10by10

Performed Pieces:

The Embody workshop participants produced a number of performative pieces which explored a range of issues. Questions offered to the participants were - what’s the relationship between how you make and how you teach? What comes out in your teaching from your practice? Some of the ideas presented through performance in pairs and explored in further discussion include:

• the more you do the more you collect - encompassing and appropriating things for your practice, (both in and from small spaces and collective spaces) making use of what is there [through teaching

• teaching is a developmental role - a drawing out to expand other's ideas, but frustrating for the practitioner as students often want to get to the end-point, rather than follow the process through.
• "being on an edge"; vulnerability of the self; the artist, compared to the role of 'the teacher' with its expectations of all knowing [division of professional and personal self] - plus working with vulnerable people [pressure and responsibility] in a discipline where students feel a great deal of stress around their work - feeling exposed [as does the teacher-practitioner about their own work and as a teacher] - and this doesn’t get recognised much within F/HE.
• teaching and practice may come together rather than being separate in the same space, teacher-practitioners might feel safer if they were the same practice. An aspiration may be to be able to ‘wear all your hats at once’ as whole person rather than one at a time, dependent on role and context - this would be the braver thing to do.
• difficulty in managing both fields and experiences - have to ‘get back on the horse’, find time to maintain practice - it’s not a sabbatical.
• the connection of how individuals were trained as an artist, and their teaching practice is not necessarily made.

Group Performance:

Small groups explored the relationship between teaching and practice:

Sitting on the Bench indicates a depth of thinking [keeping learning and investigation going as a teacher], and finding the essence of the thing - suggesting that teaching offers a different perspectives and can influence art making.

Eyes Open and Closed is about looking at things - escaping one’s own world of creativity and engaging with the outside world - teaching and other influences. Interrupts ‘your sleep’ and gives you an experience of the outside world.
Art and teaching both start from where you are - personal, individual - challenge in teaching and practice is to constantly stay open.

Cushioning the Dark Space, an installation, is interpreted as when teaching and practice support one another, when it works well, there is a ‘prize’  - when it doesn’t, things fall through the gap, into a dark, unknown space - the ‘in-betweeness’ - where there are difficult questions like ‘who are you?’ but it is mysterious and interesting. We need both [teacher-practitioners]; to work alone but also to work with other people. Teaching is not wholly positive and it can be a disturbing relationship - and when you fall through ‘the gap’ there is a struggle.

Gift; the process of exchange which can be energising. Freedom of making without articulation, and tuning into the moment as central to creativity - engagement in a task is the best part of life and being given the space/permission to do this.
Trying to set up conditions for creative problem solving underneath teaching, practice and the whole of life.

Several of these performance pieces can be viewed in the Galleries.

Participant Notes:

Written reflections on the relationship between teaching and learning: [what's the area between teaching and practice like? What does it feel like? Has my practice changed as a result of my teaching.

"Maybe I entered teaching originally, simply for the income. But also for the status it may bring. The isolation I felt at that time in part aided my decision. In the beginning it was very much something that was done to me, over time I have become empowered, the teaching has taught me to be a teacher... To grow and improve as a teacher I need to address my failings with clarity and effect changes. In the same way I fail in my practice to achieve to my standard, I fail in teaching, also from lack of positive reflection".

The Teacher:

• Identity for long-term and short-term teachers is different. Does your interface with students dilute your own sense of individuality? Fragile belief in practitioner identity [unless you do it [practice], you don’t know what it is]. It’s easier to teach for a short time intensely in residence on the other side of the world. It’s easier to admit you don’t know something when you feel confident that you know a lot - so it’s easier to teach the older you get -in that respect.
• Working with students is a kind of collaboration. Interestingly you start acknowledging your students as peers. Together [with students] we can look at ways of responding to a given stimulus and how this connects to the conceptual, the real, and lived experience. Sharing own work to students so they can have an insight into who you are as artist. Teaching challenges my knowledge and I’m inspired by colleagues at work. Seminal discussions inspire my practice. Dialogue with creative people in a learning environment.
• Teaching is a practice - inclusive pedagogic research. University offers opportunities for free training and money. Need teaching admin time. Clarity on teaching needs thinking time. It’s difficult when I feel obliged to come up with general rules rather than discussing specific instances.

The Teacher-Practitioner:

• Using the same skills to teach and to make own work. Total listening, looking and being in the moment is crucial to both areas. Teaching and artistic practice feed each other. My practice influences my teaching when I’m allowed to teach what I practice. A service that feeds on, and creates new stimulus - forth and back communication. Personal vision feeds being an artist and teaching.
• Creativity needs continuous time to swell/mull, draw things in, to make connections and allow possibilities. Teaching framework and other responsibilities disrupt that for us [practitioners] and we have to make difficult and quick switches between the two.
• It is at times hell to be both - to be caught in the conflict between these two worlds - with a need to be separately submerged in one or the other, to fully inhabit their territory and do justice to that which they represent, and each fighting for my attention.
• Teaching feels as it has starved [practice]. It has made me more sensible. It has allowed me to use deliberate irrational strategies and set frameworks for myself. Where my teaching practice has helped is in the breaking down of priorities and relevant action to form the basis of the true direction. Teaching has influenced my practice as I now need to ‘practice what I preach’ and offer a good model to students. My teaching influences my practice - when I realise I’m not following the excellent advice I give to my students in my own work and when I am inspired by their industry and endeavour. Not so self-absorbed, self-contained.
• Teaching gives me a framework/context to up-date my practice. Teaching has provided clarity of thought, sense of facilitation, confidence, depth of interest through research. Openness, stimulating, keeping-up to date… becomes embedded in practice and can be energising. It can stimulate new centres of inspiration between you. Cognitive de-construction of processes can make you more articulate verbally
• Sense of flux - of information dealt with. Providing a bridge between the profession and the students [accessibility of information, experience of professional world].
• Has our practice changed with teaching or developed through life experience, who can tell? Not sure of impact on own work

The Practitioner:

• Being in the moment, the way in which this involves being with another or oneself and the real joy of undefined possibility. Tensions inhibit creativity but also allow a different dynamic. At the basis of all life endeavours is setting up the conditions for creative problem solving. All experiences [from outside influences] make sense, within you, given time to reflect.
• Exposure/vulnerability when showing/making you work. Seen not as a peer but as a teacher

Antonia Clews, 10by10 Project Leader : Report on Workshop No5: Embody 6/09