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%).
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