Sandy and I were in Brighton last week attending the HEA’s Storyville conference, the premise of which was to explore narratives of learning and teaching in Higher Education. I had already been in Brighton for a few days doing some work with colleagues at Brighton University in my role as external examiner for the Historical and Critical Studies component of the Fine Art programmes. Fruitful discussions there had already generated quite a few questions around assessment and feedback, and how it will change/might change in the new Higher Education landscape, and so I arrived at the conference rather tired, but in the right zone. Unfortunately these other commitments, at a busy time of year, meant we could only attend day 2 of the conference so the registration/coffee period was spent eyeing up what we’d missed.

Our first workshop session was intriguing entitled: Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads: using poetry as metaphor in our own practice. To go into the nitty gritty would take away some of the magic, but the session involved using poetry and imagery (our own drawn…or, should I say, attempts at drawn representations) to reflect on, investigate, challenge and discuss our own teaching practices and the narratives constructed therein. Beyond the usefulness of the discussions, the actual methodology underpinning the workshop was a really effective way of bringing issues to the fore. We then continued in a session which considered archives and their creative use in education, most memorably with Dr Matthew Nicholls, a Senior Lecturer in Classics from the University of Reading, demonstrating his integration of digital architectural modelling of ancient cities as a skills development and assessment mechanism for scholarly research into ancient urban form and building types. His blog is here.

After a lovely lunch, we were presenting in a session that looked at the role of drawing in textile design, including some beautiful work evidencing the importance and significance of  drawing, and the use of screencasts as a tool for fashion teaching. Further details on the presenters and paper abstracts can be found here. Against this, we didn’t exactly sit easily as Sandy and I were advocating the need for an inclusive arts education, against the predominant narrative of alternative assessments for students with dyslexia or other Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLDs). Still, we managed to generate a good deal of discussion and left feeling that we’d had a worthwhile, thought-provoking day. One key thing for Sandy and I was that the event provided an opportunity to think about how our previous research (which was funded by a University Teaching and Learning Committee grant) and this current HEA project sat in dialogue with one another – considering both the synergies and the tensions. Hopefully this will help us to develop the HEA project further.