Defining key terms and understanding the methods of research on canvas.
The second half of the cohort seminar was around utopian thinking and using a guided structure to find and source materials within the UAL canvas system to help us illustrate key terms/references.
‘Focus on the material of interest relating to everyday concerns such as tutorials/pastoral, ethics, academic misconduct, risk assessment, equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), student outcomes, counselling, health advice, confidentiality, or other aspects that relate to your role!”
Before we start there is a great link on canvas on keeping up to date with policies (LINK)
1. Policy = Wellbeing policy
I thought it would be great to start off with an important topic around well-being and to see what UAL has in place. This search came from previous seminar chats around pastoral care and student engagement, which made me rethink how UAL treat and manages staff well-being.
“The principle mechanism for identifying and minimising the factors that contribute to workplace stress is risk assessment; that is, to consider potential sources of stress in a task or working environment when completing a general risk assessment. Such factors may include; restructuring changes to workload, unachievable deadlines or a lack of training. The assessment of foreseeable risk makes it possible to identify appropriate control measures to avoid or minimise harm.” extracted from the policy
This is a great policy, that clearly lists and states everything UAL offers, from management, HR and personal requirements and the stated commitments UAL has in place! As in a technical role, one of my main responsibilities is risk assessments
2. Guide = Stress Risk Assessment guide
This guide really shows the commitment behind a streamlined policy on assessing the risk of stress! let alone the other types of Risk assessments in place to secure both students’ and staff’s general well-being. The easy-to-follow layout and 16 steps are clearly written and documented with graphs that follow the processes through. The HSE management appendix which clearly outlines the purposes and descriptors of Keywords is extremely accessible. The most important part of this for me is building action plans! Something that could be put in place in the everyday job that allows me to use UAL terminology for building a better structure around the team and studio requirements.
3. Framework = Creative attributes framework
This is curriculum based, but here at knit, most of the knit skills are taught by a technician and not an academic, and this short 3-dimension framework is truly liberating and student-focused. The first dimension or capacity is “Making things happen” a very strong statement! one that I feel that I live by, I personally don’t like waiting times and push forward in my work to stay focused and stable in my work environment, I like to keep busy and building this into my practice is about refining the 3 attributes that follow it, proactivity, enterprise and agility. As an industry practitioner, my practice is all about evaluating the processes around production and how to bring a ‘sustainable’ mind frame into a students perspective while making, although I can champion this thought process, without the rest of the student’s interactions doing so as well, it creates this idea of my belief pushing onto the students. Which is something I try not to do.
Capacity 2 is called “showcasing abilities” it’s more a student focus with guidance, and here is where our tacit knowledge comes into play, using our resources of how we communicated in the past experiences we have led to help students pursue more engaging storytelling in their work, forecasting the needs around its 3 attributes; communication, connectivity and story-telling. The beauty of working in a creative outlet like an arts university and the possibility to cross-discipline collaborate or express a need for multi-disciplinary based interactions. I personally think this is also our enemy at the moment, due to the separation of campuses that spread around London, it does give us hope that the new campus ALL IN ONE building will bring provide us with better inter-discipline connections and opportunities.
Capacity 3 is around “Navigating change” and it’s quite fitting that ended capacity 2 on our move to Strafford, as this whole year is about navigating change in work life, day-to-day and our physical to digital admin duties. The descriptors of this capacity are; curiosity, self-efficacy and resilience. 3 words I can use to describe the nature around my practice, I’m curious enough to explore and express my interests in my workplace and with participating in both local and global events within UAL. I tend to always be positive in my work life, and even when I am troubled, or unconfident I express the need to nurture this conversation with myself and re-analysis where I need to place my confidences again. A technical role is the most resilient in the university work placement, I have previously been described as a “worker ant” that works continuously to see my practice and workshop grow and evolve. Something of achievement but also to reflect I know sometimes my work habits aren’t healthy, but curiously this is what keeps me engaged and motivated.
The job of this framework, or the outcome is university-wide, and the bottom line is securing the professional skills that allow students to gain graduate-level jobs or work creatively in a freelancing-based job. The framework doesn’t mention the risks it takes to secure jobs and the financial burden that it can take a toll on students especially those from lower-income backgrounds. It would be great to establish a 4th capacity and work how to “adult” or “creatively adult” into this framework, bringing the solution that failure isn’t the end and that business-related skills are necessary to learn as a creative in all fields/disciplines how to market oneself professionally and socially as a creative.
4. Strategy = Learning, teaching and enhancement strategy
‘This strategic area requires us to ensure that all our students can reach their full potential. It requires us to work in partnership with them to develop and deliver an education that is responsive, responsible, imaginative and inspirational.’
What is a strategy and why is one needed, it’s the most utopian idea of thinking around these statements that comes from a committee that sets the University’s goals for a period of time. These are dialogue instructions branched out into each sector of the university to provide a skeleton pathway to follow and guide us for a short period of time, roughly 7 years. This strategy just ended in 2022, so it would be good to maybe follow up on how this was evaluated (maybe someone can comment and point me in a direction).
The sole purpose is the focus, not in the attention spamming focus, but more in a shift of focus or importance in areas that have previously been highlighted to be key areas to investigate and ‘upgrade’. The previous focus before this seemed to be student-based, this one is around the teachers and teaching practices, I wonder if the PGcert SOW change came from this focus and its evaluation. I picked this strategy because it’s currently my focus, it’s my shift in my technical ability to learn more about academic practice and how I can improve my skills to progress my future in teaching and learning. My current job title is specialist in knit ( teaching and learning), although the aspect (apart from my PGcert, although I did have to apply to this) of learning seems to be more self-learning or self investigative and for me to upskill myself it seems that I have to do it myself, at this level, the dreaded level 4 which stops you from applying to research, KE or teaching schemes. For 2 years I’ve been asking to progress my skills in digital knitting, but it just keeps getting pushed and pushed further away, that I had to pay for one training out of my own pocket.
Although back to this strategy, is broken down quite nicely in areas that are short paragraphs and easy to read and follow, the descriptors are highlighted with titles to suggest the topic at hand followed by the core values of this strategy.
Teaching as a creative practice and the partnerships that accompany this, understanding that to be a teacher is also to be creative was a huge insight for me, as normally the common term would be natural or born to teach, but to say this is just another branch of my creativity gives me the freedom to explore how I would think creatively and problem solve as a designer. Our main goals as teachers are to nourish and provide space for young creatives to grow, question and learn, these environments are critically important to young people and extremely hard to come by while an adult unless you know what you are looking for. The partnership between staff (ALL STAFF) and students should be a cohesive conversation and embodies the tune of learning and creating together, learning in peer-to-peer scenarios and respected environments that encourage creative dialogue.
Our values – extracted from the strategy
1. Collaborative
Outstanding learning experiences are the outcome of a partnership with colleagues and students to bring together their expertise, inventiveness and unique perspectives to enrich the student learning experience.
2. Inclusive
Recognising, valuing and promoting diversity is central to a fair and inclusive learning environment for all staff and students.
3. Ground-breaking
Creative teaching is only possible when we can challenge orthodoxies and experiment, innovate and take creative risks as pedagogically informed and highly-skilled educators.
4. Practical
Our activities should lead to concrete, accessible and usable ideas, tools and resources that can make an immediate and meaningful difference to the learning and teaching environment.
5. Scholarly
The enhancement of learning and teaching should be evidence- and research-informed, drawing on the outcomes of rigorous and ongoing critical questioning, evaluation and enquiry into teaching.
I think these are self-explanatory, but I am glad I have come across the values, even though it’s 2023, I need to print them out and put them up on my wall, as they could express my future in teaching and I feel I could use these in both a technical aspect, academic and with my own personal research. The end of this strategy explains how they would accomplish these strategic priorities, something I hope to find evidence of these with an honest review, these priorities are set goals with achievable outcomes… were they met???
5. Principle = UAL Climate, racial and social justice principles
“Move with urgency to become a community that has the capabilities to address the social, racial and environmental injustices of climate emergency using creativity and resourcefulness. We offer hope through action, committing to the de-colonisation and de-carbonisation of our education and creative practices.“
5 very clear principles around the justice that is coming or needed in education, especially HE. We looked at these during class as they piqued my interest, as at ground level it’s at this stage in my career the most relatable to my practice as a specialist. It is something that I can initiate and broaden my awareness. With the Strafford move at LCF, the move with urgency seems to be church bells ringing! on a weekly basis, we are decluttering our masses of storage, paper accumulation and everyday bits and bobs, and we need to consider how we are disposing of this as waste. It also falls into my management of the workshop, with ordering and falling in line with using recycled materials, dead stock and considering our carbon footprint. Very interesting and ongoing debates with academics around this and how we can channel this into the SOW and that the yarn which is provided for technical workshops isn’t just FREE material.
6. Code = Code of good conduct in research
My dream in this job role, is to become a researcher in knitted textiles and garment making. How I get there, I have no clue, but I keep small little research projects to engage myself with to test and play and analysis the what ifs and how comes in design processes related to digital and physical practice. I have chosen this code, as a future project to set myself, to learn the ways of a researcher and engage my future goals in this program. The pgcert is just the start of my research practice a gateway into academic research or technical research which I would prefer, but it doesn’t exist yet with in UAL.
This basically says what it does, its a Code of Conduct, much like the rest of these dimensions previously discussed, only this is a tad more serious and can come with consequences. To plan the future, I need to see what UAL offers in place and if this is the right decision to more forward.
“Integrity
Researchers must be honest about conflict of interest issues, whether real, potential or
perceived, at the earliest opportunity and at all stages of research, e.g. when applying for
funding, when identifying collaborators and when reporting results. Plagiarism, deception or
the fabrication or falsification of results is regarded as a serious disciplinary offence. All
researchers are encouraged to report cases of suspected misconduct or malpractice and to
do so in a responsible and appropriate manner in accordance with the University’s
procedures for dealing with misconduct in research and for disclosing concerns about
malpractice.” extracted from the code of conduct.
It would be good to set this code into a smaller maybe 20% research project to see if I can guide my intentions and methods into a fully workable research assignment or project, hopefully one day a PHD in digital knitted textiles.
To finish this investigation into canvas and to rejoice in the climate, social and racial justice framework that we observed in class, my thoughts has been on my friend’s Alice work, who is shifting architectural ideas and farming solutions through textiles, embodying the future thinking and systems change in how we as textile designers can live and work cohesively together with nature. (LINK)
