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- Volume 3, Issue 3, 2010
Journal of Writing in Creative Practice - Volume 3, Issue 3, 2010
Volume 3, Issue 3, 2010
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Reflect on this!
Authors: Susan Orr, Jules Dorey Richmond and David RichmondIn this article we reflect on reflection. To do this, we share examples of pedagogic approaches used in undergraduate performance programmes at York St John University that re-situate reflective practice within creative practice. For example, we explore the creative, multimodal use of a catalogue document that two of the authors used to encourage students to reflect as part of the B.A. (Hons) Theatre level 2 modules entitled performing the self & artist as witness. These modules aim to encourage students to consider themselves in some sense auteurs of themselves and their art practice. The case study illustrates that we need to go beyond the familiar if we are to be reflexive about the role of reflection in creative practice education.
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Writing experiments with a lateral leaning
Authors: Harriet Edwards and Curtis TappendenThe drawing and writing experiment that I offered at the Centre of Learning and Teaching in Art and Design (CLTAD) conference in Berlin, 2010 is related to my Ph.D. research (based at Leeds Metropolitan University). The research centres around what I am calling the lateral or supra-rational sides of designing processes. While the term lateral was originally made popular by de Bono (1967) in his book Lateral Thinking, its association in the research project embraces the kinds of thinking and making connected to ideation, visualization, intuition and other elements of a sphere of practice that are harder to contain and evidence within orthodox Humanities approaches to academic research. Schon (1983) in The Reflective Practitioner, Law on Beyond Method: Mess (2004) and tangentially, in terms of contemplating a network of practice, Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis (1992) have all further influenced my research. The research project's particular portrait of processes emerged, in a first stage, from interviews with design students, designers/tutors and young designers in Leeds and at the Royal College of Art. The second, more speculative stage of research asks what might happen if such subject matter and such modes of practice are imposed on writing culture. The drawing and writing experiment in Berlin was a hands-on exploration of the theme of Observation.
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Creative visual art storytelling and concept development
By Anne LordThis article presents practice-based research in visual arts undergraduate subjects. Pedagogical approaches in the Visual Arts strand of the Bachelor of New Media Arts (BNMA), School of Creative Arts (SoCA) are outlined as motivational strategies, where stories emerge as the basis for issue-driven projects. Curriculum design was based on the premise that visual artists in a university will access specific software programmes to suit their interests and skills. While students are required to build on skills and knowledge, the lecture programme targets creative art projects with emphasis on conceptual development and digital presentation. Teaching to develop individual pathways in creative arts practitioners at tertiary level has demonstrated benefits and students provided strong appraisal in student feedback for teaching (SFT).
Lectures present ways that artists consider a story, along the lines of a plot or storyboard, providing scope for the concept that the character is to expose. Hull and Katz (2006, Crafting an Agentic Self: Cases Studies of Digital Storytelling, 41:1) refer to storytellers becoming their agentic selves in terms of personal development. One subject combines ideas about storytelling with contemporary visual arts and, in the context of relational aesthetics (Bourriaud 2002), connectivity occurs between visual and issue-driven art. The subject design involves broad issues as well as reflexivity, and merges with the scenario of how artists become involved with exposing universal concerns.
Students demonstrate potential for research in artworks where visual interpretation of characters involves storytelling and documentation. Artists' statements contextualize the work on display. Students reference web links and identify Computer Learning Technologies (CLT) crucial to their work. They write about software and links to online tutorials to explicate new knowledge and technical advancement.
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Out of our minds: Exploring attitudes to creative writing relating to art and design practice and personal identity
More LessThis research project, now at the end of its third and evaluative year, primarily seeks to support Further Education (FE) and Higher Education (HE) art and design students' critical/reflective awareness and literacy skills through creative writing as relating to multidisciplinary art and design practices, and offers help to develop confidence and greater ownership of learning and participation in dynamic group activities. Through the undertaking of activities, learners explore the relationship between words and pictures and consider the intersections and boundaries where these art forms cross and meet. As a trained teacher, author/illustrator and performance poet who extends his identity into the classroom as part of his pedagogy (Connoisseurship and Criticism. Eisner, 1998), the author encourages learners and peers to also express individual and collective identities through innovative uses of images and words. An extracurricular writing group attended by FE, HE, Postgraduate and Access learners and staff has provided greater opportunity to explore many areas of writing relating to art and design practice to enhance and improve independent learning and communication within the university culture and without it, feeding into the secondary school 1419 agenda, thereby addressing strategic Widening Participation targets. The results: a 50-session teaching pack written and delivered; papers presented at the 2008 University for the Creative Arts (UCA) Teaching and Learning conference, London; Learning and Skills Research Network (LSRN) conference, London 2008; 1419 Agenda Seminar, Kings College University, London; HE Academy Annual conference, Manchester, 2009. Learners, having found greater identity within a community (Communities of Practice, Lave and Wenger, 1998), continue to work with the author in co-facilitation roles to disseminate its findings into the wider educational community, and its challenging impact has led to the embedding of creative thinking and writing into FE, Access and BA (hons) Graphic Communication Courses at UCA, Kent and Surrey. The project has now entered the final phase of evaluation.
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CLTAD International Conference, 1213 April 2010, Berlin Creative partnerships: Helping creative writing and visual practice students to make links between their creative processes and their personal, vocational and academic development
Authors: Christina Reading and Jess MoriartyThis article reports on a research project that investigated students' experiences of creativity at the University of Brighton. It found that students' creativity was effectively supported if opportunities were provided for them to identify the things within their experiences, memories and even within themselves that inspire their creativity. By developing workshops that helped to improve students' confidence and ownership of ideas, and to create spaces in which to discuss their creativity away from their assessed work, this project aimed to provide a model of best practice that would enhance students' creativity and their personal, vocational and academic development. Ultimately, the paper suggests that students' creativity is best supported by embedding workshops into the curriculum that provide opportunities for students to gather the confidence and motivation to discuss their creativity and the factors that inspire it.
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How can we use writing as a tool for collaboration across disciplines at Ph.D. level?: Co-writing fictional versions of the truth about someone else
More LessThis article will describe some of the key tools used throughout a series of collaborative writing workshops. These are part of my ongoing Ph.D. research in the Design Department, entitled, (How) Could co-writing help designers to develop a non-specialist, more comprehensive model of practice (i.e. Metadesign)? Collaborative writing can be a tool to enable incommensurate and heterogeneous writers to work together to develop deep-level team synergy. It can generate unusual and surprising team synergies leading to a shared propensity to dream future scenarios rather than remain within existing contexts. This longitudinal pilot study engaged four Ph.D. students, from different departments at Goldsmiths, University of London, over an extended period of nine months. The outcome of the writing was a set of fictional scenarios about the participants, entitled, Fictional Versions of the Truth about Someone Else. The Ph.D. students, who went on to complete the writing, consisted of one student from each of the following disciplines: Education, Fine Art, Psychology and Media and Communications.
The process, which was co-designed and grew organically, began by developing a team synergy through tools developed to build core values, and resulted in the participants benefiting in their confidence and ability to write. They learnt from each other and became both writers of their own fictional stories, as well as editors and critics.
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An examination of the Journal used as a vehicle to bring about a synthesis between theory and practice in Art and Design higher education
More LessThis article outlines a mini piece of empirical study that examines the Journal used in two B.A. (Hons) courses, one Fine Art and the other Design. This qualitative research includes questionnaires and interviews with educators and final year students from one Higher Education College in the United Kingdom. The questions were designed to find out whether the Journal brings about a synthesis between Critical Studies and students' own practice.
Responses range from the staff perspective that the Journal confuses the students, through to the view that it has the potential to be of great use and the opinion of most students' that it supports their studio practice.
The outcomes suggest further research in relation to the key issues raised: approaches to teaching and learning (specifically writing) and the lead-up to the final-year Critical Studies curriculum content.
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