Teaching Beyond the Curriculum
Abstract
In Who Rules This Sausage Factory?, Neil Smith writes that much meat has ‘passed through the grinder’ since Marx’s wurst-shaped comparison in 1867 (Smith, 2000, p. 330). Following the Bologna Process of 1999 onwards, global higher education now pursues the capitalist production of the sausage according to marketised standards of quality and excellence. It’s about the consumer, but it’s not really about the consumer. For the art-school, the individual has always been at the centre, an essential component of a diverse community, each pursuing an individually appropriate curriculum. Comparable metrics and the associated measuring tools after balonification are inadequate. Assessment of quality is a brutal slice; but this crude cross-section is not a reliable index of the individual, the centre from which meaningful pedagogies are based. Against such neoliberal forces, there is a sense of resignation, and a reluctant acceptance that ‘all of us are in Marx’s educational factory’ (ibid., p. 338). But what if we stick with the saveloy, and fully embrace the metaphor? In keeping, we propose the Kunstwurst, or ‘art-sausage’, a process and product which borrows heavily from the factory, but subverts the standardised convention. Taking an editorial cue from food safety broadcasts, this short film discusses critical control, longitudinal integration and holistic methods of teaching and learning that aim to return the individual back to the pedagogic centre. For who is to say that the sausage is bad? We assure you, parts of it are excellent.
Benjamin Hall is an animator and lecturer with a creative practice which spans 20 years. His research interests explore animation, digital practice and radical pedagogies, in particular the playful, democratic communities of the art-school. Ben teaches Graphic Design, Illustration and Digital Media at Leeds Beckett University, The Open College of the Arts and University of Leeds.
Ian Truelove is Course Director for BA Illustration and MA Graphic Design at Leeds Beckett University. His research, which is predominately technology-led, explores the nature of material reality through creative practice. Ian’s work draws on art and design practices and principles and is informed by philosophy, quantum theory and art history;
Jo Hassall is a Senior Lecturer in Illustration at Leeds Beckett University. Her practice-based research explores ways in which visual props can activate sites of learning. Jo has an established background in illustration and collage processes, and she extends these methods within an educational context to explore and illuminate processes of study.