The bookbinding workshop: Making as collaborative pedagogic practice

This article will consider student engagement through collaborative teaching and learning practices I have developed within a series of bookbinding workshops in which I acquire new skills alongside my students. The bookbinding workshop developed from my desire to seek ways to engage with and alongside students in my practice and research to ground my own making within my pedagogic practice. In this way students are not being ‘instructed’ by a skilled specialist but rather collaborating with a committed enthusiast and researcher learning from their practice and experience. This article will discuss the impact these workshops have had on participating students, their practice and their sense of ‘creative self’ through the analysis of anonymous surveys carried over the span of two years.