‘To make is to challenge…by practising things, practising life, practising creation.‘ Theaster Gates 

Two colourful layered prints with the text our fur our fur
Image Credits: OUR FUR OUR FUR [Many): Ana Vicente Richards, Jonathan Martin, Mark Ingham, Sara Ortolani and The EPRG (2021).

During the past four years, the EPRG has actively created a range of experimental projects which have pedagogy at the heart. Through this work, the group has built a vibrant network and developed a place for existing UAL wide creative pedagogic practice and research to come together. In doing so we have filled a gap and identified the need for funded, ambitious and advanced investigation into pedagogical practice in art & design, to address and work towards solving the real problems we currently face concerning student engagement and experience.

The Experimental Pedagogies Research Group (EPRG) was set up on the 14th of July 2020 in response to growing demands from various staff and doctoral students at UAL for a place where theoretical and practical ideas of experimentation in creative educational contexts could be explored.

Three concurrent aims were quickly identified.

To create and imagine more informal, online, hybrid and in person spaces. Where ideas of experimental and creative pedagogies, could be discussed and put into practice. This has been established over the last 4 years in our monthly meetings.

And

To locate funding streams for creative experimental projects that we wished to develop. We have had a number of funding bids that have been successful over the last 4 years and we are seeking more funding for our research from other sources external to UAL

And

To explore the possibility of setting up a Research Centre at UAL dedicated to developing, with our talented practitioners, new ways of practicing and thinking about creative education.

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As UAL’s Honorary Doctor Theaster Gates exemplifies how socially-engaged art can work for the benefit of the underrepresented in our societies, the EPRG is fully engaged in socially conscious pedagogical work. Its work will be driven by research into ways of creating even better education for all our learners, staff and students alike. As Gates says in his 2018 UAL Doctoral acceptance speech, ‘…we are attempting to constitute a way of understanding a world of nothing and turning it into something’. Over the last four years, the EPRG has been doing exactly this through a series of collaborative and experimental events that model what is possible within all our limits of time and space. The EPRG spends its time between the research and creation of pedagogical ideas and the discussion and implementation of new pedagogical practices. This will include:

  • Advancing practice-led research into learning practices in art & design within the educational/ pedagogical context of UAL and the wider social and cultural contexts
  • Knowledge production through praxis (theory into practice and practice into theory) at the intersection of artistic practice and experimental pedagogical practice
  • Housing and disseminating research projects from scholars and students in the field of artistic-pedagogical practice where work is centred around social, racial and ecological justice
  • Create new forms of teaching and learning experiences grounded in the teaching and learning community at UAL

The EPRG currently provides regular meetings and action places for a diverse assembly of UAL staff and doctoral students interested in experimental and creative pedagogies. On the back of these monthly meetings, we have worked voluntarily, collectively, and non-hierarchically to develop a range of pedagogical focused experiments, including 24hrs ON EARTH experimental event which was programmed as part of the UAL Research Season 2022. We have identified a gap in the research portfolio at UAL for funded, ambitious and advanced investigation into pedagogical practice in art & design. The proposal for a Research Centre aims to address this gap within UAL, while providing time, space and funds through institutional recognition to advance our research into the crucial work of the UAL community and beyond.

The EPRG is a daring and safe place and space where new pedagogical knowledge is created and put into practice for the benefit of all UAL students and staff. It is a creative and critical learning space. We ask our students to take risks, be daring, try new things out, and experiment. We need to do the same in our pedagogical research. We should have the theoretical and practical tools to challenge what has gone before and to make new educational environments fit for our world now and that to come. The EPRG has demonstrated through its diverse community that it is possible to carry out new ways of qualitatively researching how our students feel about their experiences at UAL through funded projects like Falling Through the Gaps. We have shown how we can be a global group that takes into consideration all our students wherever they are in the world and at whatever time they are ready to learn and demonstrated to our staff and ourselves how in the space of 60 mins x 24, new work can be created collaboratively with strangers (24 Hours ON EARTH). We have used online spaces and their breakout rooms to meet new colleagues, collaborate and create hybrid artefacts (OUR FUR OUR FUR). We have presented at conferences including EdEx21 (Bodies without Organs ) We will engage our postgraduate students in this pedagogical research as we are already doing with the twelve PhD students currently members of the EPRG and through our ongoing funded projects (Talking Heads: How Did I Get Here?)

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21 January 2022NewsResearch Our Research question: What experimental art and design research methods can be hacked to understand how we can further develop digital literacy at LCC? The project took on the title: ‘Falling Through the Gaps’ as it evolved This is our Falling through the Gaps: becoming digitally literate raw interim report. This project sought to address the overarching research objective by asking the more prosaic question: How can we make our interconnected digital platforms work better for us at LCC? This work will approach ideas of being with and in the various digital platforms that comprise our virtual environments, from Moodle to Miro, via email and beyond. [...]
10 July 2021NewsUAL EdEx21: EPRG Workshop During UAL’s Education Conference Edex21 07.07.21 Mark Ingham: Reader in Critical and Nomadic Pedagogies , LCC/Design SchoolAna Vincente Richards: Senior External Moderator , UAL Awarding BodyJonathan Martin: Foundation Course Associate Lecturer/PhD Student, CCWSara Ortolani : Learning Zone Advisor, CSM/Library Services How can we disinvest ourselves of age old myths about how we learn? Ideas of ungrading, assistance instead of assessment, compassionate pedagogies and decolonising the curriculum / university amongst other ideas are being discussed fruitfully at the moment. But we still persist with teaching and learning methods and course structures that are rigid and oppressive? How can we radically change our thinking about the myths of education so that all our students now and yet to come can thrive in inclusive and eventful spaces? Come and join UAL’s Experimental Pedagogies Research Group (EPRG) in thinking about these urgent questions. Google Doc Link https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SsWBoMU1W7OFK_Aqt5uji5FSrMTOCK59c87ZMrPuA9Q/edit Questions and Prompts around Experimental Pedagogies * Please contribute/ share your thoughts about these questions by populating the in-between spaces with writing, images, links and/or more questions. These will be used to get a collective bank of ideas together, to  fuel and/ or challenge the EPRG continuing discussions.* Our Beta Website: https://ualeprg.wordpress.com/  What is experimental pedagogy? A safe place to co-teach and co-learn unlearning, unknowing, lowering hierarchies of knowledge Pedagogy without borders  Can happen in and out of the university Something from which something emerges / some things emerge. Tuned in to conditions rather than ends. learning to use confusion as a space for developing understanding taking risks without knowing if things will work Seeks to uproot in order to see – radical pedagogy?  definitions of experimental are “innovative and untested” but innovation is not necessarily ‘new’. So its a method for learning which builds on existing T+L methods but is untested. What differences are there between experimental pedagogy and critical, radical, militant pedagogy. What about study – what we do together?  Recently, I have noticed an increasing use of the term “Radical” and “Critical” in front of the noun in developing new pedagogic frameworks and key concepts in teaching & learning. For example, Radical Empathy, Radical Kindness, Critical race. Why? What’s the difference between radical empathy and empathy?  Every lesson should be an experiment in improving the previous lesson. Never stop experimenting.  What do we want knowledge to be when we think about experimental pedagogy research in the context of UAL? Are there protocols for this knowledge and what are their demands? 與萬物對談 multiple, many, interconnected knowledgeS who confirms it as knowledge? Who is the gate keeper? fluid and porous  (Who judges knowledge?) There may be a soft structure which allows for common goals or approaches. It may need to be analysed and compared Practices. Staying with the originating mode? we need knowledge to be detached from assessment – can you get a good grade from not knowing  A passionate lecture by Rosi Braidotti at Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2019- discussing Posthuman Knowledge (the title of her new book), the future of humanities and the role of universities.: https://youtu.be/0CewnVzOg5w Irit Rogoff presentation in Sonic Acts 2019 on her current investigations around ‘Becoming Research’:https://youtu.be/D3AcgQoGaSU Can you tell us when and how you experienced or performed experimental pedagogy?  I’d like to think i ‘perform’ experimental pedagogy most of the time!  for me EP is about providing frameworks for self-learning / self-discovery, not bodies of knowledge.  (Bodies Without Organs?) Sometimes I think am doing experimental pedagogy then find out it is normal practice!  My practice has adopted some ‘performative pedagogy’ by exploring multi-modal approaches to teaching and learning. Experimenting with different senses in ‘conventional space’ was enlightening. i.e. how sound played a part as an unexpected tool.   Group experiments with sonic objects – intending one thing; other things emergent  we ask students to walk a 1000 seconds from their front door without any criteria for their observations – removing most criteria and parameters for what they do and how they document.  VR seminar and workshop As a reaction to an established academic curriculum – looking to the students to see the peripheral technical areas that needs attention – working from employment backwards. Every time I teach, I experience experimental pedagogy.  How can we create teaching and learning communities where greater creative risk taking (experimentation?) can take place? expect to fail but not as a negative experience removing marking criteria (Assistance rather than assessment?) sitting with problems, not rushing to solutions, trying to shift away from goal orientated education (which is difficult when universities have to function as businesses, and pedagogy is a selling point rather than a fundamental reason for existence) Prior to the event, co-design T&L agreement between teachers and learners in which learners have equal importance. Changing government? Or surfacing the voices in government (i.e. education) who understand this? Accepting failure is essential,  but we don’t do it. We search for the best scores, best student feedback – so once you’ve got it right, it’s difficult to try anything different.  How will you see it develop in the future? (dream big!) Shifts of power, a truly activist university in continual experimentation Open and transparent institutions – or beyond institutions Always asking “who is privileged by ?” A curriculum that starts with each individual’s prior experience. No frameworks. No grading of that experience. Learning outcomes tuned in to “experiencing xyz” only.   Moves to interdependent learning and interdependent practice. Interdependent learning. close formal education  institutions as a business  across institutions, global, inclusive student engaged assessment, technology lead student autonomous learning, student led pedagogy, developing communities of practice Compassion towards staff, workload and pay.  Ideally, how your experimental pedagogy class will look like? Is it indoor? Is it multispecies? Are words being used? If so, in which language? ethically informed let order emerge from chaos, don’t be prescriptive what does the most inclusive class look like? tension between free to do whatever vs overstimulation it focuses on the what can be it is transcultural, trangenerational, trans-… it shifts between the studio, the field and the laboratory, it is situated, it is exploratory, it is inclusive (between disciplines, human/non, academic/non), it is grounded, it is tangible, it is embodied, it is transformative – as all education should be. small and intense collaborative 3D sketching immersive session (VR) without sound nor avatars. Less us and them and more we in all our pedagogies This is how it should be done. Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continua of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times. It is through a meticulous relation with the strata that one succeeds in freeing lines of flight, causing conjugated flows to pass and escape and bringing forth continuous intensities for a BwO. (Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 1980/1987, p. 161) Do you know what micro-affirmations are? Micro-affirmations: “small acts which are often ephemeral and hard-to-see, events that are public and private, often unconscious but very effective, which occur wherever people wish to help others to succeed. Micro- affirmations are tiny acts of opening doors to opportunity, gestures of inclusion and caring, and graceful acts of listening. Micro- affirmations lie in the practice of generosity, in consistently giving credit to others—in providing comfort and support when others are in distress, when there has been a failure at the bench, or an idea that did not work out, or a public attack” (Rowe, 2008, p. 46). Rowe, M. (2008). Micro-affirmations and micro-inequities. Journal of the International Ombudsman Association, 1, 45-48. How do we facilitate a culture where micro-affirmations are the norm the opposite of micro-agressions!? micro-affirmations by their very definition happen all the time without us noticing them — a smile from a colleague or student, the space for you views to be heard, a nod… reassurance Yes: Duna Sabri’s report (2018) which has called for a “site of intervention” between tutors – students interaction. Sabri argues that “the concepts of micro-affirmation, identity formation and recognition are recommended as tools for reflection, analysis, discussion and change in day-to-day practices (Sabri 2018, p.26). When did you experience micro-affirmation in education?  Were you a student or a teacher?  Was your role important or relevant in the experience of it? this should be fundamental to any teaching/learning experience, but is worth highlighting so that we don’t forget, and to think about how we can amplify this practice, particularly with increase of remote delivery/engagement. how can you affirm on a small and individual basis in a large group online sesion? or on a miro board? or chat? as a teacher, hearing from students this year that we had a very inclusive and supportive environment compared to their previous studies – a collective, peer supporting approach Within social spaces – physical or online – how an experimental pedagogical approach can take into account shyness, quietness and introversion? How do experimental pedagogies make space for listening rather than talking? – Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert (2017, Fourth Edition, 2020) by HAMJA AHSAN https://bookworks.org.uk/publishing/shop/shy-radicals-the-antisystemic-politics-of-the-militant-introvert-2017-fourth-edition-2020/ allowing for silence and different modes of engagement. some students prefer online interaction – for some it flattens the hierarchy. ideation doesn’t need to be verbal, but too often relies on that which discourages quieter more introverted students or those who have english as a second language. online chat in teams lectures has helped students  ‘speak’ We will entertain you and you will entertain us. Come as you are, as you were, as you are going to be, as you want to be.  Democratic Space “Many professors have conveyed to me their feeling that the classroom should be a “safe” place; that usually translates to mean that the professor lectures to a group of quiet students who respond only when they are called on. The experience of professors who educate for critical consciousness indicates that many students, especially students of color, may not feel at all “safe” in what appears to be a neutral setting. It is the absence of a feeling of safety that often promotes prolonged silence or lack of student engagement. Making the classroom a democratic setting where everyone feels a responsibility to contribute is a central goal of transformative pedagogy.” hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, NY: Routledge. How do we do democratic spaces? a democratic space has to recognise the multiple subjectivities present, including a refusal to be part of the space, or moving what the parameters of the space — what is democracy in pedagogy?  What do you feel your pedagogic practice most needs right now? How can you attend to those needs as a teacher/ student? facilitate the space, not the people What would be a good university?  this is a good question in the current climate – where is and what is the university when we cannot ‘be there’? What constitutes it? Where is it? Who is it and what connects those who are part of it? how is key the utopian university- is this what we need? What are the values of the utopian university?  What are your values as teachers? provocation discovery curiosity learning for learning’s sake life long learning creativity / criticality compassion, patience, empathy, active listening and care. What do I really want to do as teacher? And student? create space for individual and collaborative growth, whilst also nurturing my own curiosity What if …(i.e. no assessments, pass/fail grading) there were no top-down policies to fight against or constrain us? self-assessment, what if students assessed their own learning, development and achievements? What does an activist, radical university look/ feel/ move/ like? situated, project orientated non located, ephemeral according to need, fluid . without assessment How to teach collaboration, peer to peer model? teach through doing, recognising that collaboration is difficult and needs facilitating, nurturing and tending. creating opportunity within and beyond the university. [...]
17 June 2021NewsAlternative Alliances  Pelin Tan FILED ASTheory (Text Commission) TEMPORALITYJune 2021 LOCATIONMardin, Turkey  CATEGORYUrgent Pedagogies “The Urgent Pedagogies project points out such alternative alliances of pedagogies in critical spatial practices. Such practices not only deal with existing structures to transform its power and knowledge production but aim also to invent alliances of methodologies and initiatives.” See more at: https://urgentpedagogies.iaspis.se/alternative-alliances/ [...]
14 June 2021NewsThe EPRG at UAL will be an adventurous environment where the practices and theories of creative education can be explored and developed in collaboration with local and global educational and cultural institutions. We envision that we will have close links to all the other Research Centres, Institutes, groups, networks and hubs at UAL. The EPRG will be a visionary research community that will challenge, celebrate and experiment with perceived notions of creative education and develop ways in which we can remove barriers to learning for all UAL practitioners, recognising the implications of this for the wider creative education sector. The EPRG will champion creative experimental pedagogies by equitably advancing the thinking and practices of high-quality creative education through diverse populations and communities of practice. The EPRG will be an engaged living practice, involving networks of participants from the diversity of creative educational fields, working together at the forefront of politics, philosophy and pedagogy where new thinking is co-conceived and co-constructed through praxis. The EPRG will utilise experimental ways to disseminate its work and developments using multiple methods, media and articulations that function together to generate insights into creative educational research ventures. The EPRG in collaboration with other research communities at UAL, will assemble in new multidisciplinary, transversal and interconnected spaces in which experimental research can unfold and be fruitful in contexts of creative education. [...]