Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education - Volume 14, Issue 2, 2015

In order to inform planning for and discussions at the 2015 Group for Learning in Art and Design (GLAD) Conference, which celebrated the 25th anniversary of the group, I compiled a brief chronological account of key events in that period. This is an edited version of the original, which is offered as an aide-memoire about the recent history of the UK Art and Design higher education (HE). I recognize that educational policy is not uniform across Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, for example, in relation to student tuition fees, which are not charged in Scotland. However, for the purposes of clarity this article uses the term ‘UK’ to point to general policy positions that relate to some or all of the United Kingdom.

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.

The Maker’s Palette is a creative model delivering hands-on learning and teaching. Devised in 2007 in response to increasingly risk-averse students within the Manchester School of Art, its craft centred approach empowers the individual to take ownership of their personal creative development. Informed by the creative thinking theories of J. P. Guilford and the professional practice of the author, the implementation of the model into the undergraduate curriculum resulted in unexpected impact beyond the university. Consciously designed with flexible parameters that enabled a variety of delivery modes it offered opportunities to address teacher development and the challenges of embedding process focused creative methodologies into the classroom. This article argues that the Maker’s Palette provides a compelling model for hands-on learning and offers evidence that could be further developed and used to support, validate and underpin an approach currently at threat within academic establishments at every level of education.

While ‘problem-solving’ is defined as a research method based on a number of givens in a linear process, ‘problem-finding’ is an open-ended mode of design, actively engaging participants in a reciprocal discourse. This method of learning by doing is implicit in design education. To examine problem-finding in the context of undergraduate study a collaborative staff–student research project is presented in the form of a case study. By continuing to find ‘problems’, design educators and students alike are challenged to push the boundaries of the discipline and frame it more centrally as an agent of change in society and culture. In a development of my Ph.D. and HEA Teaching Fellowship the design process is framed as a bridge between academic research and student employability. In this context I suggest that research strategies developed through doctoral study can extend and substantiate teaching and learning in design.

This work provides an insight into a functioning partnership between one academic member of staff and one student. The student was effectively paid to learn in an area that benefitted their interests and employability, as they undertook an internship and the academic acquired an extra pair of hands to carry out the tasks that they had difficulty finding the time to do. These tasks were the first stages of research enquiry, where the time intensity of their practical nature had meant the academic had failed to embark on their research journey sooner. This case study reviews the impact of taking on an undergraduate student as a paid intern to help an academic begin their research. The benefits and draw backs from the academic and student perspective are discussed, as are the difficulties found in establishing a foothold on the first steps to research. Whilst beginning research can be difficult, it is a requirement of the academic role. With much debate surrounding the quality of work nationally from Fashion and Textile (F&T) contributions, it could be seen as a level of judgment that is preferably avoided. Statistics discussed in the work show little involvement from F&T academics and this was felt to be a result of a lack of time and guidance. Where the internship was expected to free up the academic’s time there were unseen problems that hindered progress, but also benefits that helped to shape the direction of research. Student involvement in research helped to narrow the academic’s focus into an achievable outcome and has highlighted the benefit of working with others. The findings detail the partnership as a positive experience and raises awareness of areas that need to be addressed within Institutions, so that academics can be helped into beginning research, particularly in F&T subjects.

This article explores the Fine Art curriculum in relation to the increasing focus on employability and enterprise within art and design institutions in the United Kingdom. The connection between the curriculum and enterprise and employability in the art school is under pressure from different fronts. On the one hand, the introduction of higher tuition fees in the United Kingdom has focused the student (but also staff and institutions) on the necessity to make a living after completing studies, and preferably enter into a career. The art school could be seen to have an ethical responsibility for their students here. On the other hand, within contemporary art practice there is an increased resistance towards current models of labour within neo-liberal capitalism; in particular, the idea of the ever-flexible portfolio worker, resilient and ideally adapted to an uncertain future (i.e., an artist), is increasingly being rejected as unsustainable and exploitative. The UK Fine Art curriculum is in flux, and questions have been asked about what exactly artists need to know and learn to prepare for their future. As a subject, Fine Art has not been consistently considered through a lens of employability and enterprise in the way more industryorientated design-based subjects have, but in the United Kingdom this is changing. This article asks: can art schools both prepare Fine Art graduates for a successful career in the arts to make them entrepreneurial and employable, and provide them with the critical tools to fundamentally question their place within this system (which some regard as a financially and environmentally unsustainable order)? It also considers whether this is a useful question and asks whether courses should perhaps make a choice and declare their position to potential students.

This article reflects upon the development of partnerships, initiated in 2005 by one of the authors, through existing links with the then Subject Centre for Art Design and Media of the Higher Education Academy (ADM-HEA). Essentially descriptive and reflective, it looks at the factors contributing to the evolution of collaborative activity over a number of evidence-based projects between 2005 and 2011 and aims to suggest a staged generic model for cross-institutional collaborative working that can be used by first-time researchers new to working in this way. A special feature of the partnerships reflected upon is the non-hierarchical dimension, collaborative working between staff operating at a range of levels in a variety of contexts in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), including Higher Education in Further Education (HE in FE). The varied constituency of the network could be described as innovative in that it facilitates a range of formal and informal exchanges, cuts across institutional hierarchies and disciplines within Art, Design and Media subjects, and allows for both the interests of individuals and institutional agendas. Here, the means by which this diversity and collaboration has been achieved is described and explored, as is the role of the network’s HEA-inspired focus on evidence-based practice in the process by which projects for this type of research activity have been conceived, bids written, funding sought and dissemination of the findings accomplished, providing a potential model for colleagues wishing to undertake similar cross-institutional, evidencebased, collaborative activity.

This report discusses the Graphic Design Educators’ Network (GDEN): a fledgling subject association that has pedagogic practice, research and scholarship at its heart. The rationale and impetus for creating the network – its origins, development, aims and objectives – are discussed in relation to a number of key contexts and perspectives.

Museums and Higher Education Working Together: Ch allenges and Opportunities, Anne Boddington, Jos Boys and Catherine Speight (eds) (2013) Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 236 pp., ISBN: 9781409448761, h/bk, £65

Design Pedagogy: Developments in Art and Design Ed ucation, M. Tovey (ed.) (2015) Surrey: Gower, 290 pp., ISBN: 9781472415981, h/bk, £70