July 2022 – PGCert 2022

INTRODUCTION TO ARTEFACT

My artefact is an intervention in my teaching practice where I share examples from films that are indicative of various filmmaking considerations I subsequently teach the students. My choices are examples that inspire me personally. In preparation for the following session, I ask the students to prepare to present their own inspirational example to the group. My intention is to create a dialogue about film examples as a tool for unlocking existing fluency in film language.

My intervention/adaptation uses this opportunity to investigate the choices I make in the objects that I present, in the context of my positionality and the intersectionality of the group. I will use this moment to introduce concepts of social and individual identity and the relevance of this to their own processes and choices in their concept development. Having provided this space for exploration of key terms and concepts, I will ask that the students’ presentation of their own examples is in the context of their own positionality and the intersectionality of our group.

CONTEXT

My journey is a process of ongoing engagement with my practice and with the students I work with. New to lecturing, I had based my approach on experiences as a student and practitioner, relying upon authenticity and passion within the subject and my practice; “good teaching is about the successful combination of passion and reason or ‘passionate reason’.” (Macfarlane, B. 2004)

Authenticity is a complicated and plural concept. Within a room of diverse identities, my interactions are multifarious. My student groups are predominantly white, female and of either British or mixed international origins. I placed the examples I use under review to consider how I could adapt these to make them more inclusive. I felt uncomfortable with the idea of making different choices based on my superficial knowledge of the group to diversify the content. I decided instead to make myself and these choices the subject to explore. In reading Bell Hooks, I have been inspired to find opportunities and ways to embrace my vulnerability (Hooks, 1994) and extend this act of vulnerability. We cannot attempt to fix a problem without engagement with those around us and recognition that the problem exists between all of us. We are all complicit in oppression and must work together to continually recognise and work to affect change, “Our willingness to make sacrifices reflects our awareness of interdependency.” (Hooks, B. 2001)

POSITIONALITY

As a lecturer and practitioner, I must always consider my positionality in both fields in the context of the groups that I work with.

I am a British, white, heterosexual, middle-classed, university educated, male with no disabilities. In the context of London College of Fashion, the fact that I am white makes me within the majority (of 61.8%), while the fact that I am male places me within the minority (of 30.13%).

London College of Fashion: HR – Staff Diversity by Department

However, in the industry that I practice within and represent through my teaching, I am very much part of the majority in both counts. Recognising the duality of the meanings of such data is an important issue in terms of the ever-changing set of relevant parameters aligning with fixed data. Engagement with this data and its various meanings is vital to my own process of developing awareness of my position of power in the learning environment and engaging my vulnerability through exploration of this data. Starting a dialogue with my students about my own positionality exposes the power dynamics within the group, but also introduces broader concepts of identity and the relevant vocabularies. “Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people–they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.” (Friere, P. 2001)

It is essential to acknowledge ourselves and those that make up the group we are part of in the context of wider social identifiers. To treat those around us as though they are all coming from the same place, the same starting point, is not equality. Rather, it is a method of denying the empowering act of recognising our own social identities and what these mean in the wider world. Instead, “students’ identities need to be taken into account in all educational settings.” (Hahn Tapper, A.J. 2013)

CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY

In studying works around Critical Race Theory and Social Identity Theory, I have learned that issues of identity are political, plural and multifarious.

In Feminism and the challenge of racism, Deviance or difference?, Razia Aziz explores intersecting identities and the effect that categorisation has upon existing similarities between different groups. Aziz questions the political nature of identity in asking the question “What is identity for?” (Aziz, R. 1997) This work has helped me to consider the direction of the gaze of the observer in terms of recognizing social or individual identities. This raises the question of how we consider social groups without consolidating differences and sacrificing similarities. Aziz writes, “the energetic assertion of black/white (or any other) difference tends to create fixed and oppositional categories which can result in another version of the suppression of difference.” (Aziz, R. 1997)

Delineating between concepts of social and individual identity has given me the insight to explore concepts and practices that help to break down the power dynamics of traditional and oppressive learning environments. The first step in this was acknowledging the constructed nature of identity, “…race and races are products of social thought and relations… categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient” (Delgado, R. and Stefancic, J. 2001). Furthermore, the activity of observing and exploring identities within a group acts to exacerbate existing tensions if individual identities are explored rather than social identities. This direction of observation is key to a group learning together about how they are perceived as members of groups, and how those groups are interconnected. “intergroup encounters must be approached in and through students’ larger social identities.” (Hahn Tapper, A.J. 2013)

Our attachment to our own constructed personal identities can act as a barrier to recognising how we are perceived by others. Engaging with the social identities that exist in the world helps us to reposition ourselves as the other, or through the eyes of perceivable ‘groups’, rather than to observe only our own construction and presentation of self in an individual context. The students I work with can benefit from this repositioning in multiple ways, creating work in a more engaged and considered way.

FEEDBACK / ANALYSIS / REFLECTION

Since I teach on the module for Costume Design between January and May, I have not had the opportunity to fully assess the efficacy of my artefact. However, I have managed to gain valuable feedback from my tutor and from my peer group.

When discussing my artefact with my tutor two key points were highlighted that helped me to improve the design of the artefact and to consider for future modification:

The importance not to ambush the students with the task without providing them the framework with which to complete the task. Exploring this key data together within our wider social contexts is important for safeguarding.
All choices of examples are an opportunity to interrogate their place and my position in presenting them, and whether to present them at all.

In a peer group session I demonstrated my artefact. The following comments and questions were raised, helping to guide the development of my concept:

“Are the choices that you have made for examples reflective of the audience you are presenting to, in terms of diversity, or are they personal choices?”
“It’ll be really interesting to see what they come back with”
“Have you considering raising the question of what isn’t represented in your choices? Why not include examples that aren’t representative of you?”
“Consider the structural hierarchies of storytelling, how we prioritise and present stories. These are functional within industry and have to be known about (the canon), but works to introduce the problems that exist with these canons”

I intend to engage more broadly with my choices of examples and their histories in the context of positionality/intersectionality throughout my teaching. Every choice is an opportunity for exploration of these issues.

Whilst we cannot ignore the cannon, we must continually interrogate this and reposition it in the context of the contemporary world and its social and individual identities. Moreover, as creators we are often producing for an unknown audience; providing the means to create that audience as an extension of ourselves and the groups we work within, by exploring my choice processes as a teacher, gives insight into how our choices can be perceived and received. This engages the vulnerability of both teacher and student and through led discussion creates a scaffolding of vocabulary with which to investigate these issues.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aziz, Razia – Feminism and the challenge of racism, Deviance or difference? Routeledge, 1997

Delgado, Richard and Stefancic, Jean – Critical Race Theory, An Introduction. New York University Press, 2001

Freire, Paulo – Pedagogy of the Oppressed – New York : Continuum, 2000.

Hahn Tapper, Aaron. J – A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality and Empowerment – Conflict Resolution Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 4, Summer 2013. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com)

Hooks, Bell – Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom – New York: Routledge, 1994

Hooks. Bell – All about Love: New Visions – New York, Harper Perennial, 2001

Macfarlane, Bruce – Teaching with Integrity : The Ethics of Higher Education Practice – Taylor & Francis Group, 2003

Shades of Noir – “In Conversation with Khaleb Brooks: Exploring Blackness, Transness and Collective Memory” by Jess Wan

I read the interview “In Conversation with Khaleb Brooks: Exploring Blackness, Transness and Collective Memory” by Jess Wan. Brooks communicates beautifully the complicated structures at play when we deal with our own sense of identity. They struggle with the use of identity as means to succeed in the world form a particular perspective, since the identity one needs to wear can at times be prescribed for them.

“For all of us, especially the millennial generation, we exist in these digital spaces where we have to present ourselves in a way to attain success. And it’s almost like what boxes do I check? When thinking about myself as a black trans person, it’s not just about success, but about positioning my identity as a means of survival…”

“…this work was about shifting that gaze and allowing myself to not exist in this space of projected performativity and understand vulnerability as a radical act.”

The story of the design of one’s identity is always set against the authenticity of lived experience. One being socially assigned to a person or to one’s self, another being the storytelling through prescribed signifiers or singular experiences.

“I never thought being an artist was possible because I didn’t see that representation happening.”

Representation is a key part of this experience; Brooks talks of observing a world in which they never see ‘themselves’ and so block that possibility in their thinking. This made me think of how such small experiences of seeing someone ‘like you’ in any position already creates a space of possibility, or impossibility through the absence of this presence.

“Recognising individual struggles during migration instead of those news headlines of 10,000 Africans drowning in the Mediterranean Sea is a step forward to decolonisation.”

The humanising effect of individuality. As often has happened in these blogposts, the overarching theme of storytelling emerges. The power of the story of the individual and how it connects to shared struggles is where the humanising occurs, not in the collective group, but in how we each relate to this group from our own perspectives.

“I really, really hope we can move away from digital spaces and focus on building a community around us to find healing and to understand ourselves, our identities and how they mesh and the dynamics that are created between them.”

“A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment”

“arguments maintain that if an intergroup encounter is superficial, the interaction will at best be problematic and at worst will leave the two groups in a state of poorer relations than before the contact took place, thus perpetuating the status quo of power relations between the groups such that the subordinate group prior to the interaction will have its subordinateness reinforced (Amir 1969; Jackson 1993)”

Hahn Tapper, exploring the ‘contact hypothesis’ in relation to power dynamics and the pitfalls of such group exercises, made me think about the difference of the approaches through individual identity and social identities. Looking inward and looking outward. In thinking about the power dynamics of a group I had not considered this difference and how powerful this way of looking together can be. To observe social identities together is a space where there is an outer, shared space, to observe being part of. Individual identity is a much more potentially isolating direction of observation. This made me reflect on my earlier post in relation to the mode of storytelling for the individual. Do we tell our stories of ourselves through the lens of social identities, or without? Is this even possible?

“individuals have group identities that they choose, as well as group identities that are imposed on them. People-to-people interactions exist within this context. In fact, says SIT, participants’ behaviour is shaped more by their collective identities than personal identities.”

Ted Talk “Witness Unconscious Bias”

Similarly to how Professor Shirley Ann Tate explored the nature of ‘unconscious bias’, Josephine Kwhali repositions the term in this video as an excuse for behaviour rather than a solution or process to examine oppression. The term is so very problematic as it fixes a position of naivety in such a way that a learning or changing process is deemed not possible by definition. Naivety may have been existent, and this was a problem, but the discomfort with the term exhibited by Kwhali is so justified considering where and when we are. The fact that this term is still used in training programmes in workplaces shows what a failure it has been as a concept, excusing behaviour rather than calling it out.

“Retention and Attainment in the Disciplines: Art and Design”

“Art and Design is one of the disciplines with the highest percentages of students leaving with no award (6%) with a disproportionate difference between White students (6%) and Black student groups (Black British Caribbean 9%, Black or Black British African 13%, other Black backgrounds 10%)”

“Certain kinds of art can only be decoded, and appreciated by those who have been taught how to decode them (Bourdieu, 1984). The cultural capital of the working classes, and certain ethnic groups, is devalued and delegitimised (Bourdieu, 1984). (Burke and Mcmanus 2012, p. 21)”

These two points led me to consider how the environment of the student cohort itself could contribute to students feeling lost or not welcome in the first instance.

My provocation or question based on these two revelations is, could there not be more measures put in place in the designing of our cohorts so as to create a welcoming environment for all who may wish to gain access. Considering that the vast majority of students accepted onto courses are white and from the ‘middle-class’, representation within the cohort will be less diverse and dynamic no matter what is reflected in staffing. Since Brexit, the ‘international’ reflection of the student cohort has become even less diverse, with fewer numbers arriving from Europe. But there is a pre-existing problem in admissions as they are utilizing the appreciation of potential in prospective students through a lens of decoding embroiled in the precedent of the canon. This means that prospective ‘working class’ students are still disadvantaged in this process. Could there not be a quota or cap put in place in admissions, in terms of educational background, to guarantee a percentage of non-privately educated students?

Terms of Reference – Shades of Noir – “To White Academia” by Tiffany Webster

I read the article “To White Academia” by Tiffany Webster and thought about the reflection of the writer on the possible identity of the interviewee. This led me to consider the relevance of anonymity within the context of the confessional approach of the interview. The ‘confession’ as a construct has been something I have thought about a lot throughout this module. At times a confession is what seems to be required; an admission of complicity at least. Would the performance of the interviewee have been different if their identity was known? Perhaps more political? Does confessing to complicity or worse unburden the confessor of their sins?

These are potentially questions of personal identity construction through storytelling devices. The confessional is one such device, and an interesting one in relation to anonymity. Is the performance of confession rendered inevitably political if the identity of the confessor is known?