Tag: learning and teaching
The last PhD I examined — and passed — involved a hike up a hill — during winter — which included performances in-situ (plus sweat, panting and cursing on the part of examiners). The hike was part of a submission which had a written component in the form of a film script, for a doctoral degree undertaken at a School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies of a Russell Group University. If this sound like your cup of bubble tea, get in touch to work with me on your doctoral research at the University of Southampton.
The following is a version of what I first published on Valentines Day on Instagram. It is a further example from my call for those in Higher Education and beyond to centre love in what / how we do, as shared in my recent op-eds.
I’ve migrated back down south — quiet south. I’m thrilled to share that since July 2023, I’ve become Associate Professor in Arts and Cultural Leadership at University of Southampton’s Winchester School of Art.
I am delighted to have signed a contract with Taylor and Francis in January 2023 as Co-Editor for a new edited collection, A Handbook of Neurodiversity and Creative Research (circa Q1 2025), after being approached by the commissioning editors of Routledge.
I have been invited to co-teach on a course in partnership with Manchester Art Gallery, for second year art and design students. My creative intervention is entitled ‘Go Back to your own Home! Who owns whose culture? On repatriation, cultural ownership, decolonisation of cultural spaces. Should I stay or should I go? What can visitors, museum workers and artists do (together)?’
Since 2018 I have been an invited Visiting Lecturer to teach on two MSc programmes: St Georges University London & Birkbeck: Global Health Humanities MSc, and King’s College London (KCL): Affective Disorder MSc.
I have been awarded the Principal Fellowship of Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) by Advance HE in December 2022. The highest of the HEA fellowships, PFHEAs are awarded to professionals with sustained records of effective strategic leadership in academic practice and academic development as a key contribution to high quality student learning
Since 2018, I have been a Visiting Lecturer at King’s College London for its Education in Arts and Cultural Settings MA, School of Education, Communication and Society. I lead on 2 sessions: Practice, Movement and Play in Learning, and What will a Neurodiversity-led 2050 look like?, both for the module ‘The Arts, Culture & Education and Learning, Participation’.
This op-ed for The Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE, 16 Nov 2022) outlines an inclusive and heuristic (co-) creative teaching/learning praxis that I term ‘tentacular pedagogy’ (TP), that aims to make creative arts in Higher Education more inclusive and socially-engaged, and for CA-HE to play a more (pro-)active leadership role within HE and beyond in nurturing a more creative and compassionate future, amid the perma- and omni-crises within UK HE and beyond.
The new Creative Arts Leadership MA course, for which I am Programme Lead, is an innovative, radical trans-disciplinary programme that creatively interrogates and explores new, diversified models of ‘leadership’. Curated by UK’s oldest comprehensive art school, and co-delivered with the triple-accredited Business School, the MA scopes, maps, and enacts the possibilities of a more equitable creative leadership praxis.
In this course, we will look at clips from my commissioned film about a ‘neuro-futuristic’ 2050, How to Thrive in 2050, then break into groups and share thoughts and action for our immediate and longer term future. We will cover tactics to push back the pushback, such as forms of censorship and control. Premiere: 3 May 2022, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester UK.
This new short film was created at the invitation of a design pedagogy event by European consortium FUEL4Design: Future Education and Literacy for Designers as International Respondent. A performance-lecture version was created as Keynote Lecturer for Deep Meaningful Conversations of the Design Management course, London College of Communication, University Arts London.
Why is normality the gold standard, when the “norm” hasn’t worked for a while? Isn’t it time for new models of leadership, and new role models? Isn’t it more exciting to be non-standard, to be covered in glitter, and to embrace a phenomenal spectrum of colours and possibilities?’ Read my interview on neurodiversity and creativity with Jane Clark at Beshara magazine.
The success of others is both a duty and reflection of my own progress. Through co-creative engagement with diverse stakeholders and ‘students’ from within and beyond HE, via inclusive scholarly projects and communities, the potential for culture change and necessary attitudinal shifts to improve HE can grow exponentially. 03/2022 saw several positive outcomes.
What should art schools change, so that we can lead change and thrive in, with and for the next generation? Since you asked me, I’ll recommend growing tentacles. This is my new keynote for Network for higher arts education with >300,000 members in 282 institutions in Europe, N and S Americas, and AustralAsia.
Currently Associate Professor in Arts & Cultural Leadership, University of Southampton. Taught in >200 HEIs since 1998 as Examiner, Pathway Leader, Lecturer, Tutor, Visiting Lecturer, Visiting Artist, including at: UCL School of Life & Medical Studies, Royal College of Art, Australia National University, Tama Art University (Tokyo), King’s Undergraduate Medical Education Community, Goldsmiths University, SIM University in Singapore (External Examiner, Bachelor of Art Education), Silliman University (Philippines) and University of Helsinki.
In Spring 2021, I gave two presentations that were also CPD units, including one to 870 Europe-based mental health specialists from 17 countries (+ 6 languages and interpreters – almost as fabulous as Eurovision).
I welcome new PhD and post-doctoral researchers, and/or PhD external examination opportunities, across diverse subject areas within and beyond the creative arts and humanities
I was invited by Donald Lush, Careers Consultant at King’s College London, to discuss academic job applications with a focus on equality (or lack thereof!), on 7th May 2021.
I was invited to select from and respond to a range of museum artefacts through a neurodivergent prism. I selected an artefact from the National Archives, which is an extract from an Education Department draft circular on the introduction of 11+ exam, July 1945.
This is the 2020 lockdown edition of a workshop Practice, Movement and Play in Learning for the module ‘The Arts, Culture & Education and Learning, Participation & the Southbank Centre’ Module, as part of the MA in Education in Arts and Cultural Settings at King’s College London, which I have been delivering since 2019.
Here are just 3 of several films on the #PAC75: The 75th Anniversary Celebrations of the 5th Pan African Congress in Manchester, Viewing the Past and Looking to the Future channel. Do watch, and use them for learning, teaching and research. More videos to be uploaded during the Black History Month 2020!
Instead of OBE/MBE/CBE, we’ll have NDE (NeuroDiversity medal of Excellence). Universities will finally stop failing or boring people, offering interdisciplinary MASc and PhDs. ‘Neurodiversity’ will also become truly diversified. We’ll then run around with tentacles on our heads. New performance-lecture at Royal Society of Arts attended by 130 people.
04/2020: Watch this interview (40 minutes) on ‘artful leadership’. With Dr Michael Pinchbeck.
Productive antagonisms is an interdisciplinary mode of knowledge exchange and production (Latham and Tan 2016). Itself an artful juxtaposition of concepts and practices and co-created by an artist and a geographer, I have since extended the concept into a mode of learning and teaching, although it has come from prior framings such as ISLANDHOPPING (2002-2005).