VIRTUAL: Learning. Life. Work.
Abstract
In the post-pandemic university, hybridity has become a widely touted norm. The term implies agility around methods of learning, though is often limited to the binary of in-person or on-line delivery. Despite the claim, hybridity is never truly so, compromised further by a framework of centrally enforced metrics which divide teaching into inflexible categories based around time or subject scope. A more radical form of hybridity proposed by Colin Ward and Anthony Fyson was a pedagogic dynamite which would ‘explode’ the school into the urban environment (Ward & Fyson, 1973). Their solution was environmental education, or ‘streetwork’, a learning approach that identified ‘rich reservoirs of possibility in the everyday’ (Burke, 2014). As part of a two-week project Drawing Out, we decamped BA (Hons) Illustration students from Leeds Beckett University to a stall in the middle of Leeds Kirkgate Markets. In keeping with Ward and Fyson’s approach, the residency actively invited these hybrid overlaps and their associated opportunities for learning. Drawing Out encouraged experiential encounters that would not have been possible had we been on campus: cultural conversations, a pirate radio station interview, and a visit by indigenous artists from the Amazon. Each experience offered the students (and staff) new perspectives on their learning. Drawing critically upon the project, this paper advocates for further ‘explosions’ across academia in order to foster more meaningful opportunities for learning inside and outside of the institution. This will take the form of an animated film using drawings undertaken during the residency accompanied by a scripted reflection.
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.
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.