The ‘Creative Arts Patchwork Project’: An alternative to the academic essay

The ‘Patchwork Project’ explored peer assessment and alternative submission of written work on Creative Arts degrees. Art and Design students often experience a tension between the experiential learning of their main subject disciplines and the formal academic outcomes required by their Contextual Studies (theoretical) modules. Their studio practice (e.g. making paintings in Fine Art, garments in Fashion Design or images in Photography), involves working alongside peers and participating in formative group critiques of work in progress. However, Contextual Studies modules have a different mode of pedagogic delivery (the lecture or seminar) and require written outcomes, composed in isolation. Creative Arts students thus often consider writing to be an unwelcome ‘bolt-on’ to their core activity of creative production. This article shows that Creative Arts students who share the stages of composition with each other are better able to engage with writing as a meaning-making process. The project modified R. Winter’s patchwork text model, originally established in Health contexts, to include visual and performative elements, such as an images analysis and a poster presentation. Instead of producing an essay at the end of a Contextual Studies module, a cohort of B.A. (Hons) Fine Art students wrote a number of short pieces of text to be discussed with peers before being redrafted for submission and assessment. The poster presentation patch developed previous investigations into holistic assessment for visual arts students. Participants in the ‘Creative Arts Patchwork Project’ claimed that using a poster to ‘stitch’ the patchwork learning together had helped their learning to ‘go deeper’. This article demonstrates that the combination of a patchwork approach, peer discussion and a strong visual element improved students’ analytical abilities and confidence in their writing voices. The ‘Patchwork Project’ proposes a new way to approach the academic essay on Creative Arts degrees.