Liz HaYdeN

Just My Cup of Tea

This was a brilliant session… albeit nerve wracking when it came to my turn!…

Experiencing the thought and planning that had gone into my groups sessions was inspiring. I think it was invaluable having the session from archives on object based learning, earlier in the year I had had an idea whilst teaching a session, which I attempted but I had not approached it correctly. The lecture gave me the idea to revisit this concept for my microteach…

On MA Global 2023, students Natasha and Disha were working on their final major project, How do you take your tea? A lovely project that used a cup of tea to chat with migrant communities about home. They were leading a session, supported by me to guide the cohort on planning and meeting deadlines. This made me think about about tea, my love if it and how it is something I have shared with many different communities all over the world to make things happen.

With Patrick Curry “Enchantment of Learning” playing on repeat in my head, the brave space created by John and the support of the group… I very tentatively put My Cup of Tea in front of the group and thought Fuck it….

I introduced My Cup of Tea, my favourite cup, why it was my favourite cup and my preferred choice of tea and how I liked to make it.

I then asked the group to make a cup of tea with me… I got the post it notes and asked the first person to write down the first action required to make a cup of tea. I asked them to pass it on to the second person to write the next action and then the third…

The tension started to mount… as we got to the final member of the group there was not yet any signs of a cup of tea…

toast was needed with tea…

the tension mounted… the post it notes were going around faster, there were a lot of action that needed to be completed for a cup of tea to be made

We had forgotten to feed the cat…

the post it notes went around for the third time… the tension palpable… the excitement was real

I got a cup of tea!… pictured in a long orange post it note ACTION PLAN

By working together as a team on a simple task it became evident that sharing and delivering a simple idea took many more actions than first thought.

Feedback at the time was that it had been a really thought provoking, useful and fun…. Fo me the real feedback cam at the next workshop when one of my group had actually used it in class and another one wanted to but had not been allowed the budget for post it notes.

As I left the classroom John said “Liz that was meta” which I was really pleased about but had to confess that my cup of tea had actually been a cup of coffee because I was disorganised and hadn’t found my flask the night before. Which meant that for my teaching observation my bag of magic was ready a week before!

Susanna Clarke and Alan Moore in Conversation

Thursday 11th January 2024 7:30pm – 8:45pm
British Library, London

Notes

Location location Location… inspired by a news story about a radical women’s group from Bedford in the 1920’s – real life research

https://thequietus.com/articles/32179-alan-moore-illuminations-interview

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/books/review/alan-moore-illuminations.html

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/17/piranesi-by-susanna-clarke-review-an-elegant-study-in-solitude

Both authors credited Earthsea by Ursula k le quin as inspirational

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthsea

SC talked about her childhood experiences in church and at school as places you had to behave and fantasy gave her a place for her dreams and intellect

SC started with a detective novel but surrealism drifted in and the project was shelved but she returned to writing to try again

AM
All fantasties have to be grounded in something
most successful where they connect with the human experience

….. and another 8 pages still to type up… oh my oh my what a show


Exhibition
Fantasy: Realms of Imagination
British Library, London

Permission to play

My notes from this session are far more exciting and full of inspiration than I believe my words will portray….

Fascinated by the reading and the theory of PLAYgrounds and sand THERAPY and allowing myself time to contemplate… I noticed the change and the learning process was taking place in my head.

The night previously I had enjoyed the last episode of Gardens Around the World which Monty Don closed with “gardens are a play for adults to play” which popped into my mind… my garden is my place to play, experiment and learn and the learning from it informs much of my creative practise… subconsciously I started to think about my microteach and my assessed lecture and how I might be brave enough to share my personal experience.

Much discussion took place around the aims of education, the criteria that needed to be met and how it was assessed. Challenged by assessments on many levels… many blog posts are in draft about those… I focused in on the creative attributes framework and the area that interests me most the integrated attributes for employability. I am here partly due to many years employing recent UAL graduates whom I mentored in their first roles having left university, full of amazing ideas but without the skills to make them happen. I learnt that by working with them for 2-3 years sharing some key basic skills they were then able to progress and manage and deliver their own projects. These were skills I had learnt during my degree at UAL and I am beginning to understand now how those skills could easily be embedded into courses to give graduates the flying start I had.

By the early hours of the morning I had started to gamify the assessment process… which continued after my meta teaching observation experience that could only have happened at UAL!

In a recent and rare moment I found myself with an hour to spare outside the National gallery. I was lured into the delightful Frans Hals exhibition. Thinking about the process of learning and the practise of teaching I was struck by the attention to detail in Hals work and how although historic so very contemporary. Taken by the detail of the process in his unfinished work it reminded me of a recent visited to the Museum of Process in Lund and the brave and experimental learning space at the centre.

This made me explore a problem space I had identified within a recent round of assessments which I found challenging. As a cohort the submissions appeared to cover a wide area of learning but I was looking in the wrong place for the depth of research and roots of the projects. I then understood how I could begin to support that space within the assessment framework by providing tools around which an idea can be scaffolded, communicated and delivered.

String theory networking
History and systems
Edisney

communicating

turn taking western culture

popcorn

goldfish bowl students talk to each other whilst the others gather and listen

example of by tim about graduated chinese UAL students reflecting on their learning experience when asjed why they remained silent tonecreplied i did not wish to ask a question that ghe tutor was unable to answer…

trust respect and culural un

inter cultural comm training

…must be realistic…. Want to remember and write down everything

Designing for the real world at Somerset House

Cycles of Unmaasking

The Art Cafe

Brave Enchanted spaces

We started our journey with a little string theory which was a joyous visual discovery of turn taking, the power of conversation and meeting the cohort in a safe space.

From the reading I had been particularly inspired by Patrick Curry “The Enchantment of Learning” and Arab & Clemens “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces” and I was intrigued at the influence those particular texts lit up the learning for me during this session.

Stage left aside… through the teaching I noted ideas to play with in session planning… the different approaches the are familiar in international cultures… Popcorn would make a great icebreaker with a popcorn machine throwing words around…. A literal Goldfish bowl of learning… note to self must get it out the shed and dust off…. Great metaphors to explore topics for discussion…. Then someone flagged up that by changing the voice of a screen reader meant that the text was heard in a different voice… the first thing I did when I got home was tried Grandma…. Laughing hysterically… I was happy to be back at UAL

Tim then imparted that e-learning had originated from Disneyland in early 2000… whoop whoop… now I was firmly back on home ground and suddenly my career and new adventure collided… enchanted learning experiences in a brave space is my mission.

Just to prove that magic was in the air I got to the car just before the parking warden did!…

one step at a time…