IN-PERSON: Applying Education
Abstract
This paper documents an investigative action-research project exploring a new virtual hybridity which encompasses the physical, digital and online design studio settings. This work challenges how creative teaching and learning are applied to a physical environment (existing design school studios) and adapts to embrace a new virtualized studio paradigm which parallels and supports an interactive corporeal studio setting, unbound by the confines of location. The research documents a new methodology for creative educational practice introducing a hybrid environment where participants simultaneously practice, interact and communicate design through virtual, digital and physical locations. The project aims to weave traditional creative practice and disciplinary identity whilst significantly embedding design knowledge into the corporate and business enterprise. The paper details the investigation and forms analysis and commentary of a new expressive pedagogical form. This new hybrid studio impacts how design is taught, forcing a change to how design thinking can be transmitted and used in educational and commercial settings. Significant impact is demonstrated through the methods of connecting and transferring knowledge in a local educative setting (peer to peer) across the professional creative sector and out into the global design marketplace. The paper uses experimental practices to frame a new virtualised collaborative space (X-Studio) which is modelled through a series of cognitive mapped case studies and an experimental pilot virtual studio simulation. The project is grounded through the creative principle of “learning by doing” and supported through the use of digital technologies that highlight the hapticities and proximities of creative learning.
Dr Rod Adams is Deputy Head of Design, researcher and senior academic at the School of Design, University of Northumbria, UK. His work develops new interdisciplinary research that connects education and the professional practices of design. Central to his academic practice is a continual enrichment of society through the design of interior space. His work focuses on the places of work by examining design anthropology, social sciences and the applications of spatial cultures.
Dr Stuart English is a specialist in design led innovation, Dr. English leads a portfolio of postgraduate programmes, he is creator of Ideas-lab and has returned outputs in all five of the University’s REF submissions (2013, 2008, 2001, 1996 and 1992). His work on relational problem framing has initiated new methods, new products and new IP through an inclusive approach based on design led entrepreneurship. This addresses multi and cross-disciplinary contexts bounded by clarity of market objectives, and has led to numerous new companies and filed patents. The concept of multiple perspective problem framing developed by English as part of a PhD by publication (2011) provides the foundation for the development of ongoing academic collaboration, new postgraduate curricula, intellectual property and commercial value for business both through contract research and CPD.
Andrew Frith has worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, including Emma Thompson, Bob Monkhouse, Lenny Henry, Suranne Jones and Rob James-Collier. Andy has worked as a film and TV director on a vast array of broadcast media – TV documentaries, Corporate films, Promos, Commercials and Public Sector films for Museums and Galleries for over twenty years, earning him two BAFTA nominations, as well as D&AD awards and Royal Society Television Awards. He brings his experience of traditional film, animation, stop motion, special effects, storyboarding and lateral thinking to the Media and Communication Design Department. He has worked at Northumbria since 2010.
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Thursday 27th April, 2023