This blog post was compiled by Daphne Loads, University of Edinburgh.
Content
This workshop for lecturers in the arts and humanities tackled some of the more slippery elements of academic development : imagination, risk, surprise and self-exploration. Hosted by the Institute for Academic Development at Edinburgh University and funded by the Higher Education Academy it offered the chance to experience and evaluate “arts-enriched reflection.” Fifteen participants from Norwich, Coventry, Warwick, Durham, Glasgow and Edinburgh, gathered together to experience and evaluate arts-enriched reflection. Some were lecturers, some were staff developers, all of us were concerned with how academics can learn to improve their teaching. We began with poetry. I asked a small group to respond to a poem by Emily Dickinson:
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Success in circuit lies…”
What struck them as surprising or significant about particular words, I wondered? What connections could they make with their teaching? Meanwhile, my colleague, Charity McAdams introduced her group to Theme for English B by Langston Hughes:
“The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you–
Then, it will be true.”
Her group got to talking about “truth,” frustration, their expectations of the workshop and what it feels like to be plunged into uncertainty.
Next, Brigid Collins welcomed us into a room filled with an abundance of “stuff” : paper of all kinds, ribbons, wool, sheets of coppery and silvery metal, spools of wire and paperclips. There were enticing tools and toys: hammers and blocks of print, scissors, knives and needles as well as paintbrushes and pots of ink and paint. Brigid is an illustrator, artist and educator. She works between poetry and images, creating exquisite houses for poems to live in, website here. Brigid had prepared a brown paper bag for each of us that contained more treasures: fragments of maps, pages torn from old books, photographs, a glue stick, bits of wall paper. Each bag also contained a blank postcard and a small flatpack box. We were asked to find words, cutting them or tearing them from books , stamping them on metal labels, or printing them with wooden blocks, drawing on our earlier encounter with poems.
Then we moved into three-dimensions and used the cardboard boxes to make a house for our words to dwell in. Brigid drew our attention to the inside and outside of the box, to how we foregrounded particular aspects or moved them into the background. She spoke of the potential of collage for creating unexpected juxtapositions, the learning from taking risks and making (and redefining?) mistakes. Soon the room was filled with the hum of purposeful activity. People were hammering, cutting, holding their boxes up to the light, laughing, pausing, deep in thought. As we worked, Brigid told us about how Bowie had used the cut-up technique to write his lyrics, how the Dadaists had created found poems, how Eisner talked about “thinking with our hands.”
After lunch I invited colleagues to spend some time in contemplation of their poem houses, looking for ambiguities, patterns, and questions; making connections with their identity and practice as educators. We played with the word “artefact” (arty-fact; art-i-fact) and I suggested that they had produced artefacts in the sense of objects made by a human being, that could be interrogated and interpreted. Another meaning of “artefact” hovered in the background: that of a misleading observation or result that reminds us of the fallibility of our technologies and of the need for good judgement.
I asked them to consider what they might take back to their workplaces. In a couple of months, I‘m going to ask them what has stayed with them and if they have brought any of the ideas and experiences into their teaching practice or their development as teachers. I wonder what surprises we all have in store?
I plan to:
- continue research into arts-enriched reflection
- arts-enriched reflection in equality and diversity work
Question – How could you draw on these ideas and experiences in your context?