Technical skills for art and design are an important part of students’ learning (point 3 above). Skills are required in order to engage in practice. Without technical skills, students are limited and frustrated in their attempts to express themselves. Furthermore, the health and safety aspects of working with equipment have to be addressed: organising demonstrations of technical equipment and alerting students to the associated health and safety issues are the tutor’s responsibility, as is creating an ethos within a workshop of shared responsibility for everyone to work in an appropriate and safe way.
However, an emphasis on skills, as we have seen in the approaches to learning described earlier, is a limiting way to experience the learning environment. Too much time spent on perfecting skills can be frustrating for tutors and students. Moreover, skill is not the be-all and end-all of practice; not all employment opportunities depend on being able to do the skilled components of a practice. There are a number of ways in which skills acquisition can be eased:
• Buddying. In an open studio students can learn from more experienced students in a buddy system. Students can either be paired up with a buddy from a year above or groups can be created from all years of the course. The tutor has to initiate this but once social bonds are in place students can support each other to check on skills, or teach each other new skills such as computer programming.
• Group working.Having to achieve practical outcomes as a group can lead to more understanding of processes due to having to plan explicitly, articulate and agree the next steps forward. This is particularly important for art and design which traditionally emphasise individual work, unlike media practice which tends to be more team based.
• Deconstruction of artefacts.This can be undertaken either individually or as a group.
As an illustration, unpicking a jacket and noting or describing the methods discovered in its construction can improve understanding of how its layers of linings, interlinings, padding and stitching were physically constructed to maintain its shape.
• Using visual resources to explain processes.Handouts have been used traditionally but step-by-step procedural diagrams can be replaced by digital photographs in interactive PowerPoint for technical skills. This can be accessed by students in the workshop and can be built up by the students themselves as they encounter technical problems that require inventive solutions.
Personal and professional skills
Project-based work provides excellent opportunities to learn personal and professional skills useful in a wide range of work opportunities beyond those of the physical practice 354 ❘ Teaching in the disciplines
of an artist or designer (point 11 above). There is an increasing focus now not only on skills for employability, but on entrepreneurial skills (see Chapter 8). In practice, there is no clear division between skills for employability and skills for entrepreneurship. Being an entrepreneur does not necessarily mean prioritising financial success over other goals and it is possible to be an ethical entrepreneur. The skills of entrepreneurship are as relevant to someone in employment as they are to someone who runs their own business.
Students in creative arts subjects need to be enterprising to maximise their abilities and create opportunities for employment.
There is no definitive list of the skills which increase employability, or the ability to run a business, but skills which are frequently cited in this context include:
• adaptability;
• being proactive;
• communication skills;
• confidence;
• emotional intelligence;
• financial acumen;
• flexibility;
• networking;
• opportunism;
• problem-solving;
• project management;
• resourcefulness;
• self-efficacy;
• self-management;
• self-sufficiency;
• team working abilities;
• vision.
Although the practical and experiential learning (see Chapter 2) provided by a visual arts education offers plentiful opportunities for these skills to be developed, students will need to be reminded that they are acquiring them while they undertake other learning opportunities. Often these skills are tacitly acquired, and it is helpful to emphasise exactly what engagement in practice requires and what has been learned.
Maximising the learning opportunities has to be engineered through curriculum planning. Personal Development Planning (PDP) is the sector-wide process for this. PDP is a structured and supported process through which individuals reflect upon their learning, experiences and performance and plan for the future. It is situated in social, personal, academic and work-related domains and encompasses the whole person, acknowledging the individuality of learners. It should be student owned and student led.
The visual arts ❘ 355
Stage two students in the Textiles Department at Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London, have the opportunity to show their work alongside professional companies at the high-profile annual international textile trade fair Indigo in Paris. This professional practice-based project gives students an insight into the commercial world of textiles within a global arena. The course values this experience for the students highly, but organising and preparing for it has in the past placed a huge strain on the departmental staff. The staff team considered ways that students could take on responsibility for some of the planning and organising of the project, giving them not only responsibility but also a real experience of organising the event, something that as professional designers they would have to do. The opportunity to encourage teamwork was also welcomed, as textile students often work in isolation.
The department initially looked at all aspects of the project from planning, preparation, organising and production and split this into seven tasks.
From these, students were asked to assign themselves to work on one of the teams.
• Fact-finding about Paris
To compile a Rough Guide to Paris with maps and essential information for all students.
• Exhibition and site management
To take responsibility for portfolios, presentation and mounting the exhibition.
• Sales and PR
To oversee the sales and public relations of the show.
• Exhibition design
To design and produce a team brand/identity for stand, backdrop and graphics.
• Documentation
To record and document the event prior to, during and after the event. To record student feedback and compile a newsletter, Après Indigo.
• Database and archives
To build a database of existing and new clients and industry contacts.
• Project
To write a design brief and present it to peers.
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Case study 2: Developing students’ personal and professional skills through active learning
All these tasks had previously been done by the staff. Looking at all aspects of the project made the tutors aware of not only how complex the project is but also what a rich learning experience it offers. The team tasks were advertised as jobs with a list of skills required. Students were asked to sign up for a team, taking into careful consideration what skills they wished to develop. Each team had a tutor to support its role. Once the teams were briefed they were given an ‘Indigo Journal’
to log all information such as meetings and time plans. This record provided a source to refer back to after the completion of the project when students are briefing the year below them to undertake the Indigo project again. Mentoring of the year below is a key way in which sustainability is built in: students become knowledgeable and in turn can support others. This adds to their own ongoing learning and reflection on the skills required to become professional designers.
The team tasks gave students the opportunity to extend, develop or even discover new skills that would otherwise go untapped. Student feedback was positive about teamwork and the experience of seeing themselves as textile designers within a professional arena:
• ‘I realised my strengths lay in selling, not in design.’
• ‘I was able to practise another language and improve my interpersonal skills and work with other students.’
• ‘I don’t normally tell people what to do, I worked with people I don’t know very well.’
• ‘Everyone played a part in the organisation of the event.’
• ‘I enjoyed being part of a team and knowing I was helping towards the show.’
• ‘Paris rocks!’
(Melanie Bowles, Senior Lecturer, Textiles, Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London)
Writing in the visual arts
As indicated above (point 10), writing in the visual arts can be difficult territory. This is partly because a relatively high proportion of students and tutors have specific learning The visual arts ❘ 357
Interrogating practice
How can you maximise the learning opportunities for personal and professional development in the curriculum? How can you encourage students to see how essential these skills are in relation to the practice?
difficulties (SpLD, commonly referred to as dyslexia), which can slow down reading and writing and make structuring written work more difficult. Even for staff and students unaffected by dyslexia, the written word can seem like a foreign language for people whose native preference is visual communication.
However, written communication skills are an essential transferable skill for life and employment, and core to aspects of visual arts disciplines and related areas (art history, cultural studies, media studies, journalism), and as such there has been considerable effort to find effective ways of supporting the development of literacy in the visual arts.
Key projects include the Writing PAD project (Writing Purposefully in Art and Design), based at Goldsmith’s, University of London, and with 40 UK partner higher education institutions. The website includes examples of successful case studies, examples of students’ work and discussion papers. Writing PAD is actively engaged in developing new models of academic writing which are more conducive to the visual arts.
ThinkingWriting is another project which supports academic writing across a range of disciplines with online resources. Based at Queen Mary, University of London, it has been very successful in improving student writing through structured writing tasks which allow the challenges of academic writing to be tackled one at a time. It is particularly strong on supporting reflective writing, which links into Personal Development Planning (PDP) discussed above, and to the use of sketchbooks in the visual arts.
Reflecting on learning
Reflectionis increasingly recognised as essential to effective learning (see e.g. Moon, 2000). Learning journals are now common throughout higher education, although, as discussed above, because of discomfort with the medium of written communication, without well-planned support many reflective journals remain descriptive accounts of process. However, the sketchbook is a long-standing example of reflective learning in higher education, with its emphasis on enquiry, thinking and reflecting on product, process, audience and personal meaning. The form a sketchbook takes will be dependent on local expectations, but the purpose and function of a sketchbook is worth exploring with your students. It is not until it becomes a personal necessity and portable thinking tool that its purpose is really understood. Combining written and visual communication in a sketchbook may be one way to encourage students both to develop their writing skills and to deepen their learning through effective reflection.
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Interrogating practice
How can you encourage your students to develop a personal ownership of their sketchbook and use it in productive ways? Apart from using a sketchbook, what other ways can students reflect on practice?