Image from movie, 5 devils: 5 year old kid, with afro hair, dressed in red dungerees, a pink shirt and pink glasses.
I was preparing to start marking this week. I think I learned some good practices at MMU, around preparation for marking, and the marking team getting on the same page. I am always open to learning from and aligning with the programme lead’s approach, as they have to do the hard work of compiling all of the marks together. A meeting is always useful before beginning to mark, to be clear about the approach, structure, marking criteria and where to place the feedback. We agreed that the feedback needs to be encouraging and motivating, as well as offering specific tips on how to improve if the learning outcomes are not met. I always think the structure of the marking is important, as it can align students to the learning outcomes they are aiming for across a submitted piece of work (and can make it easier to get into the flow of marking). When you organise your marking, and have plenty of time to do it, then I find I enjoy reading and reviewing students work. I enjoy encountering different kinds of assignment brief. This one asks students to write up a concept for a project, mocking it up, writing a funding proposal and then doing a critical essay to review what they presented. It’s a clever brief as it helps to see where students will need more support to choose their potential direction of travel on the MA, which splits into a practical pathway or a theoretical path.
This year, I have gotten pretty good at allocating time to get specific tasks done, like reviewing grants or doing grant admin, as it can drag on otherwise, but also those kinds of tasks take you into a different kind of headspace, than required for writing. I am also providing lots of space between meetings, so I am not sat down all day. Now the sun is out, its great to go for a walk everyday.
On the Patterns in Practice project I am preparing to programme some dialogues. This is something I have a lot of experience of facilitating in practice, although it has been a while. I am looking at how I can partner with other projects, to bring different networks of practitioners together, to enhance the impact of the work, which will also make it enjoyable and although initially hard work as you have to really plan ahead for it. It has been useful external examining a course that has assignment briefs that include students planning a dialogue, this kind of brief helps to bring theory and practice into conversation with one another. So this week I had a brief chat with Professor Helen Kennedy leads on the Digital Good Network to see what synergies there might be for collaboration in the future, and what plans they have for public engagement and impact. These research network projects, are really good for early career researchers to get a funded project under their belt and to build interdisciplinary teams around a problem, that might have multiple solutions as well as to network between institutions. When I was on a fellowship, I worked on two of these projects, Everyday Growing Cultures, and IT as a Utility and they were the opportunity for me to weave storytelling into and between research projects, to enhance impact, by weaving between people, locations and public participation. The project websites are long disappeared, but the films we made about the projects, like Everyday Growing Futures, and The Social Life of IT, are still available and tell the story of the research and at the same time, are good memories of spending time in allotments, going for walks, and climbing a mountain with rescue dogs! Filmmaking and research can offer opportunities to enter different everyday worlds. You have to enter and leave them with care.
Often projects are funded, and then they come to and end, and begin to think about impact, where actually, building in impact activities that bridge projects can be a really impactful way to ensure the legacy of research lives on. These kinds of legacies, can include values and friendships that endure beyond the research itself. I tried to write about this some time ago. I first saw this introduced in the Catalyst project in Lancaster, where we’d have a celebration event, inviting new project teams to connect with projects that were finishing. The looseness around a new project forming and one ending is the key to opening up a space for dialogue. You have to pick the right moment to bring them together.
I was running another project part-time alongside this Catalyst, and as a consequence the networks and assets of the two projects and began criss-crossing. Festivals or public programmes at museums, can be a great way to bring the criss-crossing of people, disciplines, sectors, and public audiences together to contribute to or become immersed in creative research outputs, but also it can be an opportunity for researchers to culturally transform their thinking outside of academia, without the constraints of academic language, and spaces, and to take their research in new directions.
Back to the week in hand, and I had two enjoyable days at a conference, the New Futures for Creative Economies conference at The Watershed. A highlight for me was having a cup of tea and chat with Professor Angela McRobbie, after her keynote speech on the second day, which gave us a succinct historical trip through how universities have ended up where we are, linked and complicit in the neoliberal agenda, and the role of the professionalisation of creativity as part of that. It was a bold and much welcomed critique. New labour and Tony Blair, did not get off lightly, as a remixed version of Thatcherism. I got a real sense of these key moments when you can choose to invest and align your power. You cannot sit on the fence.
I also invited a team member from the Engaging Environments project to come along to the conference, as they will be thinking through ways to bring people together to learn, but also for them to get a sense of where and how my work is situated, within a cultural centre. I also met another colleague for lunch on day two of the conference, and also got to catch up with our project manager, via phone, who has returned from maternity leave. We pretty much led Engaging Environments together through the pandemic.
In between conference days I went to the movies. I saw the film ‘5 devils‘, a psychodrama/ science fiction movie from French director, Léa Mysius. It’s an intriguing and intense movie, that feels like it is trying to get closer to the considering how different versions of the future, co-exist in the present, if only we choose to notice. Cleverly constructed, it plays with time, queering reality, and notions of family and love not fully realised, which is a powerful force for societal change.
I had a great chat with a research team from Oxford including researchers at Oxford Brookes, who have set up ways in which local communities come and teach on their arts and humanities programmes, mobilising students to get involved in the black communities dream of finding a cultural home and community space in Oxford. We heard a very different story about Oxford. 29% of Oxford’s residents are from a black or ethnic minority, which is higher than you might imagine. The panel told a story of social apartheid, that went beyond who gets to go to Oxford University, and instead, who gets to live where, and who gets access to social spaces. It was eye opening to learn about these disparities, and of course this team, where not shy, in articulating the Universities role in upholding the status quo.
It was all good food for thought in how I need to practice research and set things up to work orientated from the values of equity and social justice. Sometimes, the best place for this to happen is outside of the university. Research is really about how you walk different futures into being. It requires careful foundations to break and re-articulate the status quo. I have a quiet sense of what is possible and how to bring it about but recognise it can go in multiple directions.
everyoneandeverything 