Moving stuckness: performance practice and moving image for student self-efficacy

Abstract

Building on four years of workshops that are enabling students to explore lived experiences of creative blocks when undertaking assessed project work, UAL Academic Support commissioned a series of media and performance responses that sought to articulate these experiences for the benefit of the students and staff who could not attend. During 2017, UAL Academic Support collaborated with B.A. Performance: Design & Practice to develop “Moving Stuckness”, a series of workshops, images and films that use performance to articulate and explore multi-sensory dimensions of stuckness.

These sessions saw students translate creative block into games and improvised movements, with reflection throughout. Bombardment, internal struggle and uncertainty were all examined, with elements of play used to challenge the idea of being stuck as a negative state. The student responses resulted in our creating “viewpoints” films for Academic Support Online (ASO), which in turn are used to engage students and colleagues with discussion around the student experience in further workshops, and within the ASO environment.

By reviewing the images and film created in response to the students’ experiences of stuckness, we will be exemplifying “distinctive approaches that promote [understanding], values, attributes or skillsets.” Similarly, we will be examining ways in which students engage with “disorienting dilemmas” (Mezirow, 1991) associated with transformative learning, and therefore connecting to the conference theme of “designing that spans, transcends or connects the disciplines.

No experience of performance practice is necessary.

Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.