Eureka!

Maybe I'm onto something... Not only were the students' essays much better this week, but their reflections seem to show that they put it down to the ripping exercise (see previous post). And it's only week 4!


"I thought the whole process worked really well. It showed me that you can create a character and tv programme idea out of the simplest things. The task where we had to create characters by jotting down on a newspaper picture simple things such as the person's name and their likes and dislikes really helped as a basis to create your own character and from this, a programme idea. I think my team worked well together to give the individual characters a personality as well as putting them all together into a watchable TV programme."


"We were a group with diverse interests but after about five minutes we found a common ground in our love of music. Although we liked different artists, it felt like it was a subject we could get really in to. When we were sent off to research, I found we worked better because we did the research as a team and not individual task.  We got a lot more done and felt more positive about the task."



"From observing the four pictures, everyone on the team began throwing ideas. Some of the ideas were established formats like  “Have I Got News For You”, “Mr and Mrs” and “Noel’s House Party”. It was really difficult because our ideas were extremely scattered and time was against us. Eventually, we all began sewing our ideas together. I enjoyed working with the team. Everyone had ideas to discuss so it was nice to hear their opinions. I learnt that working with others benefits confidence and enthusiasm if each member is given the opportunity."

Rip it up and start again

I'm still musing on whether my 'paper doll' inspired exercise was a catalyst for a show of brilliance, or whether it fell flat on its face. 

To start, it was all going so well; I'd introduced them to the idea of power with responsibility and the ethics of storytelling.  I'd even used the word 'ideology' by 9.20am, but when I asked the group to build a collage of words and images from their papers that resonated with who they were, they looked utterly blank. And a bit worried. I had imagined an inspired group of young people slicing through their copies of The Mail, surfacing from a sea of images of Cheryl Cole and X-Factorless faces, and ripped up headlines creating new ones about my newly aware flock. Not quite; one older student muttered that he hadn't even read his Guardian yet. Error #1; students who have spent their last pennies on a newspaper just because I told them to are very unlikely to tear it apart for the sake of some dodgy creative writing exercise exploring their sense of self. 

Sulkily, I allowed them to write down the words instead of ripping the guts out of the opinion pages, but as their words built their pictures, so their interests spilled onto the page. Teaming up into groups of four, I asked them to see what they could find in common and to allow the seeds of a programme to emerge.

By the end of the morning class, we had four strong programme ideas siphoned from their combined words and pictures. The flamboyant Gok-wannabe had used the efficiency and good sense of his team members to create a magazine show on the history of glamour that had enough roots to grow into a good idea. The Guardian readers had pooled their disenfranchised old Labour grump into a satirical sitcom featuring characters called Nick, Dave and George who live on a housing estate in Tower Hamlets. The music fans had created a series for Radio 1 exploring musical genres from.. er Dizzie Rascal to Mica. Ok, so they've still got some way to go.  Only one group's ideas refused to materialise, but with the members' confession that they really didn't know who they were as a group - or even as individuals - even their formlessness gave the class something to learn from.

The afternoon group is a little more lethargic at the best of times, and paper ripping was clearly not something that they were up for. So after they had written their careful lists of words, I ordered them to rip up the biggest picture they could find in their papers. Tentatively at first, and then with a gusto unseen before in this class, award winning pictures of flood victims lay on desks alongside the Rooneys and the X-Factors before being named, characterised and classified by political colour, education and survival skills - or anything else I came up with at the time. After they had passed the images to their right, writing each idea on the back and then giving it up, the programme ideas began to emerge. Cheryl Cole and the director of an international charity were soon pitching against each other in panel game show, a Panorama on home-schooling sneaked in from left field and a sequel to 'I'm a Celebrity' called 'Get Me Out of Here!' was showing signs of something rather watchable. Did they get the giving up of control that the exercise is supposed to probe at? Probably not. Did it matter? Probably not.

It's important that these young people who think that they haven't got a programme idea between them find out each week that they have. But if the exercise did give them a glimpse of what they are made of, it was a bit like pulling teeth at times. And I think they're beginning to see me as a bit weird... I'll wait to see what they write in their reflective essays on it due in tomorrow, but my feeling is that it's back to good old deconstruction next week.

Plato, Marx and the Paper Doll

So I was sitting in a research skills module yesterday afternoon and we were talking about ideology, as you do. The construction of truth was being picked over and even as Plato and Marx were being flagged up as gurus of the day on the subject, the little paper doll we made on Saturday in Arts and Learning flashed into my mind. Suddenly, I had my Monday lecture; if we usually deconstruct programmes  in order to study genre, audience, purpose etc, I could pop a little creative exercise in there about construction before I set them their homework.

The collaborative doll exercise in which we each tore/cut/scrunched a shape of a paper doll before passing it on to decorate, name and attribute it with loves and hates, has stayed with me. I've pondered on what it gave me much more than the installation made up of the contents of our bags, the dodgy drawing of self, inlaid with values, skills and knowledge, and even the shockingly bad ergonomics of Sussex University's seminar rooms. Yes, of course it's about giving up control, ownership and being a really crap artist, but it's also about teamwork and constructing something from nothing that makes you think about important stuff - like control, ownership and... er ideology.

 If I'm to prod my students into thinking about who constructs their truth, then maybe I could ask them to tear up their newspapers in a bid to construct their own first, not to make dolls, but to make themselves - in their own image (or words and images, hopefully). The logistics of passing it on and linking it to the dynamics of a TV production team is escaping me at the moment, but that's when winging it seems to work best for me... I shall report back.

Creative Techniques and News Stories

We started the session by looking at today's news stories and how we could develop them into programme ideas, and had already got stuck on Angela Merkel's speech on multi-cultural Germany. The majority of students, 18-25, mostly white, mostly born and bred British, just couldn't see how it could be relevant to them or what themes we could pull out from it.

So I tried the exercise. The students lined up and dutifully organised themselves, first by height, and all without question. Silently, the dominant ones rose to the challenge while the natural followers did what they were told, before presenting their new student body for my assessment. They seemed pleased with themselves and happy to do whatever I suggested.

I moved on. This time, they would organise themselves by eye colour. Even before they looked into the first person's eye, they were squirming. This was about how they told stories about themselves and their peers, I reminded them, asking them to notice what judgements they were making, to observe any feeling they might have about the process until they were done. With a sigh of relief, they turned to me for approval. Instead, I pushed them further, asking them to organise themselves this last time by the warmth of their hands. TOUCH each other??? Tentative fingers reached out to touch tips, the occasional bloke shaking another's hand firmly, girls quickly taking the lead. Finally they were ready, a little sheepish this time, and presented their line to me. I sent them to their desks and asked them to write for five minutes without taking their pen off their paper.

Afterwards I asked if anyone would like to share what they had written. Silence. Eventually one of the more confident blokes offered; 'It felt a bit awkward'. Another joined him 'It was a bit too intimate for me'. I asked if anyone else had written the same kind of thing, and a few nodded. I asked if anyone had not written about feeling awkward in their journals. No-one. The smile spread around the room as they realised that they had all shared in the same experience.

We had our story. From reflections on British reserve to musings on age and confidence, we began to build an idea of who we are as a nation. In 20 minutes, we had moved from blank faces to heated discussion about mono-culturalism v multi-culturalism, the difference between Notherners and Southerners, we had phone-ins on confidence and documentaries on the impact of different cultures. From nothing, we had created our riches for the day.

Arts and Learning

It's almost 30 years to the day since I set off to Paris as a 17 year old, head filled with romantic notions of reading Zola in the Tuileries after dropping my small charges off at school and heading down to the Sorbonne to see what the local talent was like. With a place to study French and European Studies at Sussex University already secured, it was what girls who go to schools like I went to were supposed to do. I had no idea at the time that it would take me 30 years to get back to Sussex.

This isn't the place for the story of what happened in the years between, but yesterday morning at the crack of dawn, after the kind of night only students are supposed to have, I found my way to Fulton 208, fumbled around in a large handbag and stared at a blank page in a jelly bean notebook.

Arts and Learning is a 4 day course designed by Creative Partnerships which aims to train people like me to do what we do in the classrooms of Britain's primary and secondary schools, community groups and business boardrooms - to name a few. It'll give me some more points towards my Masters in Arts and Cultural Research, but most importantly, give me the skills to extract what I've been doing over the past 30 years and turn it into something that might do a bit of good. And earn me some cash.

Like most of the other courses I've done to inch my way towards my Masters in the past year, it's more about reflecting on what you've got than putting any new skills in, but that's a skill in itself, and without it, my 15 books, zillion articles and years in TV and Radio will not see me into my dotage.

Lesson 1 was similar to the lessons my students at the University of Brighton learn; don't drink too much the night before a lecture. Lesson 2 is to let six hours of creative techniques percolate gently before using them in my class tomorrow. Will my rag tag bunch of 18-25 yr olds begin to write more creatively, freely, rhythmically after I've learned to play with them?  I'll let you know.