Teaching Beyond the Curriculum
Abstract
In response to the negative social and cultural effects of COVID-19, in 2020 we established The Pet Project (TPP). Situated in Tasmania, an isolated island state south of the Australian mainland, TPP’s original objective was to bring people together through visual art practices that leveraged human-animal relationships as an emotionally binding theme. Designed as workshops to facilitate the teaching of visual art techniques to those with little or no connection to the university sector, and to address a need for increasing social interaction, three years on TPP has significantly changed. It has now been deployed state-wide as a creative, cultural, and pedagogical enterprise that includes a diverse range of project partners, stakeholders, organisations, artists, educators, and community participants. Yet since its inception, TPP has not been without risks, hurdles, nor momentous challenges. In this paper we reflect on how the project’s frameworks, protocols and delivery strategies were overhauled in reaction to a single workshop conducted in a small regional township on the east coast of Tasmania. Although our model was validated by a highly successful pilot program, this experience derailed what we thought was a sound methodology and the confronting conditions and outcomes of the workshop forced us to question our professional capacities when working with communities. As a result, and through tenacious refinement, our model has become more resilient, adaptive, and flexible. It now includes expanded approaches for engaging with communities, strategies for navigating local politics, and mechanisms that initiate increased meaningful learning opportunities into regional and remote locations.
Dr. Niklavs Rubenis is interested in the intersection of craft, design, ethics, and people with a specific focus on repair (objects/systems/communities). He has been involved with diverse projects spanning community, non-profit, commercial, and cultural institutions, and has had work presented, exhibited, and published nationally and internationally. He is currently coordinator of design and coordinator of object+furniture at the School of Creative Arts and Media, University of Tasmania.
Professor Meg Keating is interested in exploring the perceived value of the creative arts including the activation of sustainable relationships and wellbeing in regional communities. As Head of the School of Creative Arts and Media, University of Tasmania, she has extensive experience in leadership within tertiary education creative arts programs, and as a high-profile international practising artist with 22 years of exhibition history. She is also a multidisciplinary artist, crossing installation, painting, animation, and paper cutting. As an academic her expertise lies in the pedagogy of creative practice research methodologies and creative arts curriculum development.
Dr. Steven Carson has lectured in Sculpture and Installation since 1998 and since 2019 has worked as Graduate Research Coordinator and Lecturer in Art within the School of Creative Arts and Media, University of Tasmania. Steven’s research has focussed on how ordinary and mundane materials can be used to visualise concepts of tension and trauma, using intense, experimental fabrication processes. He holds a PhD from University of Tasmania (2016) and Master of Visual Arts from Queensland College of Art (1997).