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Dear Eloise,
I love your thinking on Criticality and Creativity so far – but I want to big up the creativity part of the equation. I feel that overall academics tend to be happier struggling with the complex concept of criticality – and thus miss out on the potentialities of creativity.
As you know I have enrolled on #artmooc (Coursera’s Introduction to Art); I am blogging about the course itself – but more importantly on the creative ideas that we can take straight back into all our practice – no matter what the subject.
Our key assignment each week is to make an artefact in a particular genre and then to critically discuss what we have done – in terms of:
1. Explain your process (medium and technique). How was it made? Which art materials and approaches did you use and why?
2. Describe the idea behind your artwork. What story or message does it get across? What does it mean to you?
3. Why did you create it? What are your reasons for creating that specific art piece? What do you want your audience to feel and think while observing it?
The constraints of the assignment provoke creativity – and the justification teases out the criticality… I feel that we could very easily adapt that rubric to develop assignments that would be more creative and more critical:
‘Okay – we’ve looked at [insert ideas theories
or concepts relevant to your subject] – now design an art work or
teaching/learning resource to bring one or all of these concepts alive to
another group of people:
1. Explain your art or teaching/learning process. How was the resource made? Which activities, materials and approaches did you use and why?
2. Describe the idea behind your resource. What story or message does it get across? What does it mean to you?
3. Why did you create it? What are your reasons for creating that specific resource? What do you want your audience to feel and think while observing it or engaging with it?’
Here the student would be both in the task and over the task. Creativity, criticality and voice are all present – not in empty reflective gestures – but in a way that invites powerful engagement.
And for your event – you could do worse than build in any of the activities from our MOOC (http://lastrefugelmu.blogspot.co.uk/) and get your participants to justify their outcomes as above.
Good luck!
Sandra
Hi all,
I’ve been asked to co-facilitate an all-day workshop for staff here at Plymouth on criticality and creativity in a fortnight and I’d like to garner some ideas from you. I think we want to get people to question these notions – does that go without saying? (Does anything go without saying?)
I’m particularly interested in political and philosophical contexts, e.g. ‘critical’ as in critical theory; ‘critical’ as in post-Enlightenment reasoning (ref our very own Gary Riley-Jones); ‘critical’ as in heresy; ‘critical’ as in – what else? and wondering about interdisciplinarity and Renaissance thinking/ways of being (ref our very own Gary Riley-Jones and Stella Cottrell)…
Although these and DPR give me some fertile ground for sowing seeds in, I’m not quite sure where to start. Anyone?
Eloïse
Learning Development with Plymouth University
www.learningdevelopment.plymouth.ac.uk
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