1. Sketch briefly your teaching context and other professional/creative identities (use images)

My name is Anna-Nicole Ziesche, I am the Pathway Leader for BA Fashion Design Womenswear at Central Saint Martins. I have done this job for 7 years but have been teaching on the same Pathway since 2003. I have got two daughters who are both now at secondary school and who are the reason why I am doing this PgCert only now.

I graduated in BA and MA Fashion from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design University of the Arts London. My shift towards film and performance began in the last year of my MA Fashion when I made a film to be shown at the Truman Brewery, UK (2000).

At the time I developed the title ‘Infinite Repetition’ and stated that fashion is about collecting endless images to translate them into tangible garments only to translate the garments back into more endless images. I concluded that this process is not necessary anymore as a garment can just remain an image. This was a radical departure for me and marked a turning point in fashion communication practice because it utilized the medium of film to unveil the continuously evolving designs and shapes of garments (22 years ago).

My interest has shifted over the years, and therefore, my more recent films convey the relationship of mind and dress and the performance of the body conditioned by dress physically and psychologically.

Exhibitions include:

The Triennial for Contemporary Art, Fashion and Design’, Hasselt, Belgium (2012); the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands and the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2011); the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rottterdam, The Netherlands (2009); the Museum of the Moving Image, New York, USA (2007); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK (2006); Kinnijoe Space Gallery, Hamburg, Germany and the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, USA (2002); the Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden and the Modemuseum, Antwerp, Belgium (2001).

In addition my films have been shown in numerous international film festivals.

Awards and commissions include:

‘The Art of Fashion: Installing Allusions’ at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam(2010); College Research Fund from London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London (2010, 2012)); Capture 4 Award of Arts Council England (2005); Merchant Taylor Award (2003); Artsadmin Bursary (2001); Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award (2000).

1. Share something you learned about pedagogy and/or pedagogic research from the item you chose, and any questions it raised for you.

Ironically, despite my digital work and innovative thinking in the past I struggle the most with the rapid expansion of digital tools, processes, and outcomes such as 3DClo or more recently AI in my teaching and learning practice.

Consequently, I chose 2 pieces of writing from Spark which investigate digital technology within teaching and learning and I feel complemented each other. They were the following:

• Vol 5 / Issue 1 (2022) pp. 42–55 Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal

“Teaching the tangible, remotely: Fashion as Material Culture” by Clare Lomas, Head of Curriculum Development and Assessment and Maria Costantino, Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies, London College of Fashion

The Fashion as Material Culture project examines real, tangible objects with regards to its changing meaning and value and its historical and cultural context etc..- something I very much relate to in my own practice. The article specifically analysed the implications when being unexpectedly obliged to teach such project online during Covid’s lockdowns.

• Vol. 3 No. 2 (2018) pp. 150-160 Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal

“Case Studies – Works of heart: Revisiting creativity and innovation through maker pedagogies” Published 2018-10-31 – at a Canadian Faculty of Education

This article also looked at remote teaching and learning however, the content of the course was primarily digital. It discusses the contemporary maker movement and traces the student’s transformation from consumer of digital products to producer of innovative digital artefacts. This text very much embraced the digital realm in all its immense diversity and importantly was distinct by utilising the terms I know so well from the tangible creative world such as maker, making, makerspace, artefacts etc. to describe digital spaces, processes and outcomes.

While I resonated with many points in the first text, I felt that the second text challenged me more in that it directly compared or even treated as equal the digital and tangible world.

I settled on one word only because I use it frequently when teaching and therefore, it resonated with me most. It was ‘active learning’ which I found it in the following paragraph originating from the second piece of writing:

The 2017 Horizon report, which is published by the New Media Consortium and predicts the impact of emerging educational technologies and trends, identifies makerspaces as a key development in technology in primary and secondary education contexts over the next few years. The report argues that the: advent of makerspaces, [and other] classroom configurations that enable active learning, and the inclusion of coding and robotics are providing students with ample opportunities to create and experiment in ways that spur complex thinking. Students are already designing their own solutions to real-world challenges (Adams Becker et al., 2017, p.4). Makerspaces tend to include digital tools such as micro-computers, soft circuits, wearable tech, 3D printers, programmable robots, virtual reality and more.

My thoughts with regards to ‘active learning’ and digital processes:

Reading the article and specifically the term ‘active learning’ in context with digital processes prompted quite a few internal thought processes for me. I realised that I struggle to see the ‘active learning’ within digital processes sometimes and wonder how much people are active or how much they just ‘use or consume’ the given digital tools.

I realised that I tend to value an active tangible process more than a digital process (programming/coding is different) because I would argue that the learning when sewing fabric together or painting a canvas in real life requires more complex thinking than in the digital world, in addition more senses are involved.

Further, I would argue the emptier a ‘makerspace’ is and the fewer or less advanced tools the makerspace contains the more active the learning process becomes and the more problem solving is required however, a lot of ‘digital makerspaces’ are filled with very advanced and ‘pre-programmed’ tools.

When I do repetitive physical tasks I constantly, almost subconsciously, examine how I can do it better and faster however, I wonder whether we have the same drive of problem solving when undergoing digital repetitive processes. Physically it is less exhausting and therefore, not as crucial to find a better solution.

I realised further that I am continuously anxious that we are losing too much of our known abilities while not gaining the equal amount of new abilities when looking at tangible and digital learning processes. Further I fear that we don’t take enough time to analyse if those new digital tools are beneficial or what the best way is how and when to implement them into our learning processes.

QUESTIONS:

What does ‘active learning’ mean during a creative tangible process and what does it mean during a creative digital process? What are the differences and is one more beneficial to us as human beings than the other?