Okay, so this week you have a choice, you can read through, or you can have a listen to this post, it’s about 10 minutes long and it’s the first time that I’m trying this, and listening back I need to sort out a better mic and rehearse it a few times, but here we go.
I’m back into it this week, preparing my courses. I’ve quite a bit to do, and as I said last week, it is taking a little while to get back into a routine. I have worked on campus a few times and riding the bus hasn’t seemed so bad. I know that it’s a little thing, but I downloaded a new app that uses much-improved tracker info, and now I know if I should jump on the trolley or find a connection, which is usually tricky to judge. It can be so demoralizing seeing the 41 bus departing just as I’m arriving at Smithfield Street, knowing that I’ll have to wait almost another hour for the next one.
I am slowly but surely preparing for the new semester, and every day when I clock off, I know that I have ticked off a few more tasks.
Also, this week, I’ve been out on the bike and enjoyed a dip in one of the local swimming pools. The water was clear and clean, with just a few leaves floating on the surface from the trees that surround the area. The climate really is temperate here in Western Pennsylvania, so we are used to dodging showers when we go for a cycle or a swim. I’m definitely feeling a little healthier than a few weeks ago.
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
I have updated my goals for the Fall, they are published on my education site if you are interested. I’ll be teaching three classes in the semester, and with quite a bit of traveling, I’m not entirely sure it is reasonable to set out a tight writing schedule. If I don’t I’ll regret it. When interesting conferences come around, I wish that I’d taken the time earlier in the year to submit something as it is so much better to attend when you have a paper to present.
One of the themes I’ve set myself to explore is the notion of uncertainty in teaching. Students will often embark on a project with the idea of arriving at a fixed point, and the sooner they work out what that might be, the smarter they can work, and follow what they see as a process in order to arrive at an outcome that they believe will please the teacher, and hopefully get them a high grade. Often they’ll seek out exemplars on which to model outcomes, or they will interrogate instructors and demand detail and clarity about grading so that they can satisfy it to the ninth degree.
This all sounds fine from the outside, it seems like a conscientious approach that rewards both student and teacher. However, this way of working is as far from a real-world situation as it can get. Creativity is messy, projects are stop/start, ideas are often incomplete, they have to be wrestled, put through the mangle; or sometimes ideas need to simmer, sit in silence, and carefully nurtured, or even left alone for a while. People working in creative industries see the signs very easily, they are experts in helping ideas become things.
As instructors, we can use established frameworks such as design thinking, to give students a roadmap, with a series of milestones that can be checked off along the way. This is great, I’m certainly not going to stop doing that, but I do need to offer something extra. I need students to be comfortable with uncertainty, following an idea to a conclusion not previously imagined. It is fine to use a framework to develop ideas, but something else needs to happen, a left turn, a reinvention, a leap. Students need to not know where they are going to end up, instead they need to trust themselves, listen to others, try things out and endure lots and lots of failure. We need to find a way to reward those that surprised themselves.
Life Lessons
I’ve been wondering about my own creativity, and how ideas form. I spoke with a colleague this week who has a spreadsheet of projects and color codes them, estimating how long each one will take, whether 10 minutes, a few weeks and months, or even years. It is essentially a list that he revisits continually so that he always has something to do so that when he finds time in front of the television he might sketch, or when he has a morning he can develop a piece of writing or make some music.
This shows such great discipline. In contrast, it feels as if I’m carrying receipts in different pockets. I have a few notebooks and sketchbooks, my phone has notes and scraps of ideas that are really not developed, and I have no way of seeing if there is a common thread or cogent idea that might become something more. I’m less worried about this than I used to be, as it is easy these days to make very short, little bits of work, which might be photographs, sketches, or short animations that you can quickly publish as gifs or short videos on TikTok or Instagram. Talking with my colleague, I did feel the urge to take some of these fragments and create a more substantial, more measured, longer, and hopefully richer, and fully formed outcome than I have for a while.
Lost and Found
Just a couple of things this week.
I really enjoyed this article talking about what it really meant to be a punk in Britain. When I started secondary school in the 80s punks, mods, and rockers were becoming less distinguishable, but I remember seeing them hanging out on railway platforms or gathered in pub gardens, and I just thought they were fascinating and probably a bit scary too. I don’t suppose I was ever interested in becoming anything, I probably worried too much about what my parents would have thought but I loved the music that was coming from all these different groups. I enjoyed listening to it all, The Specials and The Damned, it was (and still is) great. Shades of this era are depicted in Shane Meadow’s This is England series, here’s one of my favorite scenes.
What else? Former YBA Mark Leckey has opened an art school in Cornwall, which sounds like a fun place to learn. He’s not the only artist opening art schools, there’s Tracy Emin’s TKE Studio in Margate and Marcus Harvey runs Turps Art School which also claims to offer an alternative to more established art schools. It’s encouraging to see more opportunities for people to learn and develop their practice, especially in forms such as painting and sculpture, but I’m sure there are teachers in art schools that also seek to disrupt convention, that’s the idea isn’t it, to see teaching evolve in a way that is new and innovative. Mostly I’m thinking these artists are expressing deep dissatisfaction with the way that they were taught, and want to offer an alternative.
I share a similar frustration, although I didn’t go to art school, instead chose Film and French, much more essay and writing-based, only in my post-grad did I start making stuff. I thank the wonderful art teachers that I had in secondary school, who were supportive and encouraging. Although art is something that I very much enjoy now, it does make me a little sad to think about all the years that pretty much stopped doing anything. The desire was always there though and so pleased to have bought a sketchbook and made lots of terrible drawings and somehow arrived at a line. I just wish I’d started earlier.
Thank you
We still have a few weeks before school starts, so we’re hoping to head out for some day trips, maybe to local lakes or out into the countryside. Soccer and school events are starting to drip onto the calendar, so we need to enjoy free days and evenings while we can.
My friend Rob has started casting small resin toy figures and sent me a couple this week. I used to collect these up until a few years ago, and it’s extra special to know that someone designed one and made the molds, and mixed the compound. They are incredibly detailed, and I love the stickers that came with them and that he even found the most toxic-looking green corn wotsits to pack the box with, how cool are they?
I hope that you’re all well, let me know if there’s anything that I can help with, if you have a question, then I’m happy to answer it. I might be able to offer something, maybe.
So, if you’re reading or listening, I just want to say thank you. Keep sending me messages and look forward to talking with again next week.
Sounds downloaded at freesound.org
Eleonor's will. - Electronic track music by frankum | License: Attribution 4.0
Extract of "Sweetness dark" Ambience track by frankum | License: Attribution 4.0
It's *your* path through art, Stephan. Don't let conventions about timing stop your from following the thread of your interest and curiosity. This is directly related to the uncertainty of teaching (and I would add learning) that you mention above. Every place is art school!