Reading: Teaching Practices for creative Practitioners (Orr, S, & Shreeve, 2017)
I read “Teaching practices for creative practitioners” (Orr, S, & Shreeve, 2017) and it made me reflect on how I structure my teaching at the Foundation course – I am an illustration practitioner with a small freelance practice that focuses on branding, working with clients on projects.
The text touches on how many design lecturers also have a professional design practice alongside, and how they can feed into each other or even mirror each other – The lecturer bringing into the teaching space concepts from their professional work (the brief, the research, collaboration)
Many of my briefs have an element of something that you would find in a professional designer / client setting: A specific format to work to with print and finishing settings, the construction of a pitch or a blurb that summarises a project efficiently to an audience, the integration of “industry standard” software (such as the Adobe suite), a strict deadline and yet, I’m still trying to find a balance between “too professional” and “too detached from the reality of a working practitioner” Orr & Shreeve talk about the removal of boundaries to both practice and teaching and this resonates with me.
“Using this strategy is a way to exchange knowledge between the two different social worlds they inhabit, between being a practitioner and being a teacher” (Orr, S & Shreeve, 2017)
I have observed working practices from my students that have surprised me and showed me that the way I do things professionally might not be suitable for everyone in a learning environment – recently I set a publication project that had to use Adobe InDesign to be formatted. Many students learned the software and have since applied it to other work, but some students, after trying the software, realised that they had other knowledge that achieved the same results but faster. If the end result of the brief is reached, does it matter they didn’t use InDesign? What was the aim of the project? To learn software or create a publication ready to print?
Many students find resourceful ways of solving briefs – using technologies familiar to them (editing music or video using social media Apps ) but not to me. This always makes me reflect on where the line is between giving students too many rules and tools that can stifle them, or not enough tools that can keep them stuck in the same place without progressing their work. One student asked me how they could make their work look better and the answer was just “scanning it with a real scanner at 300dpi”
In the end, the studio teaching space and the professional studio are different things. I have found that client work is often not terribly nurturing and overly professionalising the teaching environment can lead to fatigue and rigidity in students. One of the reasons I enjoy teaching is because of the possibilities for innovation, trial and error and play. How often will a client request for me to create an immersive collective narrative experience that uses drawing and sound? I have yet to encounter this in my professional life.
If students don’t have a place to flex their creative muscles where they can work without fear of failure, budgets, scale and social pressures, then why have this space in the first place?
References:
Orr, S & Shreeve, 2017, Art and Design Pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum, Taylor & Francis Group, Milton.