Seminar one.
To digest the content of how we have been placed in an online learning environment, working with a chat box and content being spoken, is a chaotic learning experience and not a place to build physicality in learning or room/time to explore discussion that is happening. It again felt like academically theoretical learning, yet exclusion from topics around technical staff members or those others who teach would be a brilliant sense of bringing inclusion into this subject rather than having a ‘unique’ experience to contribute to. This leads to this academic hierarchy that its only those worthy of academia are worthy of this view of teaching others.
It was a completely different learning experience, with no ice-breakers and very fast-paced and a tad under-designed in the purpose of the day. The pre-task content was heavy and a tad squashed in the sense there was no room to digest or have an open discussion on the topics discussed. Maybe this is my bias on online learning and the trauma of teaching physical subjects during the pandemic, but I don’t feel connected or motivated in the same sense as what a physical workroom brings to the learning experience.
I context I understand the reasoning behind this move and to protect and safeguard the hardships that our POC staff members have faced, and I hope with future endeavours of this unit, that they can bring this unit into the physical world and build upon it.
The positionality task was extremely different for me to complete, it was a sense of a bio-building in gameplay, and trying to understand every section of my past into the person I am today to relate context to my personal views, with honesty and purpose. Although this did come up in conversation with task 3 and labelling 6 individuals with their stats, I explained that I characterised based on the images and foretold stories related to that, as I am someone who doesn’t walk down a street and label people, but it wasn’t until after that I realised this was an opportunity to talk about my positionality in why I don’t do this. In Northern Ireland, we are indoctrinated as children to find the labels of strangers due to colonial sectarianism and its past, by the time we are in high school children can decipher your religion based on how you annunciate words, especially the letter ‘H’. From physical characteristics of nose sizes and eye distance to shapes of ears, very much internalised hatred from a segregated past that devalued the catholic people of Northern Ireland and with-held safe platforms for education, work and life due to their nationality and religion. The seriousness of this pre-peace treaty was that it was unsafe for different religious/nationality groups to walk or partake in parts of the city, without feeling unsafe or ending up in worst scenarios, So I do feel that I don’t subject the everyday pedestrian to these biases because I have experienced life before that allows me to check in and see my position or privilege when it came to this conversation.
While on the conversation of privilege, it also came up that, I was part-taking in the ideas of white privilege and It would be good to do a privilege walk quiz, which I am 16 points to the left of the start position. The ideas around biased labelling yet being labelled as a privileged person because I didn’t communicate the why was a weird experience, but we didn’t get a chance to provide a discussion on this and it was quickly moved on. My upbringing was council estate, underfunded education, single parent and being classed as a second-class citizen due to my religion, while also being a queer man and a redheaded person, I have faced discrimination in all walks of my life and yet I am still privileged which is something I completely understand, but informing me that I do, do something is a weird realisation on the ideas of this task was trying to portray.
To be honest, this section should’ve been building around positionality and maybe the ual data based and interpreting those within our work environments, the connection between the content provided and the pre-tasks just seemed rushed and the learning experience was diluted in the sense of purpose and understanding. It will be interesting to see how this moves forward and how the blog becomes more involved within the unit. The content plus digesting the information was overwhelming, with not many relatable sources of information that backed up the session in a context of creative education rather than generalised or Americanised critical theory.
I am really excited about this term, in the value of today’s session I felt like I take up a lot of space, so I do need to build upon this and step back and evaluate my peers and allow room for others to part-take, I don’t understand the value of my input sometimes and it does get picked up often, I think this will be a learning objective of my own this unit and balance the opportunity to input and allowing of others.
I wanted a textile image, that reflected the prep work or the ‘baggage’ that’s left after a project. I thought cones of yarns would work brilliantly to decipher my thoughts and feelings around today’s seminar. It was providing new information in short doses with a lot of critical thinking points of discussion but time was limited in the sense we didn’t have enough yarn to tell the story. image from (LINK)
