“the human mind will not be confined to any limits” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“we are educating people out of their creative capacities” How the classroom kills creativity, Ken Robinson
How can we listen to what people are feeling in a way that drives learning? How do we avoid turning ‘process’ and ‘experimentation’ into another performative task that students do to tick a box rather than to really explore the projects they are developing? Bruce Macfarlane argues teaching with integrity is crucial for ensuring the quality of higher education, ‘teachers have a responsibility to promote ethical behaviour among their students’. What if in this process of good intentions to add protocols to the Crit we sterilise and standardise not only the process but the creative output. With this concern my thoughts turn to how the Crit could be a creative act?
Creative acts are unique, crits must follow this logic, throughout my research a number of academics pointed towards MIT for their unique approach, I contacted them accordingly. At MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Architecture Department, Claudine Monique, Academic Associate, confirms ‘all of our critiques are different based off the faculty who is teaching the course‘ (2023-12-06 01:36:40 PM EST MIT ServiceNow) . This is in spite of providing a written guidance for students, staff and gusts reviewers, confirming ‘Holding a review is itself a creative act, and an evolving part of our design culture. While specific rules may not be appropriate to every review, the goals below (see image The review at MIT Architecture: Values and Goals) outline our expectations and overall tools for creating the best discussion in a variety of settings and contexts, according to our community’s underlying values of respect, courtesy, equity and inclusion’.
The Creative Crit
‘Scripted instruction is opposed to constructivist, inquiry-based, and dialogic teaching methods that emphasize classroom collaboration. To provide insight into these methods, the “teaching as performance” metaphor must be modified: Teaching is improvisational performance. Conceiving of teaching as improvisation highlights the collaborative and emergent nature of effective classroom practice, helps us to understand how curriculum materials relate to classroom practice, and shows why teaching is a creative art.’ – R. Keith Sawyer
What does it look like, is it organised, structured, does it follow rules and can it be applied across the cohort to express each student’s own creative identity? To find out, I spoke with a student who’s Review (2022, May Stage 2 Summative) had generated much attention. Peerada Liewchanpatana, currently a stage 3 student last year booked a room for her Review slot, decorated the room with her models, drawings and utilised a projector to create an immersive experience.
Crit Rules and Creativity Meeting 22.12.2023
12pm online via Teams
Crit Review as a performative act
0:1:2.190 –> 0:1:20.220
McCrory, Donald
So my aim was to try with the students to create some rules for the correct and and So what happened was is that they’ve come up with some really good rules and I will share those with you when they’re all completed and typed up for the holidays.
0:1:20.570 –> 0:1:29.180
McCrory, Donald
And what my concern was of doing it is if you make too many fixed rules, you might take away the creativity.
you took ownership of your review, What happened there? Can you tell me about?
0:1:47.20 –> 0:1:53.240
Peerada Liewchanpatana
Uh, so basically last year, so a traditional crit would be held in the in the studio with a screen.
Maybe a model on a table and some piece of paper on the wall. I think that’s why I traditional crit is and maybe a panel sitting on chairs and then people viewing it in a very passive kind of way.
But what I wanted to turn the crit is to become more of an exhibition space, more interactive, more engaging, because I felt that like doing this, you get the audience a bit more into your project.
You make them believe and more convinced by your ideas by taking them through.
what I did was I booked out one of the performance spaces in CSM which is like one of the studio big studio spaces that has lightings and projections and things like that.
essentially create that like in the middle was a space where all my works and my models were exhibited. So people set around that.
that’s where the place where people the audience were and they all sat on the floor, which I felt that created a sense of equality.
0:2:45.530 –> 0:3:3.770
Peerada Liewchanpatana
And also you, you they feel more like tactile with the space and also the things place in front of you almost like a round table kind of sitting almost like you’re eating together at the dinner but everybody’s on the same level and you don’t feel like there’s a barrier between one another you can like lean over and your friend is there you can go over and say hi.
I had two projections. One projection was where my slides of my works would be and they were like really huge. It was like so immersive and was like almost like in a cinema. And then there was another protection on the other side, which was the film that I made that was basically my project was in Shadwell last year. Well, this is kind of walking through where my design would be placed and then I had another film on the floor, which was like a water…. it looks like that there was a pool of water in the area that we just one more project was about because I’m not project was called the Nest Nature Sanctuary and school… it was a floating building on site well basin that uses a lot of natural materials and basically kind of creates a habitat for the nature in the area too.
0:3:53.460 –> 0:4:0.930
Peerada Liewchanpatana
that was what like led my concept like how do I take such an urban space like CSM and also transform people in. I had like a sound ping in the background of like birds and water and things like that, just like so people could be immersed in because one of the main things I felt from watching my friends present is like, people have very short attention span… like you want to keep them engaged and you want them to really feel like this presentations for them, not really just for you to get feedback.
You know you want them to at the end of it felt like they made an impact or they were touched by something in your project whether they like it or not. At least they felt something from it. That was what I feel like all art or architectures do that. I think if you haven’t done that, then it’s not very successful in my opinion.
0:4:42.210 –> 0:4:49.640
Peerada Liewchanpatana
And I think in terms of the crit, if you’re tutors there too, you also want to honor them, like in a space that like they are…valuable people like, they get, so have so much like experience and knowledge… you want to get the best information out of them… want to feed them.. everything you have all the energy you have and then just like, give it to them so they, they’ll, they’ll give it to you back because I think tutors, they’re so smart… They can sense when the student cares about their work or not, and if the student doesn’t care about their work, then they’re like who?
0:5:25.30 –> 0:5:30.60
McCrory, Donald
That sounds it sounds very immersive that you’re trying to get people to be in it.
And so, because that doesn’t sound like an easy thing for you to do…you had to learn how to book a room, is that right?
0:5:45.730 –> 0:6:4.60
Peerada Liewchanpatana
So basically I managed to have I have how I actually saw it was I was invited to model for one of my friend who does fashion in CSM and then they managed to book their room for their kid and I said ohh wait I didn’t know you could do that and then they were like yeah you just need a friend from performance and then they’ll book it for you… it’s very chill booking system.
happen to know someone from performance and they book it for me and he was very lovely and he managed to like help me set up everything because you need to do an induction for that space… all the lighting, the projections, everything. two of my other friends helped me bring all because I had, like a lot of big models, I had them to also help me bring all that down and set it up… it took me like quite like maybe 2-2 hours to really like fully set everything up in the space… I had my friend also helping me press the like the sound.. I put up like some posters to lead people because not a lot of people from architecture has ever been to the performance space before because it’s quite out of the way for them… I probably took like maybe 30 minutes and then I think my tutor encouraged me to just leave it on for the rest of the day.
I just left it until like 6:00 PM and then people just kept coming in even like people from non like architectural courses too is and they asked all sorts of questions… interesting to get such a range of ideas..
people they didn’t, they just never thought that architecture could be a performative space.
how do we display our works and that creates like a journey for people to walk through whether cuz like architecture is like representative course that you never actually like as a student.
how do we best represent what our product will be without actually making the products also. we have to like be mindful of the way we place our works, not just like you can just slap it on the wall or slap it on the digital screen and then expect people to, like, have a sense of like connection with it.
0:12:15.50 –> 0:12:18.980
Peerada Liewchanpatana
I definitely didn’t draw out the layout of my works. kind of improvised on the spot which made me really stressed actually, but it was also kind of fun because like, I didn’t go into the space beforehand.
Marks for the Crit / Review
0:13:54.300 –> 0:13:58.730
McCrory, Donald
You don’t get marked for your actual crit or design review. Do you think that maybe that should be something that we should be looking at?
0:14:1.840 –> 0:14:12.60
Peerada Liewchanpatana
Yeah, I think so too cause basically I in my high school, which is an art school too in Singapore and we had like crits very regularly… one of the criteria in the mark scheme and that was… how well you presented too and that you…. it created a lot of pressure for the students, but also it you have to build up that confidence to present your ideas, because I think like wherever you go in life, like soft skills like presentation is at like gonna be used constantly.
I think like nowadays, people tend to be quite soft, I think like they then they know that like the world might be against them or like they don’t want to come into uni because they don’t want to get negative feedback like people were just like shy away from it. They think it’s a personal attack, that kind of stuff.
0:15:31.940 –> 0:15:38.160
Peerada Liewchanpatana
And in terms of like the criteria I think could be interesting in terms of like social or environmental aspects where? advocate for like social justice or like anti racism in the course, being aware of how diverse our courses could be, quite interesting to know how like the social aspects of the site of the surroundings was taken to consider in terms of the design projects I think could be quite interesting
Stage 1 advice
0:23:57.540 –> 0:24:7.440
Peerada Liewchanpatana
So like they have to, I will encourage them to just keep like drawing and like showing that even like bad sketch models I think is quite fun to take note also… if you do material tests or like just like a piece of paper, or if you make a Zine or something like that, like get, get that to pass them around the review panel
Bibliography
- Robinson, Ken (2006) Do schools kill creativity? https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?language=en
- Bruce Macfarlane & Lesley Gourlay (2009) The reflection game: enacting the penitent self, Teaching in Higher Education, 14:4, 455-459, DOI: 10.1080/13562510903050244 https://moodle.arts.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/1079889/mod_resource/content/1/Macfarlane Gourlay 2009.pdf
- The review at MIT Architecture: Values and Goals https://architecture.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2023-04/The%20review%20at%20MIT.pdf – About | Architecture (mit.edu)
- Sawyer, R. K. (2004). Creative Teaching: Collaborative Discussion as Disciplined Improvisation. Educational Researcher, 33 (2), 12 – 20.