I really loved reading Sara Ahmed’s book Whats the Use? On the Uses of Use. The book particularly resonated with my teaching practice because of the association Ahmed makes between ‘use’ and ‘storytelling’:
‘When something becomes blunt from being used, it is being shaped by use. Use offers a way of telling stories about things’ (Ahmed, 2019)
Elements of her writing connected with the themes that I explored in my micro-teaching session, as I wanted the students to observe the traces of marks left on each object as a way to develop narrative. The manifold perspectives from which she describes ‘use’ seemed an interesting text to read after learning about Object Based Learning as it questions not only what use means, but also how things ‘fall out of use‘, can be ‘in use’ and how the ‘politics of preservation‘ relates to people who use things (Ahmed, 2019). I feel that I could endlessly quote this book, for all the wonderful and poetic descriptions of use, and I have been thinking of ways I could use this inspiration to inform my teaching practice.
Fig. 1.5 An out of use postbox
(Ahmed 2019)
In my role as transition tutor, I have started to think about how students are identifying their own ‘use’, either in their functioning as practitioner (how do they use illustration in their practice?), or how they use skills to develop a project? It could be that they are ‘used’ for a commission or their ‘use’ in a group situation might be identified by a particular role such as working on the publication team for the degree show. To take this further, I want to develop a practical workshop to acknowledge a student’s use as a practitioner (illustrator) and how their past ‘uses’ have left traces that signpost a post-graduate direction: ‘use is an activity that leaves traces (more or less). These traces can become outlines for something: invitations to do some-thing, to proceed in a certain direction’ (Ahmed, 2019)
Initial thoughts on how this may be structured are as follows:
– Students attend a practical workshop in groups of up to 25
– Students reflect on their past 3 years in Illustration and make notes on their journey so far. This should include: All projects that were a success with details on project name, skills used, concept idea, techniques and materials and so on.
– Students make notes on any significant moments from past 3 years that brought a sense of accomplishment, for example, activities with peers, a part time job, exhibitions or trips taken. This can include university experience as well as accomplishments in other areas of life. These notes are to form ‘sign posts’.
– A peer task for students to reflect on each other’s sign post notes – Note down what commonalities occur within these lists – what is the ‘biography’ of their use’?
‘a biography of use might explore the different moments in which use happens in the life course of one thing or another’ (Ahmed, 2019)
– include options to use visuals, colours, drawing.
To support the development of this perspective, I have been reading Knowing from the Inside: Cross-Disciplinary Experiments with Matters of Pedagogy, in which Catherine Hasse questions ‘What is learning?’. She argues that learning ‘is an ongoing process of transformation whereby traces of what we have previously learned are mobilised in the course of learning something new.’ (Hasse, 2022)