Academic Practice with Focus on BA Fashion Design

Endless different teaching & learning styles experienced today:

• Individual presentations by the students
• Immediate positive feedback by the teachers to the students after presentations
• Student-led and teacher-led discussions
• Continuous encouraged student input in the discussion verbally or through writing in the chat
• A lot of listening by the teachers to the students demonstrating interest, undivided attention, curiosity, empathy, patience
• Active learning remotely – students were encouraged to draw.
• Perhaps a ‘creative, disruptive method’ by encouraging students to access their senses – What are your feet touching? What’s touching your feet?
• A form of brainstorming on Padlet
• Utilising different digital platforms: BBCollaborate, Padlet, moodle, blogs
• Another student-led learning example: a kind of ‘subject voting’ system where students voted their favourite 3 topics and then chose one they wanted to discuss with their peers
• Thinking/reflecting or reacting or communicating through drawing.
• Learning to find words through drawing – writing through drawing
• Sharing and discussing work
• Teachers being honest, showing their vulnerability and put themselves into the perspective of the students therefore, gaining students’ trust
• Teachers allowing students to view some of their home environment: pets plus mentioning children in background – being open, giving some insight into their personal life – being human – not just ‘the superior teacher’
• Q&As
• Facilitating students’ participation or involvement on many different levels such as the mentioned above examples: student-led group discussions, chat, padlet, shared brainstorming, students’ presentations etc.

Today’s key words that resonated with me personally:

• Meaningful
• Discipline of noticing
• Trust
• Resistance
• Sociomateriality
• Facilitator
• Silence

What I am taking away from today:

What I am taking away from today seems very personal and it most likely won’t be anything new to my new tutors, in fact everyone around me had mentioned it however, I had to experience it myself to understand it.

Today, as students we were facilitated and encouraged on every level and more importantly, we also were reassured and encouraged that we were the centre of the whole learning and teaching experience of this course. As I have taught for more than 19 years in many different institutions such as Mary Ward Centre, London College of Fashion, University of Westminster and Central Saint Martins plus one-off international teaching situations – I haven’t been in this position for a long time and therefore, it felt almost overwhelming.

As a tutor I do exactly what our new tutors do, too, I give and listen all the time and the only people next to my closest family and the few friends left, who seem to matter in my life are my students and ex-students, especially in the role as a pathway leader because there is a lot of pastoral care involved. This is also the reason why I cannot appear vulnerable unless I use it as a learning and teaching tool in a measured manner.

Usually, I explain that I don’t teach instead I ‘guide’ the students which, as I learned today, is a recognised teaching and learning method called ‘facilitator’. In addition, I tend to not respect my teaching qualities very much because I lost the ‘discipline of noticing’ or do not know the terms or references for my teaching methods.

The final and most vital realisation for me today was that I am as a student the centre and it is about me which also means that it is about my creative practice not only about my teaching practice. Today there was a keen general interest in what we as students do next to our teaching practice.

Even though I am very aware of the fact that my creative practice should and does inform my teaching practice I was not used to such genuine interest in who I am as an artist. Hence, I kept my practice as a visual artist quite brief in my verbal presentation today. Having realised that I am the centre, I decided to boast on my blog and included a rather long biography – mainly as a reminder and reassurance for myself.

As my own creative practice seems an important part of this course, I further understood that there is the possibility to focus in the first instance on my creative practice rather than on my teaching practice for the active research project with the intention of eventually linking the two.

My Research:

Beautiful quote from today: “What itch do you want to scratch in your research”

The research “Part of the Furniture: Encountering People and Things in the Design Studio” of James Corazzo, Associate Professor of Art & Design, Sheffield Hallam University, reminded me of one of my projects called ‘Before A Fashion’ which I did in 2014.

Even though I knew vaguely what project I wanted to do I didn’t quite know where to start so I decided to utilise drawing as a thinking and stimulating process. Similar as Catherine Smith I went to the library to draw however, I decided to draw paintings by Mannerism artist Bronzino because I was always drawn to his paintings’ stylised aesthetic, fresh colours and layers of symbolism and narratives.

‘Before A Fashion’ 2014

‘Before A Fashion’ is a short artists’ film exploring the uniquely performed relations between bodies, materials and state of creation only to be found among young people studying fashion design. It describes how ideas around ‘manner and style’, key terms defining fashion and embracing specific qualities such as the way that we stand, sit or move, are tightly intertwined with the entire design and making process.

The film originates from 5 years’ extensive observations of fashion design students, staff and learning methods at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, in form of endless photographs and drawings. It creates a different kind of storytelling through translating real experiences and gestures – a mix of clear procedures seemingly stemming from a former world and more intimate, instinctive gesticulation – into refined scenarios. Underlining this notion, the presented clothes have been designed to mimic distinct acts of performance by a recent Saint Martins fashion graduate and key-performer in the film.

Usually, the focus in the field of fashion and performance lies on the performance of the wearer and the specifically designed and worn garments. This new project includes the performance of the fashion makers and examines the interrelated performances of body, material and physical and psychological state of creation within the fashion design process as a whole.

Finally, regarding the title ‘Before A Fashion’ – ‘before’ relates to fashion students whom I want to portray within the film, which means their working and development before they ‘go into fashion’ and perhaps before they ‘become a fashion’. Also, it refers to my thought that perhaps before something is called ‘a fashion’ it is not ‘a fashion yet’ such as a dress which just has been completed and not been ‘outside’ the studio yet. 

Due to limited time, funding resources and lack of appropriate academic or intellectual support the project did not have the outcome I had originally intended. Having listened to James’ and Catherine’s presentation I am beginning to see the potential of this project and therefore, perhaps this is a project I could revisit.

Before A Fashion – story board

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?