Action Research Project

Notes from Neil´s email (also inspiring to share with my 1st year fine art students):

“Action researchers let their own story evolve” … ” action researchers start with an idea and follow it where it leads them.”(McNiff and Whitehead, 2006: 30-31)

“You are trying something out for the first time, and that you are holding ideas lightly and provisionally. You do not expect concrete answers or solutions: you are experimenting with life and creating something new.” (McNiff and Whitehead, 2010: 37)

The workshop where observation, collection of data will take place:

Post-humanism: Through the lens of flora with Carolina Rodrigues

In these workshops we will be looking at issues that encompass post-humanism; colossal issues such as climate change, racism and power.

We will be looking at the work of Marguerite Humeau, Pamela Rosenkranz, Precious Okoyomon and Shawanda Corbett. And exploring writings by Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti and Octavia E. Butler. We will ask open questions, discuss and visualize practices that will show us how social justice and ecology are mutually dependent and they have to be addressed at the same time.

Starting by looking at plants and the work of specific artists, writers and philosophers who explore flora in their work we will build collages that bring together research and ideas to produce a map of your practice which will empower and inspire you to produce new work.

Bring a plant, a leaf, or a flower that you like, or has meaning to you or your family, or you find interesting.

A walk will be part of this workshop.

My research project consists of a 3 half-day workshop x 2.

Note: I will also share my work and my research

Links

https://interrogatingspaces.buzzsprout.com/683798/4671476-belonging-in-higher-education

The workshop aims to enhance students knowledge and to have a clearer sense of research in their own practice, at the same time as welcoming their lives, experiences and knowledge as a source of research.

A part as we explore work from artists, writers and philosophers, the workshop will address personal narratives, starting with mine, and our cultures widened to issues of our era such as ecology and post-humanism.

This workshop is designed by me and it is part of the programme on the 1st year BA Fine Art at Chelsea. The students have a choice of 9 workshops.

I ask the students to bring a plant, a leaf, or a flower that you like, or has meaning to you or your family, or you find interesting. I am conscious of the “institutional weight” of certain rooms at Chelsea and potentially personal belongings can add a sense of belonging to the room.

Notes from the workshop 26 Oct:

Step 1 – How can I enhance students’ knowledge and empower them to have a clearer sense of research into their own practice, at the same time as welcoming their lives, experiences and knowledge as a source of research through a workshop?

Step 2 – 3 half-day workshop x 2. practice, at the same time as welcoming their lives, experiences and knowledge as a source of research. A part as we explore work from artists, writers and philosophers, the workshop will address personal narratives, starting with mine, and our cultures widened to issues of our era such as ecology and post-humanism. This workshop is designed by me and it is part of the programme on the 1st year BA Fine Art at Chelsea. The students have a choice of 9 workshops. I ask the students to bring a plant, a leaf, or a flower that you like, or has meaning to you or your family, or you find interesting. I am conscious of the “institutional weight” of certain rooms at Chelsea and potentially personal belongings can add a sense of belonging to the room.

Step 3 – This workshop will be enlightening to me, especially because I will have the chance to spend 3 half days with the same students. I am envisioning creating a good atmosphere of sharing informations and discussing topics of interests. It will be a relatively small group: about 10 students. I am particularly interested in picking the students interests and what they are drown to, at the same time of welcoming their lives as a source of knowledge and has a something that has value (artistic value) and can be “worked”, explored in their practices. This will empower my knowledge and my experience to support and encourage students, especially on their first year of the BA. I would like then to present this research to the course leader and the programme director of the BA and potentially going a further with this research and establishing a link with the collaborative workshops that are run on the first Unit but the staff and students are still unsure, or nomenclature and guidelines.

Step 4 – I would like to monitor and evaluate the changes made throughout the rest of Unit 2. See how the students progress with their practice. I will invite the students to reply to a questionnaire (questionnaire, verbal or written?).

Step 5 – Analyse all the data, see if the workshop has to be more prescribed or more organic. At the moment the workshop, the final part of the workshop doesn’t have an element of showing the work produced. It is more a workshop of empowering the students with tools.

Feedback from Rain Wu on the tools I thought of using to collect data (still have to comment on this for the workflow)

It was very lovely and enlightening talking to Rain. So much so that we decided to meet again before the next workshop to see where we both are with our ARP.

Rain asked me very interesting questions that made me think and reflect. I potentially, I still don’t have the answers for them I believe they are very useful.

Interviews: What kind of questions you ask; atmosphere, tea, going out for a walk? How to pu the setting. Talk about my self first?

How do they reply. Will you record?

Questionnaire. potentially informal. Will I opt for an effective questionnaire?

Explanation: this is what i want to know. Talk first about my self?

A therapy approach?

example of story shared by Rain:

she met a BBC correspondent who was doing a “deep Listening” workshop. Rain said that the BBc reporter asked Rain the origin of her name. Rain replied and the reporter said what Rain said and asked her if what she has said was what rain mean. They repeated the process 3 times.

So it is a process of refining together.

Scaffolding of language.

Notes and links from the workshop 26 Oct.

Making Feminist Points

“When we think this question “who appears?” we are asked a question about how spaces are occupied by certain bodies who get so used to their occupation that they don’t even notice it. They are comfortable, like a body that sinks into a chair that has received its shape over time. To question who appears is to become the cause of discomfort. It is almost as if we have a duty not to notice who turns up and who doesn’t. Just noticing can get in the way of an occupation of space.”

“There was no discussion of the politics of that framing; no discussion of whiteness; or of what it means to speak from the position of occupying stolen land. When I pointed this out, it caused quite an upset. It became very uncomfortable. And then a special issue of a journal was published (again with all or only white non-Indigenous feminists) and the introduction stressed how Australian feminism was “good” with questions of cultural difference.”