who was struggling to balance his intense course commitments with his commitment to observe Ramadan.  Exploration of this kind of issue would be positive for students and staff alike.

‘Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education.’ – Modood and Calhoun

Interesting to learn how  the relationship with faith in young people varies quite dramatically dependent on cultural background.  This has real implications with how we relate to our students and the varying views of faith that they might have.  Also,  interested how secularism from country to country does vary,  even among western European countries.  For example,  France has a much more stringent separation between church and state than Britain.

Both authors bring up the topic of “religious literacy”.  I think that this is a valuable term for us as educators.  I believe that we all need to develop a “religious literacy” in order to engage with students on topics of Faith in their work, and indeed even related to pastoral issues.

Lecture –     Kwame Anthony Appiah: Mistaken Identities

I was quite intimidated by the fierce intellectualism exhibited in  Kwame Anthony Appiah’s lecture,  by him and also by the questioners he engaged with.  Perhaps it is actually hearing someone speak this way rather than seeing it in writing, but this mode of thought and expression feels very different from my own, and from the way that I interact with my students.   That aside,  I found that the lecture was a compelling expression of Appiahs belief that Faith is a flexible, ever changing phenomenon.  He downplays any notion of Faith being fixed  and permanent.  Even when discussing fundementalism he observes that fundamentalist movements appear from nowhere as new movements but paradoxically attach themselves to historical dogma.  His suggestion seems to be that Faith is constantly shifting and that everything is negotiable and changeable dependant on the society of the moment.  Ultimately this feels like a message of hope,  that our sometimes tense negotiation with multiple faiths will somehow work out in the end.

Aalimah’s case study

One aspect of this really caught my attention.  This was the fact that Aalimah’s artwork and the subsequent criticism of it had become a personal criticism  of her identity.  This is complex.  Students often choose to use elements of their own identity as subjects of their artwork.  I expect it is part of being a young artist and finding your voice.  This will inevitably mean that when their work is critically evaluated, by peers and tutors,  that this will very much feel like a personal critique.  

How do we responsibly  facilitate critique of work dealing with people’s identity?  

I really liked OPTION 1 as a set of exercises to establish a positive critical framework with a class group

Christine Sun Kim – A film

A really fascinating film about the work of artist Christine Sun Kim.  She makes sound art and is  hearing impaired.  The film shows her working process creating visualised sonic environments.  She explores and expresses ideas connected with sound by making the sound detectable visually or tactilely.  This seems to be an essay in grasping that which might seem unreachable,  making visible that which is hidden.  The film also speaks of the way that artistic inquiry subverts the norm and allows us to find new ways to express notions which might seem inexpressible.

This artwork seems directly related to Christine Sun Kim’s identity.  It raises a question regarding how artists who are part of a minority culture may feel implicit pressure to speak about their identity, to be its representatives.  It seems that there is a danger that this is the expectation for artists who are part of minority groups.   As educators I feel that we need to tread the line carefully between empowering students to discuss their identity while making sure that students don’t feel an expectation that their identity has to be the primary source of their work.

Understanding Visual Impairments-Claudette Davis Bonnick.

 Davis Bonnick is a Lecturer in garment cutting at LCF.  She embarked on a project to explore the possibility of making garment cutting accessible to students with visual impairments.  Through a research project she found that it was indeed possible to do this with only some relatively straightforward adaptations for the students.  This suggests some really exciting opportunities giving access to visually impaired students in Fashion. Also, I imagine, it could challenge the ways in which we produce and consume fashion

This made me think about how we are so visually oriented  in much of the practice at UAL.  The performance program, where I work, is certainly heavily dependent on visual work.  So many of the ways we ask student to create, communicate and interact are visual.  But then I realise that there is also lots of potential for providing access for visually impaired students, and indeed for opening up avenues for performance  and design for Performance that are not so visually oriented.  I imagine that the policy now would be to make adjustments to our delivery to accommodate partially sighted students in order to facilitate their learning.  The problem with this is that the opportunities/adjustments have to already be installed in order to attract students in the first place.  We would need to make the investment of time and money into creating properly accessible curricula in advance. Why would a student wish to venture into a situation that was not prepared for them, hoping that proper accommodations would be made and opportunities provided?

Khairani Barokka’s article regarding the challenges of touring her performance while dealing with chronic pain provoked some thoughts.    In particular I was struck by how she insisted that her performances were accessible to  a wide range of audiences.  Text versions of the show easily accessible for D/deaf audiences and wheelchair accessible.  She enforced this rigorously and made a point of prioritizing this accessibility.    While this is great, and indeed an example to the wider performance community,  it does make me think how I tend to see this kind of inclusion in performances limited to performances by disabled performers or specifically targeted toward a disabled audience.  When will we see inclusive practice as a standard in all public arts events?  Shouldn’t this start In the Arts University?

Within my technical team at CSM we are producing video records of student acting work as an outcome during the pandemic.  A family member of one of the acting students is hearing impaired and in order to give this person access to the video, it will be subtitled.  This is positive, however, it is an exception, not a standard.  In fact,  we are told that the acting  agents,  who are primary viewers of these acting “showreels”  would be “put off”  by subtitling.  Wouldn’t it be better if the influencers and power figures in a cultural industry ,like these acting agents, would demand inclusive content rather than be “put off” by it?

How do I/we start to change these attitudes and ways of working that are so embedded?  I realize now that I let things slip by without realizing that they need to be challenged.