The classroom as a performative space
I wanted to return to idea staff and students’ perceptions around student engagement, this first came up for me in discussion with Carys my course tutor when talking through a learning outcome L03 in Unit 1, this mentions ‘timekeeping and engagement’ within its aims. Carys and I talked about the distinction between engagement and attendance and how a student might have barriers to attendance and might not attend every day but be very engaged. This led me to consider the barriers that come from the expected norms and conventions, to access and participating in learning within the intuition UAL.
What is our expectation of student’s participation. What are the rules, guideline and support for student to participate, and to contribute. To what extent is this participation viewed as performative by the student, is the classroom a performative space?
The act of making involves producing something, and then showing as an action becomes an essential requirement of the creative process within education and within professional practice. It is not enough to think and make but we must engage in a public, performative act if we are to succeed.
‘In Issue One of Networks, Blair highlighted the emotional aspects of studio crit and how anxiety and fearfulness can adversely affect the feedback process. Likewise, although reading written feedback involves no public performance, it can nevertheless engender an emotional reaction, perhaps when students are given their marks in a group and inevitably compare them, or as in the case above, students are required to ‘perform’ straight after the hand back, without the opportunity to absorb the information. One should not assume that ‘feedback’ is simply an exchange of information and academic advice, but that the process of the exchange – whether individual, written or studio crit – is an intense, emotional experience for students, if not to say, staff as well.
How does this aspect of the creative process make students feel, are they drawn to it or move away from it? It is evident that confidence and safety play a part in a student’s willingness to show up and step on to the classroom stage. The process of making work can be personal and the idea of sharing your work maybe daunting. Often student’s past experiences of mistakes are not positives putting them in unfavourable light.
In Dr Gurnam Singh session ‘Bending the Rules’ ‘attendee Cath Hawes reflected on the “concept of ‘performativity’ and how we as a team (Academic Support) ‘battle’ against lots of academic norms and conventions that create barriers to access to learning for students and impact negatively on their agency, sense of confidence/self-worth, visibility etc.’
The drive to experiment and explore ideas without fear of mistakes, even including mistakes, can enables students to meaningfully participate and develop as creative practitioners, to able to participate within creative environments and communities.
The creative attributes framework encourages us to develop the students:
Communication – the skills needed to present themselves, their work and their ideas, to inspire others and respond to feedback.
Connectivity – the ability to collaborate with others, create networks and develop and contribute to communities of practice.
Storytelling – the ability to demonstrate their unique talents, abilities and experiences to others in an engaging manner.
All these attributes require students to present themselves to worlds outside of their familiar environments. We should be mindful to how of performance and collaboration, look and feel to individual students, I believe we should build in a range multiple opportunities for students to practice and play with Communication, Connectivity and Storytelling, to allow for the individual approaches to come through. Scaffolding the student journey to build agency and confidence, and raise the question to both staff and students, what does engagement look like to individual creative practitioners.
References
Blair, B ( 2007) ‘Perception/interpretations/impact’ in Networks Issue No.1.
Brooks, K. (2008) ”Could do it better’: students’ critique of written feedback, Art Design Media Subject Centre, University of the West of England, Bristol pp.1-5.
Teaching and Learning exchange. (2021) ‘Bending the rules with Dr Gurnam Singh’, The Exchange blog, 21 April. https://tle.myblog.arts.ac.uk/bending-the-rules-with-dr-gurnam-singh/
The Creative Attributes Framework, 2016, Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/204330/Creative-Attributes-Framework-OVERVIEW-2020-FINAL.pdf