Reflecting on our microteaching session and general experience of being a student on PgCert I realised that one of the best things for me are those workshop-like or warming-up activities which I have not experienced in a very long time.

I had forgotten how vital the spontaneous and free nature of workshop activities are, however, was reminded through Sylwia’s microteaching. Her microteaching session constituted of a series of quick drawing and performance exercises such as drawing our ‘tasteless’ objects (chosen for my microteaching session) with our eyes shut and feeling our objects with our hands or drawing our objects and imaging that we are extremely cold etc.

As Sylwia had not done a long briefing for the drawing exercise and prompted us to start quite swiftly in drawing our ‘tasteless’ objects I felt pressured to react because I don’t deal with spontaneity well. Significantly, it was clearly communicated as a creative, welcoming task which was there for us to enjoy and immerse ourselves into and therefore, I felt invited to make my own decisions and add my own input to the task.

As I had not chosen my tasteless objects for this task but for my microteaching, and my mind has difficulties to be flexible, I did not want to use them for this workshop and therefore, chose spontaneously an object I absolutely love and find tasteful. This meant that I had taken the liberty to alter my experience of the intended task and by doing so felt even more engaged and more importantly, empowered.

 This is further supported by a memory of a past learning experience which was triggered when our tutor asked us what past learning experience has stayed in our minds. When I was a BA fashion student at CSM in the early 1990s I had drawing lessons with Howard Tangye. I was not used to the continuous line drawing technique which he taught and felt a bit deflated. However, instead of giving up I turned away from the model and started drawing a portrait of one of my peers because I loved drawing portraits. When Howard Tangye was passing by, he gave me positive feedback instead of telling me off. (I bet Sylwia would have done the same if she had seen that I had chosen a different object.)

 

Concluding, this is something I treasure in my own teaching practice at CSM that we are there to create a certain nurturing environment including guidance and support and simultaneously ensure flexibility so that students are encouraged to make their own decisions and can even ignore guidance if they want to. HOWEVER, the more specific, detailed and descriptive and perhaps even the more inclusive, sustainable and decolonised we become in our written briefs the more space for free learning development we take away from the students.

Imagining I was freezing cold – drawing of Tanushë’s sculpture, 2023, ANZ