Teaching & Learning – Kangan Arora

Teaching as Performance and Is ‘charisma’ important?

The discussion this week focused on teaching an invisible audience, teaching as performative activity and tutors receiving ‘feedback’.

Hattie Voelcker’s ‘Performing with an invisible audience‘ came with lots of good advice considering we have all had to adapt to remote teaching and online delivery to often a blank screen or tens of black squares. Perhaps the best takeaways for mhhhyyy hhe were some of these tips from teachers –

Encourage interaction
Accept silence
Keep it real and don’t aim for perfection, it’s ok to stumble over your words.

Accepting silence and ‘making room for silence’ as discussed in Victoria Odeniyi’s lecture on language (reflection here), are both important for students to digest the content and reflect to formulate relevant questions.

The tips from performers seemed less relevant in our context, albeit the one about watching the video recordings over to see what we can improve on. I have tried ‘looking at the dot’ when talking to students online and felt this has disengaged me from the conversation because you’re focusing so hard on the dot, I’d rather be looking at the blank black squares that appear if students’ don’t turn their cameras on.

There were some more useful and practical suggestions in the Padlet Lindsay set up for us to contribute our ideas about ‘teaching invisible students’. Simple actions like inviting contribution through the use of whiteboards or creating a sense of belonging by facilitating student led social sessions by giving them agency.

Is ‘charisma’ important?

The second part was a discussion around the most important issues arising from an excerpt from Bruce Macfarlane’s 2004 book Teaching with Integrity: The ethics of higher education practice (Routledge). My group (Rochelle, Seema, Yasmine) and I discussed whether ‘charisma’ is important? Whilst I was of the opinion that charisma can often be a facade to hide insecurities and that teachers cannot rely on charisma alone to mask or enhance their teaching abilities, my group convinced me to see charisma as a more positive force. Charisma as passion, as something that encourages engagement as passion can be infectious. Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society perhaps epitomises this view.

Lindsay’s question from the notes is perhaps more interesting – is charisma gendered?

The two resources that Lindsay shared with this question helped put in context the current understanding of ‘perceived charisma’ for men and women, however it’s worth noting that the studies were geared towards charisma in leadership (management and politics) and entrepreneurship rather than teaching.

It might help to define what exactly is charisma the meaning of which Kellerman acknowledges has been watered down in recent years when talking on the HBR IdeaCast podcast. She describes the relationship between leaders and followers and although some modes of education around the world may follow this model, from my understanding increasingly universities have been moving away from the traditional teacher-centred model to more student-centred ones, where teachers alone aren’t considered the imparters of knowledge. However, when it comes to the question of whether men are more charismatic leaders than women; the whole arguement may be skewed as women have historically been written out of leadership roles.

The Prosodic Charisma Training report contradicted Kellerman who believes that charisma can’t be taught or acquired. The training measures charisma with respect to performance in pitching business ideas. I think it the report highlights more deep rooted problems like gender bias and discrimination that creates the gender gap in successful business men and women. Is it really charisma that the women are acquiring through the training, or is it confidence?

Bibliography:

Voelcker, H. 2020. Performing with an Invisible Audience [Video] Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl5a_eU_H0o (Accessed: 28 Feb 2021)

Excerpt from Macfarlane, B. 2004. Teaching with Integrity: The ethics of higher education practice. Routledge. Teaching Evaluation case study

HBR IdeaCast. 2009. What Charisma Really Is (and Isn’t). 2009 [Podcast] Available at
https://hbr.org/podcast/2009/02/what-charisma-really-is-and-is (Accessed: 31 May 2021)

Niebuhr O, Tegtmeier S and Schweisfurth T . 2019. Female Speakers Benefit More Than Male Speakers From Prosodic Charisma Training—A Before-After Analysis of 12-Weeks and 4-h Courses.

Love and Care

Love and care are crucial for establishing a sense of belonging. For this week’s discussion, I read/watched three resources – Bell Hook’s introduction to her book, All about Love, Laura D’Olimpio’s Ethics of Care and Lindsay Jordan’s Love & Belonging in the Educational realm (lecture and notes).

It was interesting to read both Hook’s observation about the gender imbalance when it comes to theorising love (it seems to have been the domain of men for many years) and D’Olimpio’s explanation about the Ethics of Care, a feminist approach to ethics challenging traditional theories as male centric, that focus on universal, rational and logical rules whilst dismissing care and emotions that are stereotypically associated as ‘feminine’ and unimportant.

I fully endorse the Ethics of Care, as one cannot apply a moral blanket when interacting with a diverse group of students. Students have different circumstances and needs and the care we take to address this has to come from a place of understanding and individual response. Lindsay Jordan also advocates for this in her notes about Love and Belonging in the educational realm, where she says that ‘It makes little sense to speak of the student experience as something singular. Experience is something that an individual goes through.’

I attended the discussion for this session with a different tutor group and it was really lovely to meet and interact with a new tutor and group of peers. Whilst we were discussing Hooks and D’Olimpio, it was observed by one of my peers how many of the new ADF (Academic Development Fund) roles that UAL recruited for in 2019 were filled by women. This is particularly interesting for me as I was one of the new ADF recruits and there is a huge emphasis on pastoral care embedded in my role. I think it’s important to note that there is an overwhelming feeling amongst staff that a lot of decision making that happens by senior management (who are by and large white and male) bears little relation to the reality on ground, where we have to navigate the rules to provide care and create a sense of belonging for each individually, albeit not always successfully.

In smaller breakout groups, we were asked to think about this question – ‘How do we include care within our teaching?’ Seems like such an obvious thing that one would automatically do, but really sometimes is overlooked. There were a range of answers and specific themes emerged – some focused on the virtual learning environment – I’ll summarise below as I think it’s a great list to look at when planning a session or indeed the larger curriculum –

Integrating pastoral and taught sessions
Buddy scheme
Sign-posting – academic support
Drop in sessions/Open door policy
Personal Tutor System
Establishing mutual responsibility between students, suggesting they are responsible for each other’s learning too
Community social building event/activities
Making academia accessible

This last point was picked up upon and we discussed Intellectualisation v anti-intellectualisation. I am of the opinion that you have to cater to different learning needs. That doesn’t imply anti-intellectualisation but employing different methodologies and resources to aid your students’ understanding and learning. Surely it shows that you care and are trying to make your teaching more inclusive and accessible.

Another important point is the use of language. In the Inclusive T&L unit, one of my colleagues shared an article that I feel is relevant here – How compassionate language can enrich your life by G. Lains. Lains concludes that ‘words that come from a place of true love and kindness can be transformative in the most positive ways in a person’s life‘. By creating a safe space where students can interact without judgement, we are creating a space where they feel they belong and feel supported.

As part of my ADF role, I made a few initiatives to address pastoral care and community building.

Bridge time

CSM Kings Cross. Photo: The Architectural Review

Once or twice a term, I offer one to one sign up sessions on the bridge at CSM, which moved online during pandemic. The idea was to be more visible (hence the location) where students could informally drop in and talk about anything they wanted to, whether they needed extra pastoral support, a tutorial or just a chat. It was felt that if tutors are sat in the office, students often feel intimidated to approach them, whereas the bridge is a more approachable shared space that belongs to us all. As online teaching eliminated any visibility tutors had outside of scheduled teaching time, the online bridge time sessions proved very popular.

Culture Club/CSM Textiles Club

‘Culture Club’ started as a community building exercise for year 1 students, where as a group we would visit galleries and museums to see exhibitions that would enhance their learning experience for particular projects. It was seen as a chance to interact with students outside of campus and enjoy ‘London as a resource’ together, especially as this is often the first time a majority of students will visit or live in the city. Students were also invited to contribute to a shared Moodle page that listed relevant resources in terms of exhibitions, suppliers, museum listings etc.

As the year progressed, we realised that the field trips were harder to organise within the demands of an already full time table, and students couldn’t spare the time for it. The Moodle page was rarely accessed as Moodle can often be clunky and uninspiring and it was hard for students to contribute to it without admin access.

With the introduction of new platforms during the pandemic, we moved this resource list to Padlet as ‘Things seen and heard‘ where it is much easier for students and other staff members to contribute. We also started the CSM Textiles Club on Instagram that made sharing and communication a lot easier.

During the pandemic as we moved to remote teaching, the importance of ‘love and care’ and ‘online communities’ really came to the forefront. As students suffered from isolation and low morale, tutors and universities came up with various ways to support them. I attended a great talk by Vicki Fong, MA Textiles tutor at the RCA called ‘Designing for online communities‘. Amongst other initiatives, Vicki started strength training with her students to promote well being through exercise.

As part of SIP, I want to explore community building initiatives further with the aim to foster belonging to the course and interaction between all the year cohorts, where although some ideas may be tutor initiated, they eventually become more student led where students support each other.

Self care for staff

Something to consider is also self care for staff involved, the pandemic has really blurred the boundaries between our personal and professional time. Being a fractional staff member myself, I have struggled to ‘log off’ on days on which I don’t work for the university and focus on my professional practice. There is a culture of ‘always being available’ that really needs to be addresses within course teams without feelings of guilt creeping in.

Bibliography:

Hooks, B. 2000. All About Love. HarperCollins, New York

D’Olimpio, L. 2019. Ethics of Care [Online]
https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-ethics-of-care/

J, Lindsay. 2020. Love & Belonging in the Educational Realm

G. Lains. 2020. How compassionate language can enrich your life [Online]
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/how-compassionate-language-can-enrich-your-life/

Fong, V. 2020 Designing for Online communities [Online]
https://the-dots.com/events/new-designers-designing-for-online-communities-2505

Microteaching: Colour

Slide one of my microteaching activity where we discussed how colour can be a very emotional and personal object.

We were asked to design a micro-teaching activity around OBL or Object based learning. Chatterjee (2011) emphasizes that ‘Objects have the power to inspire, inform, excite and educate; they can be used to acquire subject specific knowledge as well as more generic transferable skills such as communication and teamwork. Object-based learning in higher education draws on many of the learning strategies already known to inform students, including active learning and experiential learning.’

I had some limited experience of OBL drawing on when I initiated and participated in a session with the CSM Museum last year for our year 1 textiles and jewellery students, designed to discuss cultural appropriation. However, as it was in person where one could look, feel, handle the object the task at hand to translate this in a virtual environment was somewhat different. I decided to use this contradiction to plan my micro-teaching activity around colour – both virtual and physical, emotional and practical.

I designed the session aimed at Year 1 design students to discuss ‘colour and colour communication’. I wanted to choose something universal that everyone has to encounter in both their personal and professional lives and these interactions would form the basis of their engagement.

The session aimed at developing ‘visual literacy’ and ‘communication skills’ by looking at colour as an object. We discussed the emotional and intangible qualities of colour to begin the session. I showed the group the image above and gave them some time to articulate how they would describe this to someone who didn’t have a visual of it, without referencing the actual colour. (for eg: the colour of the sea) It encouraged them to draw on their own experiences and relate colour to a particular place or activity. Larry’s description, I thought was pretty spot on – ‘bright colour that can be added to a cone ice cream’.

Slide from my presentation showing the NCS (Natural Colour System) method of colour communication.

For the second half of the session, I wanted to focus on the ‘practical’ side of colour. As designers, how do we communicate colour across physical/virtual spaces, across substrates, from studio to industry. As important as emotional poetic colour communication is, it often fails to translate if we use it in industry. For eg, the colour of the sea is different in different parts of the world, is different in the same place in different seasons, even on the same day at different times of day.

I asked the group if they knew of any colour systems that help designers to accurately communicate colour for print, manufacturing etc. Pantone was the most common answer, but no one knew that the Pantone numbers mean, are we supposed to read a Pantone number and know what the colour is? To be honest, I don’t know either. So, I use something called NCS or Natural Colour System, a colour system that is based on how we see colour, which we went on to understand through the three characteristics of colour – Hue (pure pigment), Value (lightness/darkness) and Chroma (amount of colour in a hue). Once we had understood how to use the notation, we went back to the colour I showed at the start to try and come up with it’s NCS notation.

Slide from presentation explaining how to read the NCS colour notation

In hindsight, I should’ve had another slide listing and showing various colour systems from around the world as no one had heard of any others – Munsell, Colour Aid, RAL or more obscure ones like Werner’s Nomenclature of Colour. I wanted to minimise the slides as the brief suggested we drive discussion around one object, however it would’ve been useful in this instance and given the group more resources to refer to after the session.

I received some very useful feedback from the group, which will help make the session more coherent and engaging.

Ocean and Karen enjoyed starting with the ‘conceptual’ part of the activity before jumping into the practicalities. They found the discussion around ‘colour systems’ interesting but would’ve liked more time to understand the notations and colour charts. The discussion around industry colour communication made Larry appreciate the difficulty of the task, having the tools to communicate the accuracy of the colours he wishes to match will be helpful in future interactions with his printers. Vikki suggested the use of Miro, which could help simplify the colour chart exercise and make it more of a group activity, rather than individual. At the time of the micro teach, I had not used Miro but have tried it since and agree that this would’ve made the session much more dynamic as it serves as a visual whiteboard where a group of people can brainstorm and collaborate.

In the past I have tried this session in person where the first part was more of a game, where I put a colour in an envelope and asked the students to describe it to their partners who tried to match the description to a colour in a Pantone colour swatch book. Vikki asked me to consider how I could bring this playful element into a virtual session.

On reflection, there was perhaps too much content to fit in a short 20 minute session and some pre-planning would’ve alleviated some of the time pressure. The feedback from the group unanimously stated that both parts were important and complemented one another, however a bit of time management would’ve helped the pace more. To introduce an element of play, I could send half the participants a colour through email and ask them to describe it to their partners in a breakout room depending on the size of the group.

I found the exercise very useful to think about planning future sessions and the importance of the inclusion of the element of play. Yes Gadamer, I hear you.

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I also really enjoyed my groups’ microteaching sessions. It was great to see different teaching methodologies and media being employed as well as the deliberate use of ‘silence’ or ‘time to think’. This was particularly successful in Ocean’s session where we were asked to look at a photograph – Still Water by Roni Horn. I have the tendency to fill the space and need to allow more time for thinking and reflecting.

Lauren’s session based around monsters and characters from films was very engaging. She started the session with a breakout activity sharing our favourite creatures which was really successful as we were bringing our personal understanding and references, rather than discussing one she chose for us. There was a lot of new information but she had planned the session well and covered all grounds at an accessible pace.

Bibliography:

Chatterjee, H (2011) Object -based learning in higher education: The pedagogical power of museums (Accessed: 19th May 2021)

Vilhauer: Understanding Art

Having returned to Monica Vilhauer’s “Understanding Art: The Play of Work and Spectator” after a few months since I initially read it back in February, it revealed it’s true meaning in language that I found much more palatable than the first time I’d read it. The text was much easier to understand after immersing myself in all the various discussions and readings for the PG Cert over the last few months, and building a wider picture where this understanding fits in. My first experience, back in February was difficult to say the least, when I found the language very academic and heavy.

One of the takeaways from this experience is to persevere with these academic texts, but also build on further reference points and discussions that help in that understanding. One size doesn’t fit all. We had an interesting discussion around ‘over-intellectualism’ and ‘anti-intellectualism’ in the session around ‘love and care’ which resonates here. I believe that there is a place for intellectualism but on the ground, this doesn’t always work where one must be able to articulate and explain ideas and concepts in a way that they are understood by the participant (or student).

As Vilhauer points out, “Because the back and forth movement is so essential to play, we can see that play itself cannot be a solitary event.” (pg33)

With the above in mind, reading the text could not exist as a solitary event and in order to be understood, the reader (me, in this case) had to immerse and experience the teaching and the context. Through reflecting on lived experiences and discussion with my peers, a shared understanding was reached. This interaction and subsequent understanding, I believe can be applied to our context as teachers and we should look to actively embrace and embed it in our teaching and make ‘learning’ the most important aspect of our teaching. Teaching is not about imparting knowledge, but creating an understanding of the knowledge through ‘active’ participation from the students.

Gadamar maintains that “the work of art has its true being in the fact that it becomes an experience that changes the person who experiences it” (TM, 102)

This transformational experience is key in the back and forth of teaching and learning. Gadamer also emphasizes on the importance of the effort and commitment required by the participant. The act of understanding comes with this engagement and want to participate. It also fosters a sense of belonging.

Franz Erhard Walther, ‘Shifting Perspectives’, 2020, installation view. Courtesy: Haus der Kunst, Munich, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; photograph: Maximilian Geuter

Gadamer’s interpretation of ‘Play’ also reminds me of the work of Franz Erhard Walther, a German artist who explores ‘action as art’ and invites the audience to become an active participant in his fabric sculptures.

When Kolja Reichert (2014) describes Erhard’s show The Body Decides, he writes “Werksatz were laid out like stock in a textiles factory awaiting inventory, like equipment in a school sports hall, like tents after camp has been struck or like the elements of an installation before the artist had come to arrange them. In fact, the elements were waiting for the viewer to turn them into artworks through use: waiting for someone to slip into Objekt zum Hineinlegen (Object To Lie Down, 1964) or for a couple of people to place the very long hood for two, Sehkanal (Sight Channel, 1968), over their heads. When in use, they take on ‘Handlungsform’ (action form), joining with the user to form ‘Werkfiguren’ (work figures). Subsequently, they return to their ‘Lagerform’ (storage form), the state in which they are displayed. But even here they await activation, now in the imagination of the viewer, as ‘Werkvorstellung’ (the work’s idea).”

Although this could be classed as ‘performance art’, giving the audience agency and making them more than mere spectators fully embraces Gadamer’s principles of ‘play’ to reach their own versions of understanding. This direct connection with the materials and techniques, the ‘doing’ can be seen as essential for the understanding of process and ideas, in a hands on design degree like textiles or jewellery design.

Franz Erhard Walther: It Jumps out of time: Tate Online

Another artist who comes to mind is Dayanita Singh, an Indian photographer who’s primary format is the book. Frustrated by the fossilisation of her works in a museum setting, Singh creates ‘pocket museums’ or ‘Museum Bhavans‘ which she or visitors can endlessly edit, sequence, archive or display. Through this possibility, Singh allows audiences to immersive themselves in the work and build their own narratives from her photographs.

Bibliography:

Vilhauer, M (2010) ‘Understanding Art: The Play of Work and Spectator’

Reichert, K (2014) ‘Franz Erhard Walther Wants to Change The Way We Interact‘ Frieze [Online] (Accessed: 23 May 2021)

Tate. Franz Erhard Walther: It Jumps out of time [Online] (Accessed: 23 May 2021)

Jobey, L (2019) ‘Thinking outside the book‘ Financial Times. (Accessed: 24 May 2021)

Singh, D (2015) ‘Building Museum Bhavan‘ [Online] (Accessed: 24 May 2021)

Meeting new peers, new ways of learning

Slides from my introductions presentation:
I introduced both my teaching and professional practice to my peers,
these are my collaborations with IKEA (left) and Floor_Story (right).

We introduced ourselves to our ‘tutor group’ almost a whole month ago and although it feels like I’m reflecting on it after a long period, these are a few things that stayed with me that I’ve been thinking about.

Perhaps the first was the surprise at how nervous I felt introducing myself to my peers. I was well and truly back in the shoes of being a student, my voice wavering, my palms sweaty. And I wasn’t even in the same room, I was presenting to a computer screen, I had done run sessions with dozens of students in the past so why was I so nervous? Suddenly all the conversations I was having with my own students who are currently suffering from anxiety and lack of confidence to present to a group, were applicable to me and I found myself trying to listen to my own advice! Be prepared, practice beforehand, have notes to prompt you etc.

Nerves aside, I introduced my professional and academic practice with the group. My role at CSM in the large part involves teaching and pastoral care for Year 1 Textile and Jewellery Design students. Some of the other initiatives I’ve undertaken are community building, developing online pedagogy (through my involvement with the Dean’s Online Learning Group who’ve met once a month since the start of the pandemic) and Decolonising the curriculum.

Speakers from Left: Sandra Poulson, Caroline Broadhead, Priya Khanchandani, Fernando Laposse

I work closely with the Programme Director to organise various events and opportunities to discuss ‘race’ and ‘decoloniality’ for the staff team as well as for students in a non-hierarchical way. One of the events was a series of Programme wide talks called Material Bias for the Jewellery, Textiles, Material Futures and Biodesign students. These can be watched here.

I also shared a resource I found particularly useful to understand what Decolonising means in the context of Design. Anoushka Khandwala’s ‘What does it mean to Decolonise Design?’ clarifies our understanding of terms like ‘diversity’ and ‘decolonising’, which are often wrongly substituted for one another. Khandwala also provides a good reading list to understand Decolonising further.

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My colleague Ocean’s presentation stayed with me, she described her teaching practice as ‘gentle’, much like herself. She explained her practice so eloquently, I found myself wanting to be her student for the really interesting themes she spoke about, but more for the manner in which she presented them. In the past I have always thought that bringing ‘energy’ to the classroom is one of the most important factors, getting students engaged through sheer energetic enthusiasm. After this session, I realised that quietness and compassion, pace and tone are equally important. Especially as we teach through this pandemic, I feel like a certain measure of gentleness and empathy are hugely important attributes that everyone needs in their teaching toolkit, I certainly will be more aware and bring them into my own practice as only enthusiasm will not be enough.

UPDATE: Read more about this on a separate blogpost where I discuss love, empathy and charisma and if they’re important in a teaching practice?

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I’m really enjoying some of the teaching methodologies that my tutors are using to deliver the course. The pre-reading tasks bring focus to the discussions in the breakout groups and help to ease the awkwardness of meeting new peers online. The tutors facilitate the sessions expertly by giving specific instructions of what to discuss based on the readings, so even if you have previous knowledge the tasks are specifically about texts that have been sent to all of us, so that’s a bit of a leveller.

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Kala Bhavan Campus, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India 2017. Photo: Grant Watson

Something we have discussed from day 1 is how urgent it is to decolonise the curriculum and bringing in more diverse opinions. So why are all the texts that we have been sent so far from a white / western perspective? I know it’s early days but I have found myself wondering what were the teaching philosophies of Tagore’s Kala Bhavan at Santiniketan? Rabindranath Tagore was an Indian poet, educator, painter and mathematician who founded an experimental and progressive school, Santiniketan in 1901. The art school, Kala Bhavan was founded in 1919, ‘born out of the need to rehabilitate Indian culture after the demoralising impact of British rule.’ (A.Dasgupta, Life at Santiniketan) Sounds like Tagore was a century ahead of all the conversations we are currently having about decolonising education. Shouldn’t we be reading about more diverse academic practices from around the world? Is this something we will only address in the Inclusive teaching and learning elective? Hopefully not.

UPDATE: I guess this is where Intersectionality and Decoloniality come in. Whilst I accept the texts shared with us have been diverse from the point of view of including non-white perspectives, they have still mostly been through the ‘western’ lens. I appreciate we are in a British HE system and hence, they are relevant in this case. However, as we pride ourselves to be truly an international university, further barriers need to be broken down. I am a non-white POC, but I also come from a post colonial country where the system of education greatly differs from the west. I believe we have much to learn from one another.

Language

Victoria Odeniyi‘s lecture about ‘Reimagining Conversations with Multilingual Students‘ asked many relevant questions that are being raised on a day- to-day basis within our teaching team since we made the transition to online and blended teaching. Our reliance on language, especially written English to communicate with the students through email, Moodle, Blackboard chat, etc is more than ever, without the presence of face to face interactions.

It’s important to take the right tone as intention can sometimes be misconstrued through the written language. I, for one was used to writing very to-the-point, straight forward emails that could come across as a little unfriendly. I’m learning to be more encouraging through words.

The feedback on online learning has been mixed from students but there is no doubt that the majority of them feel like their written English is improving because they are having to explain their intentions more, in crits as well as classroom interactions. I have found that as ‘chat’ is the default way of peer to peer communication in their personal lives (through WhatsApp, instagram comments etc) students feel comfortable using this feature in Blackboard sessions. We encourage them to use the emoji buttons at the start of a session to share how they are feeling and many more engage using this simple tool. This sets a more informal atmosphere but I think it’s important for relatability and fostering belonging.

The importance of ‘silence‘ in a virtual environment is also not to be underestimated, something we discussed in breakout groups during Victoria’s lecture, but something that has become more and more relevant to my experience of online teaching. Everyone needs time to process information, whether that’s before or during a lecture, to respond to questions or construct questions after a session. This was recently discussed in a ISECoP meeting called ‘Explore the Silence’, which sadly I couldn’t attend, but I did explore the resources on Padlet later on.

Whenever I think of language, I’m reminded of an excellent example of pedagogy that I heard in an International Student Experience Community of Practice meeting. Mo-Ling Chui, the Course Leader of BA Design Management at LCC described a session on Chinese Creativity where she invited several speakers to give a talk about their work in Mandarin that had to be translated into English for students who didn’t speak the language. She described this as ‘shifting the centre‘ where home students had a one-off experience of what their international peers experienced on a daily basis. This also brings up the question of why English is always regarded the universal and superior language, when it can sometimes be limiting, especially in a global context.

UPDATE:

Since writing this post at the start of the T&L unit, I have participated in Victoria Odeniyi’s research, where she came and observed a couple of my tutorial sessions on Teams with the BA Textile Design students. I’m keen to read her report or hear any observations she made.

Hindi: Jury in Translation. Credit: Architectural Association

I also attended a rather revolutionary event called ‘Hindi: Jury in Translation‘ at the Architectural Association, organised by Manijeh Verghese (Head of Public Programmes at the AA). It was part of a bigger project her team were working on – to learn from ideas embedded in different languages, in terms of how we design and describe space. There were 6 students presenting their projects-in-progress to a panel of interdisciplinary critics with live simultaneous translation between Hindi and English. The event was on Zoom and attendees could tune in to either channel.

With English being pretty much the universal language of the world, it was wonderful to hear design, architecture and space being spoken about in Hindi. Also interesting as one saw both students and panel members borrow words from English when they chose to present or critique in Hindi, as they struggled to find some suitable words, perhaps a reminder of the colonial connections to the English language (especially in post colonial countries like India).

Hello!

Hello, my name is Kangan Arora.

I’m a Lecturer on the BA Textile and Jewellery Design courses at Central Saint Martins. I mostly work with the Year 1 teams and alongside teaching, focus on community building and decolonising the curriculum.

Developing pedagogy around inclusive teaching and community building, especially in a virtual space is what is currently driving my academic practice.

My own professional practice centres around colour and print design. Born in India and now based in London, my work explores bold colour, geometry, abstraction and playful pattern application; with a specific interest in traditional and contemporary colour languages and processes.

I have collaborated on projects with the likes of IKEA, The Office Group, Heal’s and Floor_Story across a range of products including soft furnishings, rugs, acoustic panels and more.