For the reading prior to Workshop 1, I chose to read Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography An Autopsy by Carolyn S. Ellis and Arthur P. Bochne. I chose to read this as it looked like an unusual text and because it references Tangled Up in Blue by Bob Dylan on the first page. The text reads as a discussion or low-key interview between two friends.
The text discusses the difference between realist ethnography and creative ethnographyor auto ethnography. I think. It is a little confusing if I am entirely honest. The below quote sets out the position of the interviewer and the interviewee:
“They want to master, explain, grasp. Those may be interesting word games, but we don’t think they’re necessarily important. Caring and empathising is for us what abstracting and controlling is for them. As you just said, we want to dwell in the flux of lived experience; they want to appropriate lived experience for the purpose of abstracting something they call knowledge or theory.”1
I feel some parallels to this quote in my new teaching context at Sunny Arts. The teaching at Sunny Arts is built around teaching painting and drawing from a technical and more traditional position, as opposed to my position which is less about building technical skills or tricks, and more concerned to help the students to build their inner, as opposed to outer worlds. There is of course merit and a great deal that can be gleaned from learning and building a technical skill set that allows one to create works of a hyper realist style. However, for me, in painting and drawing, I feel technical skills or tricks can be more synced up with the exterior, with show as opposed to building connection with ourselves and what we are working with. I feel more interested in helping students to develop realist ways of working by helping them to really look at what they are making. For me, this is a key thing for all artists and something which is rarely afforded to us in our contemporary lives: to really take the time to look at an object, say an apple, and to render it not by filling in our page with what we think we know an apple to look like, but to make the commitment with our eyes to study each and every apple as if it is a unique world in itself.
This distinction between learning to look as opposed to learning technique to me is about a way of working that can help students to think and connect with the world like an artist, to pay attention to the world around them. By concentrating on connecting with what is around us, we habituate the building blocks of seeing and perhaps feeling things in a deeper way. This quote below also speaks to what I hope to make space for students to find by teaching from a person centered rather than technique-based position:
“Autoethnography wants the reader to care, to feel, to empathize, and to do something, to act. It needs the researcher to be vulnerable and intimate. Intimacy is a way of being, a mode of caring…” 2
I am aware that my position stems from my own education and learning. For example, on my BA at Chelsea College of Arts and my MA at the RCA, in other words, over the course of five years of education, I was never once taught a technical skill. I am not the most technical of painters, but when I want to, I can get my own work to a standard I am happy with through looking and drawing or painting what I see.
In addition to this, my experiences of discussing and teaching through primarily technical based making methods, is one of feeling ungrounded in myself and in my teaching. Whilst I think a position of feeling lost or unmoored can lead to greater understanding of oneself, this feeling for me is one of disconnection and this what I always worry traditional or technical modes of making and teaching could lead to: academic (and therefore steeped in something authoritarian) and disembodied making.
In some ways, I think these concerns around academic and technical making/teaching methods are because I feel that they have the potential to close down one’s connection with one’s embodied self and more importantly, with one’s own vulnerability. Which for me are at the key to both teaching: the vulnerability to connect with another person’s inner world of making and that of making: the vulnerability to strive to make something that is embodied and true to who we are.
In my experience this is also one of the key differences that students from East Asia find when they come to study at UAL. This shift from precise technical rendering to a more experimental and looser way of working is most probably very jarring.
I think at the heart of my position on this, is that I want my teaching to be a co-performance and activity with students. I want them to be empowered by and in charge of their own learning, and for me, helping them to connect with their own internal worlds feels like the best route to do this.
I would like to coopt this quote below and replace the word stories with the word teaching:
“The difference between stories and traditional analysis is the mode of explanation and its effects on the reader. Traditional analysis is about transferring information, whereas narrative inquiry emphasizes communication. It’s the difference between monologue and dialogue, between closing down interpretation and staying open to other meanings, between having the last word and sharing the platform.” 3
In addition to this, I feel the auto-ethnographic position links to what we can and cannot truly offer our students on fine art courses, as opposed to an abstract social sciences analysis which would include: a purpose, findings and conclusions. I am not sure that we can offer definitive outcomes or conclusions in fine art, as students, teachers or makers. I am not sure that I think that definitivity is what making art is for. Should there not always be room and space for others beyond ourselves to journey in learning, teaching and making? Could embodied making be the key to navigating traditional skill based hierachies?
“Instead of being obsessively focused on questions of how we know, which inevitably leads to a preference for analysis and generalization, autoethnography centers attention on how we should live and brings us into lived experiences in a feeling and embodied way. This is the moral of autoethnographic stories—its ethical domain.” 4
Other thoughts I had on this text:
I appreciate and feel aligned to the general aims for connection that are being posited in this text:
“I want to write something that shows what we do rather than argues against what others do. I want to demonstrate my passion for autoethnography through a story or a conversation that shows multiple voices and positions. I want people to feel the story in their guts, not just know the ‘facts’ in their heads.” 5
In many ways this position of building out of connection rather than difference feels at odds with the contemporary Western landscape. In politics and even in the arts where identity and difference can be used to give voice to those marginalised by Western patriarchal society but also to create polarities and to section off groups from one another see Brexit, Trump etc. I would wany my teaching to create space for flexible thinking and awareness of, instead of adherence to hierarchies. With the idea of connection and embodiment, for me, being one of multiple internal and external access points, not one that comes from a single, monolithic (or phallic) position.
In some ways, I think the placing of connection and feeling above a concern for facts and figures are radical and are connected to feminism and ideas around de-militarisation. At the same time, I also feel this is a position which one can take up when one’s history does not contain a battle for accurate figures or to be seen, in other words, it has the slight smell of a position which one can only take up from a position of power.
Or could power be seen as not stemming from control, but from being flexible, malleable, could power come from elasticity rather than rigid control? The power of being able to detach, to have enough awareness to see and connect with other perspectives.
There is another thing that interests me here and that is that auto-ethnography seems to draw a line between undercutting or rebalancing hierarchies or at least educational hierarchies (the learning of facts or in my line of work, techniques) with its concentration on more intangible or tacit things like feeling and empathy. This is something which I have always tried to find ways of doing in my own pedagogy, as a re-balancing act when teaching students with language barriers or different levels of experience. I do this through things like experimental drawing warm up activities or teaching life drawing not focusing on anatomical precision but with a focus on drawing and thinking about colour and light (or in other words looking rather than measuring).
In this text, auto-ethnography offers its key mode operating or function to be storytelling:
“I think the simplest way to state the differences between us is to refer back to Hannah Arendt’s conception of storytelling as an activity which ‘reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it’” 6
Which also links to my short course Narrative and Identity which was built around finding ways to help students to consider their intersectionality through making. This link was made through a concentration on using materials or objects to language and process different aspects of their own narratives and identities. Connection through materials and mark making was empathised on the course as a means to empower students to lean into their own creative journeys and to trust in their own experiences and feelings as valid and enough. To attempt to dim the self-critical voice that we all have and to feel free, connected and embodied to make.
References:
Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography An Autopsy by Carolyn S. Ellis and Arthur P. Bochne, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Volume 35, Number 4, August 2006, page 433
Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography An Autopsy by Carolyn S. Ellis and Arthur P. Bochne, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Volume 35, Number 4, August 2006, page 433
Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography An Autopsy by Carolyn S. Ellis and Arthur P. Bochne, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Volume 35, Number 4, August 2006, page 438
Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography An Autopsy by Carolyn S. Ellis and Arthur P. Bochne, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Volume 35, Number 4, August 2006, page 439
Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography An Autopsy by Carolyn S. Ellis and Arthur P. Bochne, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Volume 35, Number 4, August 2006, page 435
Analyzing Analytic Autoethnography An Autopsy by Carolyn S. Ellis and Arthur P. Bochne, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Volume 35, Number 4, August 2006, page 438
Over the summer I was informed that my HPL contract at CCW was not going to be renewed as all staff members working on Foundation who were outside of the entitlement period (2 years of work or more) have been let go due to the merger between CSM and CCW Foundations. This was on the back of being nominated by students for a UAL teaching award for the second year running and really feeling committed and happy in this role that I had enjoyed so much. In addition to this it came as a surprise having been told by my line manager to expect more work, not less (or none) for this coming academic year. This has been a pretty hard change to accept and has implications for how I can viably complete this module of the PGCERT.
I am continuing to run short courses for UAL and I am also currently working as a one to one tutor for Sunny Arts and running evening classes for City Academy, but earning half of my UAL hourly rate and working with students who in general are starting off at a lower level. Which is all a little demoralising. On the flip side, I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to work at CCW and hope to get back there.
The implications from these changes for my PGCERT are that my ARP interventions plans are going to have shift to accommodate a different and new mode of teaching.
I enjoyed the group dynamic and people’s willingness to discuss tricky subjects. The diversity and range of materials on offer, introduced me to some new writers which was exciting, even if I got somewhat hooked back on bell hooks’ writing. This time round, I found it harder to find the time for extra reading and writing outside of the workshops and Blog Posts due to work and other commitments.
I found the task of thinking about and planning for the Intervention to be a useful and clarifying task. It came at the time where I was planning and running Summer Short courses for UAL for students from China, which I am halfway through a block of six weeks. Nearly all of the students on these courses are aged 16-25 and it is their first time in London, so a pretty big culture shock combined with learning a new model of teaching.
It made me think about and really consider the importance of using accessible language and ways of communicating that are not just verbal. Using visual language and making my own examples of the work I hoped that they would make. Printing out and sending round material before the lesson starts has also proved to be a popular addition, allowing students to discuss amongst themselves the day’s making prior to being here. So far these simple, practical new additions to my teaching pedagogy have helped increase engagement from students compared to last year.
I hope Unit 3 continues to help my teaching practice evolve and grow.
Over the summer, I run a series of six UAL short courses for students from China at CSM. For many, it is their first time in the UK and as such, it is important that they feel supported in unfamiliar surroundings.
One of my key aims was to increase the diversity and breadth of the resources and methodology of teaching that I offer to students.
The aim of my short courses is to create space for students to consider their own intersectional identities. As Kimberlee Crenshaw says: “Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power.” 1
On a philosophical level, I view positionality as akin to identity: something which is ever changing, “as a place where meaning is constructed rather than a locus of already determined values.” 2
I acknowledge that the subject matter of identity can be sticky and challenging to traverse, I hope that the opportunity this creates to learn more about one another will increase each persons connection and capacity for empathy, as bell hooks says:
“As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognising one another’s presence.” 3
hooks’ use of the word voice stresses the importance of moving away from the student as a silent listener and puts emphasis on the need to readdress the power balances at play in classrooms. All voices need to be heard and listened to. This allows students to connect with the views and positions of people other than themselves and their teacher, increasing their understanding.
hooks is discussing a person centered and empathy-based way of teaching, which is how I like to teach. Getting to know students and making a connection with them helps them to feel more confident to experiment with their work, this leads to more engagement, growth and better work. Augusto Boal says, “empathy is the most powerful tool.” 4
Positionality statement
It is imperative that my teaching methodology is inclusive for all students. Whilst I may be a tiny cog in a giant UAL wheel, it is within the classroom that we can help co-create the conditions for a just society.
This is how I perceive my positionality in the context of the short courses:
I am teaching Chinese students in my mother tongue of English. What can I do to navigate this power imbalance?
I am a white and a man, what power do I gain from this? And how can I use this power to ensure that all students on the course feel included and engaged?
I will be asking students to engage in creating personal stories, how do I avoid creating another power structure?
As bell hooks says “Professors who expect students to share confessional narratives but who are themselves unwilling to share are exercising power in a manner that could be coercive” 5
I view my own intersectionality as a continually evolving, shifting, learning experience. As Crenshaw says:
“Intersectionality draws attention to invisibilities that exist in feminism, in anti-racism, in class politics, so, obviously, it takes a lot of work to consistently challenge ourselves to be attentive to aspects of power that we don’t ourselves experience.” 6
Inclusive and Diverse contextual resources
The contextual resources that I will offer students on the coursewill be broken down into the following themes:
Personal and Historical Identity: Amanda Ba’s work merging her Chinese and American heritage, Frank Bowling and his use of colour and personal objects in his paintings, Lubaina Himid’s work discussing and tracing the impacts of the slave trade, Chrstine Sun Kim’s use of sound as a deaf artist, Eddie Peake and his work looking at the unease of white privilege.
Place and Identity: Mark Bradford and his mapping of LAX and use of materials from his mother’s barber shop, Michael Rakowitz and his use of food as a call to place, Yin Xiuzhen’s work exploring globalisation and cultural identity)
Performing and Questioning Gender Identity: Jutta Koether’s reworking of the male gaze in renaissance works, Jordan Nasher’s stitched work using the traditionally/historically feminine format of the Tatreez, Lin Tianmaio’s textile installations exploring gender codes, Sula Bermudez-Silverman’s soft sculptures questioning the representation of the black female figure in art history
Objects as Carriers of Identity: Louise Nevelson’s assemblages, Steve Claydon’s work on how the meaning of an object can shift over time, Theaster Gates and his use of his father’s roofing materials and the hose pipes from the Civil Rights, Yin Xiuxhen’s use of tiles from destroyed traditional buildings.
For the course to be inclusive and diverse, it is imperative that the artists I offer to students come from a variety of backgrounds and work in different mediums. Diverse and inclusive contextual resources create a wider range of multi-cultural learning for students through both increasing a sense of belonging for students from minority groups and increasing the awareness of other students.
As Graeme Chalmers says in Celebrating Pluralism: “Multicultural education is not just for students from ethnic minority cultures, but for all students.” 7
By looking at work from a diverse range of cultures, I hope that art education can be a form of social inquiry. That we can ask the why of all artworks that we encounter, and students can be bonded by differences as well as by commonalities of experiences.
Teaching Methodology:
The territory of identity as subject matter is a challenging one. I am not trained as a pastoral carer and had to keep an eye on the nature of discussions. The course’s structure emphasises accessing personal identity through materiality, in other words, through the vehicles of making.
There are risks in accessing the personal, in looking at who we are and what we believe our identity to be, however, I hoped that with supportive dynamics and care for one another, we could move through fear to find connection, to celebrate difference as hooks says:
“Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.” 8
Through inclusive and open discussion, we can move into a space where we get real freedom of creativity and expression. Augusto Boal’s text Theatre of the Oppressed puts forward theatre’s potential totransform the lives of the spectators to become activated participants, through active engagements, the classroom can be a stage for us to become more connected to the social justice issues that are embedded inside and outside of the classroom through engagement with one another. Teaching and learning spaces should be a space to share: “A form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it.” 9
By giving students, the stage to consider their own identity and their own choice in materials and objects, I aimed to give students agency and power, to be liberated from the power dynamics of the classroom and to make their own choices, based in how they define themselves as people and as makers. As Paulo Freire says:
“The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.” 10
Tools
In the UAL Tutor Hub, it is suggested that:
“All learners will benefit form a glossary document or access to written records of the class activities and presentations, but these can be extra support to learners with low English skills as they can translate the documents in their own time. Consider using a Padlet.” 11
I had not used Padlet before, but it is one of the tools I will now use for future short courses. I shared a glossary of terminology (such as assemblage or collage) and printed out the course and day outlines which students used to refer to or translate in their own time if they did not feel confident raising questions in class.
I used PowerPoint for my presentations for the artist references. These PowerPoints were also sent round via email at the end of each day for students and printed out to ensure that each student had multiple routes to learning.
Feedback
I asked the students who took the course the first week for some feedback on the following questions – please see the Appendix below for this.
I also asked my colleague Beatrice, who was working as my assistant on the course, for some feedback – please see the Appendix below for this also.
In addition to this, I ran the course online independently and have included the feedback for this also.
Reflections
One of my key reflections was that the language used for the PowerPoints was too advanced for most of the students studying from China. I found that I mostly ad-libbed from PowerPoints and used the images on the slideshow to discuss the work shown. In future I will try to make my language more accessible.
Beatrice’s suggestion of a visual step-by-step guide to the making processes on the course is an excellent idea, that I will incorporate into future courses.
The diversity of artists looked at both in terms of methods of making and identity were well received by students and increased their knowledge of contemporary artists. I want to continue to increase my awareness and engagement with artists from non-western backgrounds and marginalised communities. I see this as a task that must continually be worked at inside and outside of my teaching practice as Paulo Freire says:
“For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” 12
I want to continue to find ways to enable students to bring an awareness of their own voice to the materials and methods they use to make their work. The planning and experience gained from running these courses has clarified for me that a key component of my teaching methodology is finding every opportunity to give students confidence and agency to make their own decisions around their learning and making.
I attempted to navigate the issue of students being forced to share or becoming the “native informer” 13 by offering my own examples for students. I asked students to choose their own identity and character traits and to bring in their own objects and materials that would act as carriers for this information. This felt like it was a successful way to navigate this.
The end goal of making teaching practices more inclusive is to ensure that students from minority groups have the support to achieve their full potential. This should carry through and result in a more diverse teaching staff and knowledge base, increasing engagement for all students. As Paulo Freire says:
“No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting models for their emulation from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption” 14
Word count: 1,640 (minus indented quotes)
Appendix
Feedback from Beatrice Vorster, teaching assistant on short courses and fellow UAL tutor and PGCERTer
During two of the short courses, I was Tommy’s assistant. In both courses, the majority of students were under 18, in London for the first time, still developing their English language skills with many of them not knowing each other either. This is a challenging teaching scenario to navigate while addressing conversations around identity, diversity and inclusion.
I think the major point of success was that, by the end of the week, each student was able to say a few sentences about their final piece in front of the larger group. Although they struggled at times with the language differences, giving them some time to prepare what they wanted to say was a great way to make sure no one felt like they were being put on the spot. This is a more inclusive way of approaching crits that could be brought into teaching scenarios when everyone is comfortable with speaking in English, not just for students who are struggling with the additional language. For me, this was a sign that you did well to generate a group dynamic where each student felt like they had a place and a sense of agency – you have a lightness and sense of humour which seems to put students at ease and make you an approachable teacher.
In the future, it might be useful to prepare step-by-step visual guides to the activities which can cater for a wider range of language levels. This could include a ‘keywords’ section which might give a simple indication of areas to focus attention on.
The presentations did well to frame the conversation around the activities and included a culturally diverse range of artists. These also worked well as reminders when they were stuck on the wall which hopefully encouraged some independent research. In particular, for these groups of students who are based in China, it was useful to have a well known Chinese artist as a reference point from which to bring into conversation with artists they might be less familiar with.
Feedback from students from Art First International
Although it was only a few days, I learnt a lot of new things in your class after I came back from ual summer school. I learnt a lot of new things in your class, such as different forms of artistic expression and a lot of skills about painting. I have also learnt a lot of new things about the subject of Pure Art. And I really like the content and the atmosphere of your class.
You patiently told us what to do over and over again and always encouraged us by telling us that we were doing a good job.
Most importantly, after the course I realised that I had become very interested in the course and I liked the fact that I could think out of the box to express my views. When I came back I also searched for a lot of artists and works related to the course. To this I found that I was very interested. The course was very inspiring for me.
I love art and I want to express my attitude and crazy ideas through art and drawing. After coming to this school again I found that everything here fits with what I like.
Yi Fei Bao
Thank you very much for your great teaching in the class. I especially like your mode of education, the lessons are very interesting: the PowerPoint is very detailed, and it offers a wide variety of artists to make my mind more open. Moreover, you are very patient and will always encourage me and make me become more confident. For this short courses, I especially enjoyed it. Your courses filled me with passion, I took every piece of work especially seriously during the class and tried my best to do better. So all you may see of me is in position to do my artwork peacefully.
Thank you again for teaching me in this short courses, it helps me a lot in my future art study. I will go further to achieve my goal!
Warm regards
Your student,
Qianle Liao
Feedback from Online Course students
Tommy has very skilfully helped me find my way to my own very particular Narrative and Identity, which I always thought my work lacked. I was very excited to do this course and now I know why. I have found myself happy and curious not only in long forgotten but also in surprising new territories and materiality. He challenged us from the word go, both during the all-day Zooms and in the homework set. Expect your head to hurt and to feel sick as you start to shift and think differently. Tommy connected me with working from the bottom up and not the top down. I have so many ideas and lines of inquiry now! The Zoom group crits, dialogues and presentations with him and my fellow artists were invaluable and we now are a firm friendship group. We really have all been on an amazing journey together. Bravo Tommy, and thank you xx
Christine Turnbull
A very great experience of doing an on line practical course indeed. The course content covered different aspects of identity in contemporary art brilliantly and fantastic questions and discussions were raised which I found very beneficial for my practice.
Yasmin Noorbakash
This course is a glorious exploration, for it’s participants, of ways of inhabiting personal narratives and identities through the medium of art making. Each week is a fine balance of conversation, an opportunity to look at the work of edgy contemporary artists, art making with tutorials and the sharing of work with the group.
I found this approach wonderfully liberating. Tommy put us at ease. We were comfortable to share work and ideas and felt listened too. It was extremely valuable to receive careful and thoughtful feed back about our work from the group and Tommy himself. Each week Tommy suggested particular strategies for connecting with art materials and how we might use them, in new ways. This encouraged me to put aside some of my more familiar art making routes and I found myself embracing new materials and thinking about my emotional relationship with them. I was surprised by the work I created. The course took me in new directions, and I finish it with renewed energy to create work and with many different strategies for initiating and sustaining my work.
Tamsin Hayward
The course felt meaty in content…satisfying and unsettling at the same time. I feel like we all could have asked more questions of each other rather than making statements. I feel like i did not make the best use of the space but that i have lots of material and feedback to go back over and rework. I learnt a huge amount. Content and about myself.
Robyn Reeves
How did you find the PowerPoint presentations on artists
Very good. I have been introduced to a whole new world of artists and makers. Tommy found such excellent examples that really illustrated the point he was making about the topic for that week and that engendered some most interesting and personal discussions.
Christine Turnbull
PowerPoint presentation on artists was the most helpful tool to me, Specially the question asked at the end are so valuable. They were very generously sent after each lesson and were shared with the group in my surprise as many courses do not share their content fully with student.
Yasmin Noorbakash
Presentations were great. I hadn’t heard of any of these artists. I was thrilled to see this new work and also have the opportunity to think and talk about the pieces. You have such a relevant perspective on all this work as a young contemporary artist. You speak with real confidence and authority. You’re steeped in the vocabulary of Art talk. I would love it if you talked without looking down at notes, so we are looking either at the work or you, not the top of your head.
Tamsin Hayward
References:
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hooks, bell, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, 1994, page 145
Baol, Augusto, Theatre of the Oppressed, Pluto Press, 1979, page 140
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Crenshaw, Kimberlee, Seeing race again: countering colorblindness across the disciplines, edited by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang and George Lipsitz, Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2019, Page 187
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hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. London: Routledge. [e-book in library]
Kendi, I. X. (2019) How to be an Anti-Racist. London: One World.
Lorde, A. (2013) Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Berkeley: Crossing Press
Orr, S., & Shreeve, A. (2017) Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum (1st ed.). Routledge
Schon, D. A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books
Smyth, J. (2011) Critical pedagogy for social justice. New York: Continuum. [e-book in library]
Steventon, G., Cureton, D. and Clouder, L. (2016) Student attainment in higher education: issues, controversies and debates. London: Routledge. [e-book in library]
Tien, Joanne, Teaching Racial Justice through Critical Pedagogy, Routledge, 2017
I will be running some short course with UAL over the summer and I would like to use this opportunity to run a course that is based around the themes of identity.
I wrote my MA dissertation on Contemporary Painting: Process, Materiality and Identity. The reading and writing for this was a transformative experience for my practice as an artist. I would like the intervention to a similar affect for my teaching practice and I think for me this means the intervention needs to have a real life impact for me.
As such I would like to use this opportunity to plan and teach a short course that helps students to consider the different intersectional aspects of their identities and how they can language these in a material way. I will use examples of artists that have chosen to do this and will perhaps structure the five day course as such:
Personal and historical identity
Place and identity
Performing and questioning gender identity
Expanded painting and identity
Collage and assemblage
The aim of the course would be for students to consider how they define themselves and to create the framework for their own personal language.
Unit 2: Inclusive Practices: Blog Post on Pre-Tasks and Workshops 5 & 6: racism in HE
Definitions of Race
The definitions of race were an interesting starting point. Thinking about where the definitions had come from, who was writing the definitions and whom they were writing the definitions for.
The Cambridge Dictionary definition of “Ethnicity = a group of people with a shared culture, language, history & traditions”1 and The Law Society definition of “Race: physical attributes or traits vs Ethnicity: long shared cultural experiences, practices, traditions, ancestry, language, etc.” are perhaps not as cognisant of this as they could be.
This led to interested discussions amongst the group about how parents who grew up at ‘home’ and then moved to the UK had different experiences that made up their identity. The ‘shared experiences’ of parents and their children were different in these circumstances.
This made me think about fragmentation and difference and intersectionality. The more we break down our identity, the more commonalities and shared experiences we may find. The example of parents moving from home to the UK and their children growing up here shows the shifting of experience from generation to generation.
In Shirley Anne Tate’s TedTalk the importance of stereotype threat and how important it is that you see people who look like you in universities is discussed. She talks about the “cold climate that BPOC students receive and the daily experience of racist micro-aggressions” 3. She goes on to explain that this is why BPOC students drop out more than white students “the BPOC attainment gap for 2017 according to the EEC is 25%”4. This attainment gap is caused by the cold climate and racism that BPOC students encounter. This has the knock-on effect that BPOC students do not carry on with their studies and continue to progress through their field of study into academia. This results in BPOC students feeling othered and not seeing people in positions of power from their ethnic backgrounds. Tate’s powerful point that there is no “unconscious bias is not unconscious, racism must be named” 5. This highlights the importance of diversity, retention, support and care that we must offer, in particular to our students from marginalised backgrounds to create an inclusive space for them to learn, feel supported and grow.
Whiteness (White Supremacy and White Fragility)
White Supremacy = conscious or unconscious ideas of supremacy, dominance and control.
White Fragility = the difficulty and uncomfortableness white people feel when discussing race, racism, white privilege and white supremacy.
White Fragility is a term coined by Robin DiAngelo. DiAngelo says that white progressives are some of the hardest people to explain racism too as they are too busy showing how they are not racist instead of:
“Engaging in ongoing self-awareness, continuing education, relationship building, and actual antiracist practice. White progressives do indeed uphold and perpetrate racism, but our defensiveness and certitude make it virtually impossible to explain to us how we do so.”6
DiAngelo goes onto show how white supremacy is built into the fabric of our society and as Shirley Anne Tate shows, all racism should be considered as conscious and called out. Through this, people are offered the chance to learn from their blind spots and mistakes. DiAngelo says that the work is to uncover why these discussions make white people feel discomfort:
“The key to moving forward is what we do with our discomfort. We can use it as a door out – blame the messenger and disregard the message. Or we can use it as a door in by asking: Why does this unsettle me? What would it mean for me if this were true?” 7
This way of thinking and learning could give white people a greater understanding of the world around us, of the myths of meritocracy and lead to greater learning.
This workshop also dispelled the notion of ‘I don’t see colour’ as clearly being something that only a person in a privileged position could say and a view that is clearly not possible. We see colour, whether we like it or not, and it has a profound effect on how we have moved through our lives and the experiences that we have.
We were tasked with thinking of examples of Whiteness and White Fragility within our workplaces at UAL. This image below shows what we as a class came up with.
Critical Race Theory (CRT)
Critical Race Theory is the telling of stories through the voices of the oppressed, focusing on listening to and using examples from marginalised voices, and is based on the empirical, lived experiences of those who have experienced racism. To me, this seems like the right thing. It provides a space for those generous enough to offer up their experiences to teach those of us who wish to learn and see more.
The difficulty I have with CRT, is: how does a white person who agrees with CRT, and wants to help, be active in anti-racism through the CRT mode? CRT is based on empirical experience but, as a white person, I have not experienced racism… I worry that this would position me as a bystander which is problematic. I would like to have asked this question in class but felt unsure of doing so.
In many ways, CRT made me think of how artists such as Theaster Gates and Mark Bradford use objects to tell their stories and to speak of their histories through materiality.
Workshops 5 and 6 have led me to re-think my plan for my Intervention, I think I would like it to link back directly into teaching. And to be based around the theme of identity and focus on intersectionality and for this to done through connection to materiality, and the act and journeys of making.
At the moment I am not sure as to what exactly I want to focus on. I think it will be on one of the following areas:
Accessibility and language with a focus on how projects can be communicated more clearly for students, perhaps with a workshop discussion breaking down specific art terminology in a clear way for students.
I have also been considering the learning from workshops 1 and 2 and the discussions around accessibility for disabled students. How could we improve accessibility for these students at UAL and what ways could we increase student and staff awareness of the barriers that students with disabilities face. This could result in a workshop where students consider how there work could be more accessible for students with disabilities.
I have come across the term “empathy gap” and this is something that I would be interesting in working with further. Empathy feels like a key ingredient as a teacher, learner and human being. I would like to try to help students access empathy with one another as this could lead to more awareness and connection with one another and more interesting, supportive and challenging work and discussions. How could an empathy workshop take form? What would a workshop for this look like (not like the privilege walk…) Perhaps students could be asked to make a positionally statement.
Unit 2: Inclusive Practices: Blog Post 2: Intersectionality and Faith
Intersectionality LGBTQ and Faith:
Choudrey’s text Supporting BAME Trans People was an interesting and thought provoking read and raised several important points:
A lack of BAME representatives in the trans community. In part due to worries about “the consequences of being outed”1
The need for trans communities to implement a “BAME positive representation policy”2 to ensure visibility and representation.
The need for an increased awareness of differing religious faith views on LGBTQ and Trans communities.
This shows how Faith, Race and Religion intersect with one another and the multi layered difficulties that BAME Trans person must navigate and be supported through to find how they want to be part of their communities.
A few thoughts on this could be to allow for roles in Trans communities to not be public facing to allow for a person to keep their identities private.
To ensure that marketing and advertising material from LGBTQ and Trans groups shows BAME individuals as this help boost connection with these communities.
On the other side of that if an event is being live streamed or broadcast in some way, it is important to have permission from people who can be seen in the recording.
I also really loved this simple idea:
“A great way to celebrate different cultures and faiths would be to celebrate religious holidays or days of cultural significance. Create a cultural calendar and share this with the team, regularly checking upcoming events and incorporating this into discussions or activities.”3
It feels like a great way to increase awareness of each other’s cultures and faiths. I think this is something which could be simply added to our UAL calendar and would be a simple step towards increasing staff awareness.
Inclusive Mosque Initiative
I thought the Inclusive MosqueInitiative is an exemplary example of a religious community opening to and caring for all of members of it’s community with or without faith. It is written and a very clear. It offers it’s own initiatives like the Raise Your Gaze campaign whilst also putting on events and pointing visitors to other relevant and useful resources.
Intersectionality: Feminism and Racism
Razia Aziz’s text Feminism and the challenge of racism: Deviance or Difference discusses the difference and the marginalisation of black women in feminist discourse. I first came across the term difference when reading Luce Irigaray’s writing on my BA. Her writing has been instructive in my own practice as an artist and has helped shape the conceptual framework around why I use the format of the multiple in my painting practice. As such I felt aligned and familiar with some of the concepts in the text.
I felt Aziz’s text was an excellent example of unpicking the layers that make up an individual and their intersectionality. Aziz shows how intersectionality is imperial/colonial and historical and how class, education and other factors affect different people of the same race and gender:
“The issue of identity is one which best crsytallises this dilemma. Rooted as it is in complex layers of struggles and contexts, identity is not neat and coherent, but fragmented and fluid” 4
I felt that Aziz’s text was very open and to me read as interesting grapple with ‘identity politics’ “the cost of a ‘home’ in any identity is the exercise of a power to include the chosen and exclude the Other…this can lead to an inwards looking politics where identities are added and subtracted”5.For me this quote seems to question if asserting differences in identity raises more borders and separations between people than it connects?
In many ways I feel this is a text that has given me language for some of my niggly feelings around identity politics. I feel that when taken to an extreme this de-humanises the individual and does not offer the best template for a person centered or intersectional approach to how we connect and communicate with each other.
And at the same time, like Aziz I feel, particularly for marginalised communities, there is immense importance and agency in asserting one’s identity and finding connection through it “the assertion of identity is a process people can relate to because it gives them agency and makes them power-full”6. Only though this can the power imbalances that weaved into every facet of our society be held up to the light.
I feel that Aziz’s person-centered approach to moving away from ‘identity politics’ is the end goal but that we are very, very far away from being in a position to be able to do that.
I do fundamentally agree with and feel that a post-modernist way of thinking is in fact a useful and apt tool for our current time as it allows us to both assert and deconstruct simultaneously. And that perhaps we can do both at the same time.
“Post-modernism is deconstructive: it sees subjectivity as a product of power rather that it’s author and agency as power’s way of acting through the individual…it proposes that the selves we think are fixed are actually unstable, fragmented and contradictory”7.
I would offer the analogy that building a positionality that is set in one’s identity could make one strong like a brick and allow one to build robust foundations from. But that perhaps creating a self-identity that is more like water would allow us to be porous, to connect with and move side by side with one another more easily and cohesively.
References:
1. Choudrey, S, Inclusivity – Supporting BAME Trans People [Online]. Gender Identity Research & Education Society, page 21:
Intersectionality feels like a commonsense approach to understanding the make-up of an individual. No person is one thing alone, we are all made up of various histories, experiences, parts of our Self’s that we are aware of and perhaps also, parts we do not yet know. We are also all connected to one another and accountable for how much we try to understand each other. Empathy and understanding are key components to what I feel makes up the role of a teacher and they are key to how we interact with those around us in everyday life.
As John Donne says in his famous poem No Man Is an Island:
“No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.” 1
Ade Adepitan
Ade Adepitan is a bronze basketball medalist, TV presenter, children’s author, Nigerian born, wheelchair user and is black. As such his identity intersects, Ade says “I intersect disability and race, so I see discrimination from both angles”. 2
Ade is being interviewed by Nick Webborn and is asked “how can the Paralympic movement show that injustice and discrimination is not tolerated?”3. In response to this, Ade discusses how we are at a “really important time…. a crossroads for humanity, with what happened to George Floyd… the struggle and the journey that people with disabilities go through.”4
My favourite point that Ade goes on to talk about is the importance of giving people a platform, he says: “If we give people the chance to shine, the sky is the limit”. In particular, the references the advertising by Channel 4 used for the London 2012 Paralympic games, and the positive message that sent out to the public “5
“What makes people disabled is not that you have a disability, it’s not if you have polio… it is society what holds you back. It is systemic discrimination and oppression”6. He goes on to show how this is built into subtle structural things in society, such as wheelchair access, and how people with disabilities are segregated in society in things such as how public transport is structured. This is segregation by design, it shows that society is based on discrimination rather than inclusivity. This is systemic discrimination which is in-built and tacit. Ade discusses how we have moved beyond the overt discrimination of the 80’s but that we are still entrenched in systemic discrimination and that this is inbuilt covertly in the employment opportunities for people with disabilities and people of colour.
Christine Sun Kim
Christine is American, she is a mother, and she is a sounds artist, who works in drawing, performance and video. She has also been deaf since birth. Her identity as a deaf person is at the crux of her work, “the drawings and sound installations make visible and tactile sounds that as a deaf person from birth she can’t hear but that, at the same time, enable her listeners to hear through a deaf optic”7. Christine discusses how she has chosen not to read lips and that this is a political decision, she offers up a quote from Sara Navid to explain how difficult it is to learn to do so “I can one hundred percent promise that you learning sign language is easier that a deaf person learning to hear”8. She discusses how living in Berlin is affordable and how the state offers free day care and how the government supports people in Germany. Christine discusses how misunderstandings in her daily life have forced her to explain all her work components. In this, she discusses how most people have the privilege of invisibility and how those in the minority do not have this luxury.
Disability and Gender
Chay Brown describes himself as “a trans man with mental health difficulties, and I’m probably not neurotypical and co-founder of Transatual… I’m a trans man, I’m a gay man, I’m white which offers me a lot of privilege within the LGBTQ+ community”9, which is an organisation focused on how identities intersect. Chay discusses the important role that organisations play in providing access to all members of society through a person-centered approach. Chay also stresses that a lot of the issues around accessibility can be solved by including people from minority communities who have lived experiences of discrimination and in the decision-making process “inclusion first approaches are just the right thing to do”10.
Recurring Themes
All three people interviewed emphasise how they have been marginalised and discriminated against in society. One of the recurring themes that stood out most to me is how these discriminations are woven into the very fabric of our society; simple things such as, not all buildings being wheelchair accessible seems absurd. And then on a more tacit level, wheelchair users are confined to a location of convenience, how on public transport, wheelchair users need to call ahead to inform station staff they will need a ramp. Could we find ways that are less intrusive and alienating to include wheelchairs users? All three interviewees also discussed being part of a community of people and how these communities intersect and support each other.
It seems clear that a person centered, empathy led response is not the norm and that this needs to change.
Disability Consideration
As a teacher on the UAL Camberwell Foundation painting course, we have a responsibility to consider how best we can support students with disabilities and students who are part of minority groups. According to the 2017 UAL report Students’ Experience of Identity and Attainment at UAL, “black and minority ethnic students are 21.7% less likely than white students to gain first or upper second-class degrees”. This is something that needs to be rectified.
As a white, straight man, attempting to consider the reasons for this, I am perhaps not best placed to do so. But I would say that the reasons are manifold, that they are intersectional. These reasons could be historically based (but in the present, for example if a student is studying painting, perhaps their parents could be discouraging them from engaging fully in the course if their parents wish them to focus on a career that offers financial security, if for example their parents have suffered financial difficulty due to racism/disability), they could be from the systemic discrimination inherent in society (as touched upon above, this comes in a myriad of tacit and overt ways) and or within education (not many institutions or college have staff members that are BSL fluent) or could be university specific (at Camberwell we are not trained or advised on how to support students who are neuro divergent) or even individually specific (students could encounter prejudice from a teacher or fellow student).
Drawing on personal experience, during Part 1 on CCW Foundation this year, we had a student that had Tourette Syndrome. The college did not deal with this particularly well. Only some members of staff were informed initially and then an email was sent out late to all staff members. Not all staff members read this email. This led to staff members interacting in an un-aware manner with the student when the student was experiencing coprolalia. This could have been avoided by staff members communicating better with one another, but this is also difficult to achieve due to the system UAL employs of having most HPL contracts for staff members.
Consider any recurring themes or differing perspectives highlighted in the interviews.
I have found Unit 1 of the PGCERT to be enjoyable, stimulating, and challenging. I really enjoyed the in-person workshop days though have preferred them when they are spaced out a little more. I found the teaching and group dynamics generous and respectful.
I most enjoyed the micro teaching day, despite being in a mild existential panic about what I was going to do for several weeks. I really enjoyed doing my micro teaching lesson and in particular, getting a window into the worlds of other teaching practices was stimulating and gave me fresh perspectives and ideas on lesson planning.
I have found writing the blog posts to be a fun activity too and really enjoyed the teaching observations. The blog posts have been a useful way to retain and digest learning from the workshops. I have also found these experiences useful in making me feel more positive about the students at Camberwell using Workflow to document their making and record and track their own thoughts.
The workshops on Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria were interesting, broadened and extended my thinking around this. I think the workshops in general have helped me to clarify the type of teacher I want to be and the type of space that I want to create for students.
I have found the amount of reading difficult. There have been so many texts that I would love to have read but have not been able to. As a separated parent sharing the care of a nine and half month-old boy, working multiple jobs, I have had to become a strategic learner! This has been a new experience for me and a learning process. I appreciated having the space to discuss this with my tutor John in our previous tutorial. One of my key learnings from this Unit is to accept this new form of being a student and to not feel regret if I have not read all the texts that I would like to!
