What did you do to create inclusive practice and how did you do it?
Students were asked to make artwork in response to the theme of ‘sanctuary’, for exhibition at Foss Park Mental Health Hospital in York. I decided to expanded this thematic commission so that ‘sanctuary’ included ideas on ‘place-making’, ‘site’, ‘orientation’ and ‘instruction’, meaning students were asked to think spatially in their approaches to making. They built their initial ideas on a close reading of Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology (Ahmed 2006). This provided an explicitly queer lens through which we opened up discussions around sanctuary, safety and belonging. Through class discussion, students made works that attempted to use ideas from Ahmed surrounding ‘orientation’ and phenomenological thinking in artistic practice – in particular, Ahmed’s assertion that: “Phenomenology can offer a resource to queer studies insofar as it emphasizes the importance of lived experience, the intentionality of consciousness, the significance of nearness or what is ready-to-hand, and the role of repeated and habitual actions in shaping bodies and worlds”. This enabled students to think about their own lived experiences and apply it to their artistic practice. We also considered Susan Stryker, Paisley Currah and Lisa J Moore’s proposition that ‘trans’ can be a verb, ‘transing’ – where transing is an assemblage – which helped students as a strategy in synthesising theory and practice (Stryker et al 2008: 13).
References:
Ahmed, S (2006) Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects and Others. Duke University Press, London.
Stryker S, Currah P and Moore, L J (2008) Introduction: Trans-, trans, or transgender? Women’s Studies Quarterly 36(3–4): 11–22.
Why did you implement your example of inclusive practice?
Both Ahmed and Stryker’s texts had been part of my own research for some time and so, in order to explore them further as tools for practice-led research, I used them as core reading for this project. These two texts were outlined as key texts from the beginning of the project, and therefore framed the project such that it had to be approached with an understanding of these queer ideas.
As this project was one of three optional pathways, this explicitly queer approach to thinking and making signalled an inclusivity that isn’t always possible in wider module planning. Working with a smaller group of students meant that students were able to discuss the readings more openly in relation to their practice, and we had more time to spend on close readings than we would usually have.
What was the impact of your case study?
It’s hard for me to measure the impact of this project in relation to inclusivity. Informally, I would argue that students were able to approach their own live experience as a valid and valued line of autoethnographic enquiry; they were encouraged to understand complex queer theory as a lens that could be applied to and useful in their own artistic practice, and perhaps open up new methods of working.
On a personal level, it was refreshing to develop my own understanding of research through teaching. Moreover, being able to frame this as explicitly dealing with queer theory, grounded in lived experience, meant that I was able to claim a space that is sometimes less possible in wider teaching situations, especially where my own understandings of and experiences with ‘orientation’ and queer place-making are centred and not periphery.
What were the lessons learned?
I think allowing more space and time for students to feel comfortable with the territory explored in the readings before opening this out for discussion may foster a wider range of responses. Nonetheless, as a pilot project with a small number of students, the approach taken was successful.