Review of the workshop including processes, outputs and outcomes:
The combination of small group discussion, and working with text and image [digital photographs taken on site within the session] worked well in terms of drawing out a range of ideas and issues around the teacher-practitioner. Participants appeared uncomfortable with the process of focusing on ‘the teacher-practitioner’ as a refined index, which is distinctive from, or which does not necessarily include, all aspects of both practice and teaching. The large number of words and images produced [indicating a broad range of experiences and interpretations about the teacher-practitioner and a difficulty in defining it], with the resistance to limiting the selection, meant that the final index was perhaps not as refined as it could have been and the process of critical consideration needed more time.
Facilitator:
Index was a very ambitious workshop in terms of its aim to work with an equal emphasis on processes, outputs and outcome. As the emphasis was in many ways on the quality of the visual ‘product’ perhaps some of the process and output was compromised. The resulting index looks beautiful, classified and more coherent in the o-nline gallery, but in reality it was less organised and less comfortable.
As the objective was to work with photography and new technologies within a very short frame of time, the workshop was subject to a large element of risk and unpredictability in terms of its mechanics. This was something we were keenly aware of and if we had chosen to work with traditional media, which is ironically more reliable, many lessons would not have been learnt. As this was an experiment, it seems fitting that the element of ‘risk’ in process and output indeed produced some unexpected encounters, and through some of its failures (identified below) there are certain successes.
Suggested improvements or adjustments to the technique/approach adopted in the workshop:
As with all workshops, deliberate and facilitated ‘meaning-making’, drawing on the work produced, within the session, may have helped participants reflect more on the outcomes of the workshop and enable a greater clarity of the issues. Following the generation exercise, which encouraged a wide range of material, greater discernment or more restrictive rules about which of the many words and images, to be included in a final index, may have resulted in the final ‘product’ being more resolved. This is difficult to manage in a large group scenario and can only really be achieved through small groups of individuals working together, and greater time. The workshop was slightly compromised due to difficulties with the printer [this may have been resolved by bringing a back-up], which unfortunately meant a delay in printing out participants’ images and some groups did not see their photographs printed. This slowed the workshop down and meant that there were fewer images than words to work with, and that the text-image relationship was less of a vehicle in the workshop than envisaged.
Facilitator:
This workshop was unique in that it was, in many ways, truly out of context/out of institution (even the institution of creative practice) and this displacement, this ‘heterotopia’ helped reveal how challenging it is to facilitate our practice once we remove our props or aids, whether physical or psychological. I felt constrained in the knowledge that there were certain theoretical aims to the workshop, when usually my outcomes are planned to be entirely unexpected. Maybe the process suffered as a result of this as I failed to focus on the practical challenges and problems which are usually my main focus; however the outcome in the end was interesting in the very ‘absence’ of what we had envisaged - the words actually not being brought together with the images - we are left with ‘disconnections’, even an absence of connections.
- The failure of the printer to output as many images as we had planned, created an ‘absence’, what we might call ‘contingency’ or ’slight panic’ in teaching or practice. I think we have all experienced this. This however became a trajectory for an un-anticipated learning outcome - this ‘absence’ is actually quite a unique opportunity to reflect on the teacher-practitioner role, realising what kind of skills and self-awareness are needed when working in unfamiliar territories. Contingency it a familiar scenario for the teacher-practitioner, except in this case the only resource left was the time and space, and the facilitative relationship, which was quite a frightening prospect for a visual artist practitioner.
- The workshop was dependent on a clear visual documentary strategy of the process to express and articulate concept and findings. Unfortunately the process, in particular the key assemblage of the visual index at the end, was not adequately documented. This was irretrievable as it was an installation work. However again, this ‘absence’ or ‘failure’ created a new space or challenge, where we had to recreate the index post-workshop which became reduced even to a form that was ‘purely visual’, where the words appear less important or obscured. I feel this actually was a success and the index to be viewed in an alternate way.
- The process of ‘indexing’ which asserts a need to classify, and the documentary process, perhaps reveal that the teacher-practitioner is actually something with a much less fixed identity; which essentially resists pinning down, Maybe the mechanics of this index is of the type you cannot control and requires continuous flow, exercise or reshuffling, juxtaposing several spaces at the same time and resisting definition.
- This workshop proposal presented a very tight time constraint. The mechanics of the tools and technology within new media can be laborious and slow and probably irrelevant to the process. This applies to the Index workshop because it involved definite gradual shifts of development and output, the ‘timelapse’ being the time between moments of exposure and non-exposure. To hide some processes can often be a more effective mode of delivering and the workshop did not have time for the post production.
Comments on the effectiveness of the workshop in engaging teacher-practitioners with exploring the issues:
Loosely exploring associations through text [in affect, brainstorming] seems to be an effective way of generating discussion around the wide range of associated issues. The juxtaposition of text and image was an affective way of thinking more about associated meanings and interpretations. The dynamics of the groups created a positive space where individuals felt comfortable with exploring different ways of describing teaching and practice roles and relationships and further time and discussion defining a set of juxtapositions may have added extra depth.
Facilitator:
It was good not to establish any hierarchies in the beginning via informal introductions, with little emphasis on what we brought to the table. The group was very relaxed through-out, this was in fact the perfect testing ground for elements of failure, as when things went wrong, the group had a strong and empathic relationship with one another, enabling things to progress relatively smoothly and issues to be implicitly explored without too much awareness of them (the photographic images exemplify this). I believe and hope that this also enabled the effective exploration of issues following the workshop, via reflection and viewing the gallery of images created online.
I am certain that a calmer method of delivery, where ‘it doesn’t matter’ if something goes wrong, creates a calmer and clearer vision enabling the teacher-practitioners to explore some less obvious issues that might be subjective and pertinent to them, which after all are perhaps the main signifiers or ‘glue’ of the index and are ‘the real’ issues at stake….words like ‘flow’, ‘knowing not’, ‘ a bag of roosters’, ‘vulnerability’ emphasise this. But even more so, the photographic images are true personifications of the ‘here and now’ which was the main atmosphere during the workshop, and they also provide evidence that issues are not always easy to verbalise. The freshness of the imagery exceeds the verbal outputs and quite rightly the final gallery, presented ’sans’ their verbal counterparts represent very effectively the issues at stake.
Participants Feedback:
“Excellent - need summing up/reminder at end re where it is going/what it is for for, from our point of view”
“No pressure, lots of physical mental space, which is positive”.
“Needs context clearly setting out - tendency to polarise without sufficient opportunity for dialogue”.
“Inclusive but clarity of purpose - effective session. Team leadership sometime faltered”.
“Thought provoking. Perhaps sometimes unclear re purpose/intention - possibly had to generate index from relatively momentary analysis/engagement - but certainly interesting”.
“Practical, visual approach was very refreshing”.
“Shame the printer failed as I’d have enjoyed the purely visual index”.
“Too soon to know sorry”.
“Interesting and useful but break diffused energy and used up too much time. Marvellous group. Explanations not always clear. Enjoyable”.
“I enjoyed the pace and space provided and the combination of intellectual and playful tasks”.
“New experience for me”.
“Printing out images was too slow and we lost the connection with our images. The index concept is useful. Good group of people”.
“Buzz groups to generate words and groupings in smaller numbers for images, very effective”.
“More engagement with participants and more flow in the delivery”.
“Very interesting method of extracting thoughts/info. The images injected additional thoughts to the words and sometimes changed the meaning”.
“Made me think of the open space aproach but with an even freer setting”.
“Visual with verbal very useful”.
View the final Index in the galleries or download a pdf of the full text/image teacher-practitioner index
Index Workshop Evaluation: Project Leader: Antonia Clews and Lead Facilitator: Helen Marshall
5/2009