My Action Research Project focusses on addressing the Social Justice issues of
Student Inclusion, Digital Equity, Digital Literacy and the equitable broader access to technology and Sustainability, by increasing student engagement in sessions in which they learn Digital Skills such as working with Adobe Illustrator, and preparing Digital submissions of Portfolios, Sketchbooks etc.
I want to emphasise and show objectively that Digital Skills alone are not enough to produce a good standard of work for Submission, and by extension for students’ career in industry.
I intend to do this by contextualising Digital Skills within students’ overall creative practice, modelling a creative workflow from Inspiration to Development and finally Realisation using a circular Analogue > Digital > Analogue process, more specifically using the approach of ‘Thinking through Drawing’.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I currently teach both Analogue and Digital visual communication at LCF, in sessions which range from open, collaborative Drawing sesssions, through Graphic Design and Layout sessions, to Adobe Illustrator sessions focused on making Technical Drawings for manufacturing.
I work across 7 different BA courses at London College of Fashion, across all 3 years: Textile Design (Print, Knit and Embroidery), Womenswear, Menswear, Footwear, Accessories, Bespoke Tailoring and Fashion Pattern Cutting.
This has given me an extensive insight into how students learn Visual Communication, Creativity and Digital Technology skills in relation to their subject areas, and what might help to increase engagement and social justice in these sessions.
In particular I have found experientially that providing the Context and Relevance for subjects in my sessions is vital for student engagement and outcomes, and making access easier for all students from every background.
Another is my axiomatic approach that technology is at the service of creativity, not the other way round.
These are the basis for my Social Justice references, which I expand on in a later post.
My focus on Context and Relevance started from my time studying for an MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art in the early 1990s, when I became interested in how Art gains power and who grants it power. I realised that Context and Relevance are key for understanding Visual Communication in a very broad sense. I was vey influenced by reading Brian O’Doherty’s ‘Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space’ (1976/1986) which critically examines the modern art gallery’s role in shaping the perception and value of art. The “white cube,” characterised by pristine white walls and minimal decoration, is described as an environment that isolates artworks, granting them an aura of neutrality and transcendence. O’Doherty argues that this “apparently context-free space” is far from neutral; it imposes “aesthetic and ideological values” that elevate art while also commodifying it (O’Doherty, 1986). The essay critiques how this sterile setting divorces art from real-world contexts, creating an artificial hierarchy that prioritises art as sacred and separate. This framework, O’Doherty asserts, “represses the social and political dimensions of art,” transforming it into a marketable object. Moreover, the gallery conditions viewers to adopt behaviors – such as quiet contemplation – that reinforce its authority and the commodification of artworks.
Brian O’Doherty’s critique of the white cube encouraged me to reflect on how spaces (and indeed dialogue) shape cultural and economic dynamics in the art world, and how similarly, teaching spaces have immense influence on student experience and expectation. The Digital Learning rooms 1011 and 1012 at East Bank are grey, severe looking and uninspiring, with banks of large screens facing a larger screen on the wall for demonstrations; I suggest this does not encourage an open, experimental and creative mindset for the students (and tutors).
O’Doherty, B. (1986) ‘Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space’. Berkeley: University of California Press.
