Royal College of Art - Art Plus Conference Keynote Presentation with Dr Mark Ingham, SFHEA, FRSA, NTF.

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dd

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What did you think of the images?
http://www.pollev.com/svasant

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What did you think of the images?
All the hard work has gone!!! Now I go cry...
Intriguing
This is how we started the pandemic pushing very hard in TEL land and now are we now just a small puddle
of water?
They told an intriguing story
Focus, life and learning
Told a story
Pushing until you achieve the end goal (with cold holds)
The end point doesn't matter. It's all about the journey.
Thought provoking - it made me want to know what would happen next...
where should to put your energies?
Are we crying because we have bee all asked to go back to the way we were before?
Reverse child birth...all that effort ...for what reward???
I'm not sure what I'm doing but it's fun
Moving a block of ice on a hot road, definitely not the right thing to do unless at the end we are looking for
transformation - ice to water
absurd actions that could be seen as not productive but are
Sometimes the hardest work goes un-noticed.
art project

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Still from FRANCIS ALŸS, SOMETIMES MAKING
SOMETHING LEADS TO NOTHING.
SHOT IN 1997
THE ARTIST PUSHES A BLOCK OF ICE THROUGH THE STREETS OF
MEXICO CITY UNTIL IT MELTS INTO NOTHING.
Alÿs, Francis. (1997). Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes making something leads to nothing)
Mexico City, Mexico, 1997; 5:00 min. https://francisalys.com/sometimes-making-something-
leads-to-nothing/

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Session Outline
 Introductions
 Pandemic Experiences
 Different Spaces

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UAL’s Honorary Doctor Theaster Gates said in his
2018 Doctoral acceptance speech, ‘…we are attempting to
constitute a way of understanding a world of nothing and
turning it into something’. Over the last two years, UAL's
Experimental Pedagogies Research Group (EPRG) has
been doing exactly this through a series of collaborative and
experimental events that model what is possible within our
limits of time and space.
Theaster Gates giving a moving speech as he receives Honorary Doctorate
from UAL https://youtu.be/3vxnOl7gyQE

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A portion of the Johnson Editorial Library, as displayed in
Gates' 2011 White Cube exhibition, Labour is my Protest
https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2017/june/13/lo
ok-at-theaster-gates-incredible-record-and-book-collections/

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What were your pandemic experiences of
teaching, learning, supporting staff and/or
students?
http://www.pollev.com/svasant

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What were your pandemic experiences of
teaching, learning, supporting staff and/or
students?
I think 'frenetic madness' would be the best description of those days.
exciting, scary, tiring, fun, WTF... often all at once!
Slightly controlled chaos
Had to become an expert in tools such as 0365 overnight
Chaotic, held as beacons to assist in the move to online....but dropped very quickly once we were back on campus
It went from shock and blind panic, quickly to some form of order, some great lessons learnt but it seems we are all too easily slipping back... which feels a real
shame
Incredibly busy, suddenly online pedagogy was of interest to the whole university....it was a gift....that is still giving today
Blended and connected learning became more important then ever. Less use of VLE as a repository, with emphasis on 'context over content'.
A very busy time of doing!
chaotic but valuable.
It's been my first experience of support L+T so nothing to compare it with, but it's been very solitary. I haven't seen many students. Lots of worrying.
Quite frantic in the beginning but then got into a flow and I felt like it encouraged creative thinking and inclusive thinking
Tricky as it was expected that the students could adapt to online like it was easy

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What were your pandemic experiences of
teaching, learning, supporting staff and/or
students?
Teaching: Initial anxiety, which quickly became pleasant surprise that it was actually enjoyable.
It has all been very different. Some are very positive like the EPRG some not so. Students felt even more lonely being stuck in their parent's house or in and place
where the could never be alone...
Rewarding!
It was easier to support students one-to-one, but as a team, it got more complicated, volleagues were not used to remote/online work.
Worry for staff who were under pressure and watching people push themselves to the brink...
It didn't change much as I support online distance learning courses. However had to adapt training to make sure academics considered the world situation in their
practices.
initially firefighting, extra work to provide online material, trying to keep students on board and making work, and dealing with the emotional fallout from students
and staff.
and so hard to know whether they had understood.
We achieved a lot in a small period because we had no choice. But we still haven't had a moment to reflect properly on changes.
It was extremely difficult to do what needed to be done, without proper understanding and support from line managers and senior management.
Also impossible to diagnose the millions of problems students can have with their PC's etc...
but then...saw potential and opportunities
Change was difficult for some to accept.

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Silence
Meditation
Invisible
Process
Eventful Spaces
Filling the Void
Treasure Hunt
Clues to be Solved

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Not Filling the Void
Being Comfortable with Silence
Education for Thinking and Focus
Invisible
Void
Silence
Mediation

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SHY SPACES/SILENT SPACES
Within social spaces - physical or
online - how can an experimental
pedagogical approach can account for
shyness, quietness and introversion?

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How have you made space for listening rather
than talking?
http://www.pollev.com/svasant

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How have you made space for listening rather
than talking?
Nope but would like to
Weekly support drop-ins (unfortunately, not well attended)
Yes
Cameras off makes listening much easier for me.
Mention the need to listen and not interrupt at the beginning of large meetings/classes online
Technically yes, in the form of drop in sessions for training, but questions are welcome.
Online tutorials
Online Office hours, options for camera off, non-compulsory webinars but access to recordings
Reducing the amount of content in a presentation. Easy to overestimate how much you'll get through when delivering online and forgetting there will be those natural
interactions.
We have asked online workshop participants to listen for silence for 1 minute (there never was any just slightly more quietness!)
Purposefully weave in activities such as take an observational walk into online BA Illustration. Make time for walking meetings (haven't done enough of this
recently!).
Training ss to listen to others in conversation; listening and later responding to content when the speaker has finished, interpreting phonological cues such as
downward intonation to note when the speaker has finished. etc.
Keep the camera on to show active listening and engagement, especially when it is something that I am leading - lead by example. Show my presence in various
ways e.g. camera on, in chat, etc
it's tricky as time for listening is not factored into my sessions, I'm there to teach technical.
Cameras off allows me to focus

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SHY SPACES/SILENT SPACES
Allowing for silence and different modes of
engagement. Some students prefer online
interaction, for some it flattens the hierarchy.
Ideation doesn’t need to be verbal, but too
often relies on that discouraging quieter, more
introverted students or those who have English
as a second (additional) language.

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Can you give us examples of how
students who didn’t engage before the
Pandemic but now do?
http://www.pollev.com/svasant

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Can you give us examples of how
students who didn’t engage before the
Pandemic but now do?
They seem to like Teams to make a little enquiry
Online tools have given many a voice that they weren't comfortable raising in person sessions
Using the like or emojis more in webinar tools
Waving on camera at the start of a session. Thumbs up on forum/blog posts.
Using Padlet for anonymous discussions as been a really useful tool.
For some, "hiding" behind a computer screen really helps because they are not "really" speaking in front of people. Yes they are but mind tricks can be
wonderful things.
More flexible ways to communicate, different options available now that weren't there (or used) before
The use of the chat function has been really powerful to give certain students the confidence and a voice to ask a question or make their views heard
Student led Discords have been set up as a way of peer review and feedback for their artwork
Partially deaf student was able to engage with recorded lectures plus transcripts transformed their experience. Using chat and forums levelled the playfield
for them
More checking in on wellbeing than previously, seeing how people are feeling, how well they are coping
This is difficult, students who started before the pandemic have graduated now - so comparison will not be with same cohort, same scenario. Now we have
students coming in who have been studying for their A-level online. Engagement will of course be different (although not necessarily better).
networking in absent peers to stream course content on their own
One of my first active blended online lectures asked for some free writing. in the chat in Teams. For 5 minutes we had the most amazing thread of thinking I
had seen in a while. It worked much better in this space than the usual lecture theatre as all students could see what they had written...
Students feel they have access to a learning approach that fits into their individual learning needs, differences and lifestyle.
I think students are struggling more to engage, mainly due to the isolation of the pandemic

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UNCOMMON SPACES/EVENTFUL SPACES
Marcus Doel (2010) discusses the notion of event in
Gilles Deleuze's thinking by relating it to difference:
'What does this eventfulness mean in practice? It
means that the world is not given in advance. It is not
always already suspended in reserve as a set of
countless possibilities or eternal and ethereal Platonic
forms, which simply await their successive realization
in the course of everything that happens.'

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UNCOMMON SPACES/EVENTFUL SPACES
The world does not take place as the serial realization
of possibilities and forms, which would make of the
world and its occurrence nothing but an impotent
repetition of the same and a dutiful re-presentation of
the identical … the world that takes place is not
simply the addition of reality to a prefigured
possibility… the world that returns is never the same
world. What returns with the taking place of the world
is neither the same, nor the identical, nor the possible
– but the event. (pp. 120-121)

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UNCOMMON SPACES/EVENTFUL SPACES
"An event is a change of course, a displacement, the
pre-emption of a line of fight that prompts change
from one ontological state to another. In terms of
assemblage thinking— where everything is already
on the move—the event is a theory of how change
occurs in relation to the ongoing formation of the
social." (Fendler 2015)

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UNCOMMON SPACES/EVENTFUL SPACES
What are similarities and differences between
physical and virtual liminal spaces for
teaching? Why do they matter? What is the
significant to creativity and formation of new
knowledge?
How do Eastern and Western cultures view
creativity in the subjects and what impact
does this have on siloed vs holistic thinking?

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How these spaces can come together?
http://www.pollev.com/svasant

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References
Doel, Marcus. (2010). in Navigating the eventful space of
learning: Mobilities, nomadism and other tactical maneuvers by
Rachel Fendler (2015).
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/33349402.pdf
Alÿs, Francis. (1997). Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes making
something leads to nothing) Mexico City, Mexico, 1997; 5:00
min. https://francisalys.com/sometimes-making-something-leads-
to-nothing/