I have turned my attention to how Action Research Projects can help me explore my Analogue Drawing exercises in sessions.
The intention is that one person becomes self-evaluative in order to work better for others with whom they are in company.’ from the Action Research booklet by Jean McNiff given to us by our tutors as a Word document.
This booklet is a very concise and accessible assessment of Action Research Projects. It has been very helpful to me in the way it states simply the steps to follow, and in particular I find a resonance with the focus on ARP being part of personal and group enrichment.
As I have mentioned, for my ARP I wanted to think about how I have been using ‘Thinking Through Drawing’ with students, and at first I had a broad idea 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. However on reflection I have limited time, and I felt that the subject was too broad, so I decided to be more focussed and examine students’ particular responses to the Analogue Drawing activity in my technical Adobe sessions. Given the time constraints, I felt this would be straightforward, actionable and achievable.
I found the online workshop 1b very useful to envision where my project sits on the ARP circle; I did Analogue Drawing activities with students last year, so in discussion with Rachel and my fellow students in my tutor group, I realised my PgCert project would be starting near the end of the circle. In fact I found it very useful to conceptualise the circle as a spiral instead, as demonstrated by Rachel and Karen in the workshop. A spiral enables me to imagine reiterating and refining my project, so it doesn’t matter where I start, it will just keep on moving around. There is a resonance with my approach to Analogue Drawing with my students here, that nothing is perfect but we just keep going – “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” as Beckett famously said in his 1983 piece “Worstward Ho,” I need to objective state what I did, then analyse it, then amend it and do it again. ARP and Drawing are both iterative activities.
In addition, I applied this to my Ethical Action Plan, which underwent 3 drafts, following input from Rachel and my fellow tutees. I found the first group tutorial very useful, in particular Kayal mentioned the socio-economic dimension to decreasing attendance and engagement, and this could be part of the Social Justice aspect of my project. She also said it would be interesting to make it a toolkit available to all UAL staff to use in the future, something I am keen to do, but not sure how it would work logistically – I could run workshops for staff initially to test it. This ties in to my approach that there is a universality to my project which could apply to many subjects. Sabrina mentioned that I could consider different modes of making, how this linked back to the Analogue and informed access to different modes and media, which I found very interesting and is something I would like to expand on and explore in the future.
Here is my completed proposed first draft Action Research Circle:
McNiff, J., 2002. ‘Action research for professional development: Concise advice for new action researchers’ (3rd ed.). London: Routledge.
A student’s individual drawing – 30 seconds