#64millionartists

Musings on the 2020 January Challenge: Part 1

~ drnatashataylor ~ Leave a comment

This is my fifth year taking part in the 64 Million Artists January Challenge and, as in previous years, I’m taking time out at the end of each week to reflect on the experience and draw parallels with the (often un-creative) world of higher education. Here are my thoughts on the first week (or so)…

So far I have kept up with all the challenges. We’ve been on holiday in Western Australia since the New Year and I have come to rely on the daily challenge as a way of taking time out – to step off the holidaying tread mill (What’s for dinner? Are these socks clean? Why won’t this stuff fit in the case? Where did we park the hire car?), properly engage with my surroundings, and appreciate the impact that creativity has on well being. For the first time, this year, I’ve really found it an effective way of de-stressing!

I think the reason for this is that I have worked out how to make time for and enjoy the reflective parts of the activities. The framework that supports the January Challenge is ‘Do Think Share’; I have really cracked the ‘Think’ bit this time, and not just focussed on the ‘Do’ and ‘Share’.  This has made me think about how we teach, support and value reflection in our teaching, and work as academic developers – how we walk the walk as well as doing the talk.

Do

Anyone who has followed my tweets in Januaries past will know that I am an enthusiastic photographer and a very reluctant poet. I danced once in 2016 and declared that was enough! The whole point of the January Challenge is that it encourages people to take risks, have fun and just play. Failure is just as important as success.

So far, my most satisfying activity was Make Something Small Look Big (Day 5). I’ll admit that I was lucky with this one – it landed in my mailbox just as we’d made the decision to visit Wave Rock (Hyden, WA) in the morning, and I just knew what I had to do.  Being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no craft materials made it all the more fun – amazing what you can do with a penknife, an up-cycled boarding pass and a glob of stolen blutack! The mini super-surfer was born and it was a lot of fun playing around with perspective in the awesome surroundings of a 130 million year old landscape!

The hardest one (and least enjoyable) was Post-it Possibilities (Day 7). Yes, I know, imagine the shock!  Post-it notes are my lifeblood, my currency and I was quite smug when I first read the challenge – to do something creative with a post-it note. But then I was hit by complete creative block. I had nothing. I gave a note each to the (5) kids – within a minute they’d made chatterboxes, fangs, wobbly eyebrows, airplanes. But I sat for hours in the the car with an empty head and a pen, and inspiration never came. The deadline came and went and I failed; I failed the one task which should have been easy. The post-it pad is still on my desk, taunting me.

There’s a lot to unpack here. I think there is something in the fact that the Post-it note challenge brief was very open – just ‘be creative’ – it lacked the structure and assessable/observable outcome of the perspective activity. What is an easy or safe activity? What IS creative? I’ve seen so many creative ways of using post-its in my time, perhaps I was interpreting it to mean new or original? I was setting myself up to fail. It has made me think about how we introduce reflective practice to our students and colleagues – do we adequately explain what is ‘expected’ and how do we support the process? When we introduce new forms of assessment (which I absolutely believe we should) then how do we ensure there are no victims to the sinking sands of ‘creative stuckness’? Actually immersing myself in the experiential side of these questions has exposed new layers of complexity.

Think

It is interesting to think (!) about what I’ve done differently about the Think tasks this year.  I see a marked difference between noticing/observing what I have done, and actually uncovering the meaning beneath or within it. I have been reflecting semi-objectively, consciously, and that is not new…but there have also been times when realisations just pop into my head (‘maybe I did/felt that because…’). It is not always comfortable enlightenment!

I have found myself thinking deeply about the significance of being here in Australia, rather than in the UK. Some of the challenges need a twist of interpretation – so for example the challenge to write a winter Haiku (Day 8) led me to reminisce about the sensations of the British winter (cold, wet, grey but with soft lights, fires, comfort food) and contrast them to those of the Australia summer (which I LOVE) – being warm, outside, swimming. January brought the most horrific bushfires to our doorstep and this led to some poignant reflections on the power of nature and the threat of climate change (in both hemispheres). As the month unfolds, there will be more explorations of my identity, connection to country and desires for the future.

Context, then, is important. We can set the same task for all, yet the meaning they attach to it will depend entirely on the context; what came before, the place, the priorities. And context changes: hourly, daily, annually. Reflection never really ends – its a life long thing. The trick – and I think this is my breakthrough – is to find your themes. This is, of course, exactly what underpins the work I do to support Awards/Professional Recognition, but this is a great example which I will find really useful to share when I am explaining it to people in the future.

Share

This has been the one area of difference for me this year. In previous years, both Jenni and I have enjoyed the sense of community that has emerged as fellow challengers (strangers) connect and play.  This year, the only real connections have come in the form of a few ‘likes’ – that is nice of course, but there isn’t the sense of being part of a collective generative project that there was in the past. Looking at the tweets via the hashtag #£64millionartists, though, it seems like there has been a big take up of the challenges in physical spaces – community hubs, libraries, museums – this is brilliant and it has made me think about how I could do that next year.

There is a Facebook group and I have never used it in the past – I don’t tend to use Facebook in that way. But out of curiosity the other day I joined, and the conversations there are literally awesome – the levels of emotional honesty, openness and personal exposure almost terrify me. Perhaps the lull I am experiencing, then, is a Twitter phenomenon, and could be just as much a product of my own relationship with social media as anything else?  I’ve certainly used social media differently since moving to Australia – I notice and value interactions more acutely. It has made me think about the ways we connect online – use filters, crave ‘likes’, (mis)interpret silences, choose words and imagery to express emotions. It has made me think – again – about feedback…the message, the purpose, the vehicle, the emotion…..that’s another can of worms open!

So, that’s a wrap on my reflections for the first week or so.  It is not too late to join the January challenge if you want to give it a go this is a good place to start: Do Think Share.

Sharing – sometimes frustrating, but also fun!

~ Dr Jenni Carr ~ Leave a comment

Followers of our blog might recall that, last year, Jenni and Natasha took part in the 64 Million Artists January Challenge. Well, we’re embarking on it again this year and we thought it would be interesting to reflect at the end of each week on our experiences and try to relate our activities to the world of learning and teaching. Here, Jenni reflects on the first week…

Day 1:An image of fireworks exploding Have you heard the news?

Great start to the challenge – or so I thought! The idea was to design the front page of a newspaper with stories that you would like to see in 2017. The thought of doing something around visitors coming to earth from other planets popped straight into my head, which will come as no surprise to those that know me well!

I have to admit that I did spend a little time looking at other peoples’ contributions before getting started on mine. Funny how I frame that as a confession. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do, but no doubt that seeing other contributions further shaped my thoughts. There were a lot of ‘world peace’ headlines being posted, and I think that made me think I might not use that actual term.

I think the reason I feel the need to ‘confess’ to being influenced by others goes back to the ‘it should all be your own work’ that so often pervades teaching and learning. Not a notion I subscribe to, but one that is deep-seated. How frustrating it must be for students if we over-emphasise individual work rather than encouraging collaboration.

Anyway, I decided to produce my newspaper using Sway – and that’s when things really went to pot! I am new to using this, but had the basics sorted. No problems producing the newspaper, but then I had to share. To cut a long story short, a combination of the embed code seemingly not working and the institution I work in disabling the ‘public’ share options (or so Sway kept telling me!) meant that anyone wanting to view the newspaper had to sign in with their Microsoft user details. In the end I just had to do a screen grab of the headline and post that.

The first ‘take home’ message from this is obviously check the functionality of any tech. you are going to use before you use it! But there is also something here about barriers being put in the way of sharing. Might have to re-visit that thought in a later post.

I missed the next couple of activities due to some bad news that meant my focus had to be elsewhere.

Day 4 – a deeper shade of blue

The challenge was to take a 10 – 15 minute walk and focus on spotting things that were blue and photographing them. I work near to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, so decided to go for a walk there. Now I know that commonsense should have told me that this would have been better for green stuff rather than blue… Still it was a nice walk! Had to do a bit of walking around campus to get the images I needed.

Changing the focus of this activity, but keeping the format, has a lot of potential, I think. Instead of looking for colours you could ask students to focus on a concept or theory. They could go for a walk, in small groups and capture images that they feel in some way represent that concept or theory. The images could then be displayed (or presented) with an explanation. Getting students to apply their knowledge in this way should really deepen their understanding. Word of warning – when you send them off for their walk, tell them what time you expect them back! That was a lesson I learned on my first placement when studying for my PGCE. Losing all my students for a complete double period didn’t go down too well with my mentor!

Day 5: the golden conversation

Now I love poetry, but don’t feel very confident about writing it myself. Always in awe of those that can. But the idea of taking the first line of the fifth text on your phone and using it to structure a poem was such a novel idea that I thought I would give it a go. Having looked at which text I would need to use (coincidentally a text from fellow blogger Natasha!) I suffered a bit of a ‘poet’s block’.

I arrived in my office and explained the task to a colleague who immediately got their phone out and wrote their poem. Just like that! Their advice to me was ‘just don’t overthink it’. The words in the text immediately suggested to them the tone of their poem, and they just wrote. So I did the same. And it sort of worked.

What was a little odd was that the original text had been designed to cheer me up, but the poem was rather gloomy.

But I think the main insight here was that sometimes it’s not good to think too much. I’m a big fan of free-writing usually, and encourage it in all kinds of settings with students, and this experience reminded me why.

Day 6: ABC go

Such fun! A game of photo tag. You form a group. Someone takes a photo of an object beginning with the letter ‘a’, next person does ‘b’ and so on. Now have to say we weren’t too good with the ‘tagging’ notion in the sense that we didn’t nominate who should do the next photo. Ended up being a  bit of a free for all – but we got the challenge done and had some good laughs along the way.

I suppose with my teaching and learning head on I should say something about this illustrating how group activities need to be set-up very carefully and you need to ensure everyone knows the rules. But, well, the chaos was kinda fun!

Here’s some of the photo’s we took.

Feeling inspired? It’s not too late to join. Sign up here if you want to get challenging! Follow the daily conversation on twitter #64millionartists .