During this past year Jonathan had the pleasure to be introduced to and meet with Alasdair Foster, Adjunct Professor at RMIT University, Melbourne and Visiting Leverhulme Professor at Duncan Jordanstone College of Art. The result of these exchanges was the invitation to contribute towards the forthcoming conference he was convening as part of his Leverhulme fellowship. The below text is the short proposition, authored by the Disruptive Media Learning Lab, written to inform the findings for the Flourishing: art, participation and the world to come Leverhulme Conference presented by Duncan Jordanstone College of Art, University of Dundee.
What is your story? People, Context and Activity *
Arts provision within Higher Education is facing a series of challenges. Through a combination of specific interventions to the national curriculum, as well as the sector wide context presented by post-Brexit uncertainty and fewer students enrolling at higher education institutions in the UK.
In response the Disruptive Media Learning Lab (DMLL) is researching and developing a proposal, in support of Coventry’s successful bid to host the City of Culture in 2021, to introduce an accessible framework which will certify the breadth and depth of the amazing creative and cultural activity taking place across the city, to expand and create new learning opportunities and open up visible pathways for arts and culture, for the University and it’s wider community.
In essence, our aspiration is that cultural activities would be packaged into bite-sized learning experiences enabling citizens, through Open Badges technology, a social and portable means of sharing participation and learning with their peers and the wider community.
Moreover, this proposal seeks reaffirm the notion of an ‘Open Faculty’ and offer sustainable and innovative ways to enact the University’s civic responsibility to the local community, and in this scenario the creative community more specifically.
This work is informed by holistic education approaches, exemplified by models such as the Chicago’s City of Learning initiative, the RSA’s enabling social mobility through technology and our forthcoming Learning on/with the Open Web event.
* What is your story? is the name of a set of playing cards that the DMLL produced, under it’s
GameChangers programme, which prompts participants to create a story combining three key elements;
People, Context and Activity.
Further reading on the ideas touched upon here: Pathways and recognition for extracurricular, civic and cultural learning