While Digging Holes
I am writing this blogpost as a sort of reply to the self who started this PGCert in early January.
I think she sounded lonely.
And I see this with our students. You apply to Higher Education as an individual, you are graded along the way as an individual, you graduate as an individual, responsibility for learning and growth appear to fall on the shoulders of the individual. Yet the experience of being on an art and design course with a group of other creative people should ideally be a collective, connected and mutually supportive one[1]. A connection I am still searching for on my PGCert. There are tensions here between the implicitly competitive nature of individualism and neo-liberalism in universities, and the more anti-capitalist ideas of power distribution and radically collective futures[2].
To summarise, using the fine words Kae Tempest, “The way we have decided to live on this planet is sinister and strange.”[3]
Instead of pretending to be clever enough to sort all that out – and in a quest to find my own learning community – I am going to go digging for worms.
In Dec 2023 our Graduating MA Students used the concept of a wormhole to frame their Final Show[4]. Partly to mess with our minds as we tried to understand hypothetical physics of possible space / time travel, and partly to pay homage to the collective and invisible labour of worms.
Since then we have been investing in the infrastructure to support our growing alumni network on our MA, and I have been reading different papers to gain more understanding of how institutions are doing this[5]. Writing this blogpost is helping me now imagine this as a wormery of moist knowledges and somatic connection. A damp and shaded space to connect burrowing creatures working tirelessly to keep the soils of our earth healthy.
“Worms are the living, breathing, engineers of the underworld”[6] – just like our borrowing learning communities.
I wonder then on this PGCert where my worms are? Those hidden engineers whose mutual labour will strengthen and deepen my interests in becoming a better teacher. Those mischief composters who fancy joining me in chats about going into the woods and eating our Learning Outcomes. I look forward to next term, and getting my hands dirty with some (as Darwin referred to worms) “lowly organised creatures”.
[1] Tempest, K. (2022). On Connection. Faber Social.
[2] Mould, O. (2018) Against Creativity. Verso
[3] Tempest, K. (2022). On Connection. Faber Social.
[4] Referencing Post Graduate Show at LCC, Dec 2023 instagram.com/MA_Design_Sustainable_Futures
[5] Obeng-Ofori, D. and Oppong Kwarteng, H. (2021). Enhancing the role of alumni in the growth of Higher Education Institutions. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies and Innovative Research Volume 04, pp. 40 – 48
[6] Quote from the Soil Association https://www.soilassociation.org/
[7] Darwin, C. (1881). The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms. John Murray.