Timed session plan:
20 min session / 10 min feedback
- Explaining context of workshop: wanting to collaborate and add play to my teaching (3 min)
- Setting up room and preparing table surface with help of participants (3 min)
- Making collaborative drawing tool with bamboo sticks and tape, attaching pens to each corner (3 min)
- Drawing exercise where everyone contributes a gestural drawing movement: Each person gets 1 minute (10 minutes in total to allow for thinking time)
- Blind drawing exercise to finalise and wind down session (1 minute)
Key decisions made:
1.I decided to make a collaborative drawing tool that was activated by the participants where we came together to make work as a group. This decision was made due to my personal context of having lost the peer to peer learning and more playful student involvement and student led activities I consider key in the studio. As Jana Hackathorn mentions in ‘Learning by doing’:
‘Active teaching techniques change the pace of the classroom, and are a creative way to increase students’ involvement, motivation, excitement, attention, and perceived helpfulness and applicability of the class’ Hackathorn (2021)
2.I chose drawing as an activity because it is key to the discipline of illustration and is embedded into our curriculum. As John Berger mentioned in ‘about drawing’ ‘FOR THE ARTIST DRAWING IS DISCOVERY.’ (Berger, 2012, p.3) and discovery is what I was aiming for, not a finished result.
3.The object chosen were the materials we used (bamboo sticks, pens, paper and tape). The yellow paper was chosen to have a surface that was not precious or would intimidate participants into not wanting to “ruin” it.
4. I decided I would immerse myself into the activity to challenge the tutor/ student hierarchy that has been prevalent this year. Everyone was leading the activity at some point, not just me.
What happened in the session and any deviation from the plan?
During the session we constructed the drawing tool and each participant was asked to decide a “gestural drawing movement” we would all perform. The end result was the experience, not the drawing itself. The authorship of the drawing belongs to everyone and is evidence of collaboration.
Something that I hadn’t factored into my plan was the paper ripping as we made the drawing. My first instinct was to patch it up, but someone suggested that the colour of the table underneath coming through was like making a secondary drawing. This complete accident made me consider how there could have been so many more layers to the activity than i could ever predict.
Reflecting on Feedback provided:
The feedback was really helpful and pointed out things I had not considered before, starting by changing the Sharpie markers because of the strong smell. It was suggested to use charcoal, which upon reflection would have interesting properties with the quality of line it would produce when dragged and the chance to erase it, prompting me to think about how this session could have had an aspect of going back on the drawing to erase it.
An interesting observation made was that even though the object I brought in where the drawing tools, a new object formed: the drawing itself. This was an unexpected, co-created new object – can a drawing be an object? would the idea of creating the object itself be a new way of re-writing the session?
Another piece of feedback was that the session was inclusive: it didn’t rely on language and participation was embedded into it. Even when you where not leading the drawing, you where involved in it.
Something important that I overlooked was when one of my instructions wasn’t very clear (blind drawing task). It was pointed out that I should have done some concept checking, something I don’t often do.
References
Berger, J. (2012) Berger on drawing. Edited by J. Savage. Aghabullogue, Ireland: Occasional Press.
Hackathorn, J. (2011) ‘Learning by Doing: An Empirical Study of Active Teaching Techniques’, The Journal of Effective Teaching, pp. 41 – 45
Tormey, R. (2021) ‘Rethinking student-teacher relationships in higher education: a multidimensional approach’ , Higher Education, pp.