Navigating Next Models of Design Education
It’s fair to say we talk about design, in particular design education and education in general, on a daily basis and with most of the people we know‌
Introduction
El Ultimo Grito
Issue: ONE
A life to be pitied perhaps... but it is hard to avoid this when most of your friends and acquaintances come from a small group of designers and educators.
El Ultimo Grito
David Falkner, director of the Stanley Picker Gallery in London, is one of these design insiders. Well, not just one of them, but one with whom we have “conspired” against traditional models of education. The plan was to create a design hub with the working title: “Dock”. It was to be a hybrid space where people with different levels of experience could exchange knowledge and participate in each other’s projects in a kind of symbiotic, university-cum-production, facility-cum-publishing house. This ambitious concept would take considerable time and financial backing for us to generate and develop (at present it is still under development and hopefully one day will be brought to life). So, when David asked us if we wanted to co-curate a project for the Stanley Picker Gallery, we decided to create “Pilots”, a pilot scheme for “Dock”: a space where we could test some of the ideas we had already discussed on countless occasions to see if they might have some resonance with other practitioners. We wondered what other ideas could spring
from Pilots, if, as designers, we could encourage other people to obsess over design education as much as we do. It seemed fitting that the Pilots schema we were formulating should be an experimental site within which different performative models could be tested and their results then compared and analysed. We conceived of them as briefing sessions, where our guests would participate and then, in their own time, reflect on what the future of design education would look like from whichever perspective they chose. Each session would be divided into two parts: one that encouraged dialogue and reflection, using open content from the Internet to trigger the conversation; and one that was more of an activity aimed at producing some sort of outcome that would encapsulate the ideas generated during the dialogue. This process relied on having Pilots, people that could effectively lead and navigate a session. The Pilot would brief the participants, who, from that moment on, would also become Pilots themselves. The project, we imagined, would be like a massive ship piloted by multiple Pilots, who might have very different ideas about where the ship is going or what the mission is, but that somehow are piloting together. To be able to differentiate and analyse these models we had to come up with some sort of conceptual framework. When looking at education models, we realized that there were three interlinked elements which determined how the system behaves: these were CONTENT, CONTEXT and CONTROL.
Handout for Participants and Visitors
Ultimately, Content, Context and Control are not simply parameters that describe the influences shaping design education, but rather have become the battleground for diverse definitions of what design is and, consequently, of what design education could be.
El Ultimo Grito
Superficially, these need almost no explanation. Let’s say we look at a standard Industrial Design course in the United Kingdom. The Context, as the name of the course suggests, is primarily that of industrial design: designing products for market which can be manufactured, distributed, then consumed and used by people. Therefore, in an indirect manner, society itself also becomes part of this context of design. The Content of the design course would then consist of all those skills that help us to understand and interact in this market context: understanding production processes, appropriate technologies, drawing and planning skills, the history of design, trend analysis, etc. Control would be exercised directly by a tutor or professor, then by the university, which is indirectly sustained by governmental education policy, and finally by industry, which effects what type of courses will be supported and influences employment choices. At the moment of analysing these parameters more in depth, what transpires is the realization that there is a much more complex social, cultural and ideological structure behind them. Consequently, once you change the balance of any of the parameters, the whole system starts to transform. There is no doubt that the Internet today is transforming the balance of the system, rapidly creating the possibility for types of structures unconceivable in the past. It is transforming information, education and knowledge into
a general purpose utility, as accessible and inexpensive as electricity, water or the Internet itself. And in doing so, it is creating new challenges and raising interesting questions as to how the Internet would cope with, transform, revolutionize or destroy educational structures already in existence. Whilst this remains to be seen, the unquestionable fact now is that the Internet has granted design access to specialist content that was previously inaccessible. The Internet exposes design to an array of “new� problems, which expand and blur (like a camera lens going out of focus as you zoom out) what the content, context and purpose of design might be. Finding possible answers to such questions was our main motivation for opening up a dialogue about what design is today, about what design education should be and where it should go.
What follows on the next pages is an abridged version of some of the conversations that took place at El Ultimo Grito’s Pilots session on the 13th of May 2013 at the Stanley Picker Gallery. These dialogues have been divided into themes: Academic Design vs. Simulators of Reality, Public & Private,
Cultural Producers, Connecting Content, Roles of Tutors within Learning – Pilots as Samplers, Types of Education, One Voice vs. Multiple, MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses) and Re-activation. Many of these same themes have recurred in different sessions over the course of the Pilots project.
Professor Shelly Kagan (Death) (Yale University: Open Yale Courses OYC. YALE.EDU (ACCESSED MAY 14, 2013) LICENCE: CREATIVE COMMONS BY-NC-SA
El Ultimo Grito began their Pilots session by showing an Open Yale Course in philosophy on the subject of death by Professor Shelly Kagan. The participants were then asked to use this lecture to generate discussion about design education Furthermore, in using content that hadn’t been directly generated by anyone in the room, the intent was to give the conversation freedom from being directed by a particular hierarchical or authoritative viewpoint.
WHAT AM I? WHAT ARE MY PARTS?
IS THE PERSON WHO’S GOING TO BE LECTURING TO YOU ON TUESDAY... HERE I AM LECTURING TO YOU TODAY, THURSDAY
THE VERY SAME PERSON AS THE PERSON WHO IS STANDING IN FRONT OF YOU...
LECTURING TO YOU NOW?
YOU AND I ARE WALKING ALONG AND WE SEE A TRAIN. AND I SAY, “LOOK AT THAT TRAIN”
SUPPOSE, AS WE’RE TAKING OUR WALK, PART OF THE TRAIN ISN’T VISIBLE THERE’S A LARGE WAREHOUSE THAT’S BLOCKING THE VIEW WE SEE A CABOOSE, I SAY, “HA! THERE’S A TRAIN”
AND THEN AFTER WE GET PAST THE WAREHOUSE, I SEE A LOCOMOTIVE AND I SAY, “HEY LOOK. THERE’S A TRAIN” AND THEN I ASK YOU, “DO YOU THINK THIS IS THE SAME TRAIN AS THE TRAIN WE POINTED TO BEFORE?”
AND THE ANSWER IS, “DON’T KNOW; CAN’T TELL. THE BUILDING’S BLOCKING THE VIEW.”
IT MIGHT TURN OUT IF I HAD X-RAY VISION, THAT WHAT I’D SEE IS THIS
THEN THE ANSWER WOULD BE, “AH, THERE’S NOT ONE TRAIN HERE, BUT TWO TRAINS”
EASY ENOUGH WITH TRAINS. WE KNOW HOW IT WORKS WITH TRAINS
MY ABILITY TO DRAW CARS IS EVEN WORSE THAN MY ABILITY TO DRAW TRAINS
THERE’S MY CAR IN 1990, IT WAS NEW, IT WAS SPARKLY
BY 1996 OR 2000... IT WASN’T LOOKING SO GOOD
THE SPARKLE HAD GONE
Projected Alongside Lecture – Jane Fonda Workout Video, How To Fix Your iPhone’s Cracked Screen, Basic Suturing Techniques
2006, WHEN IT FINALLY DIED
BUT WHEN I SAY IT’S THE SAME CAR, I DON’T MEAN TO BE TALKING ABOUT CAR STAGES
I MEAN TO BE TALKING ABOUT A SINGLE THING THAT WAS EXTENDED THROUGH TIME
WELL, HERE’S A PIECE OF JARGON — IS THERE A SINGLE “SPACE-TIME WORM” HERE OR ARE THERE TWO?
PUBLIC vs PRIVATE
very pure, no longer limited by commercial and industrial agendas and it might find ways to contribute to society that are different and unique. To do “academic design” might sound contradictory but it could allow design to take on new social functions and purposes. That’s one way I think academic places, universities and colleges could have a much more powerful role to play in society. If they are just equipping students with skills based on the simulation of industry, then I think you’re better off doing that in industry where you’ll learn much faster. Roberto We’re talking about a specific model which is very much focused on the cult of the individual and leaves very little space for such situations as working in groups or working in a way where you would collaborate with others in order to resolve bigger, more systemic problems. We started this project because we are in a moment of crisis. Most of the ideas that people are coming up with are, precisely, those which try to bring education even closer to reality, and we believe that this model no longer works. Realistically-speaking, you don’t get a job based on what you study. Perhaps what design education needs to do is to be completely the opposite, work with people who really want to contribute to advancing the culture of the discipline. If this is indeed the case, then what would happen if universities applied this same logic to other disciplines
such as medicine, history or politics?
Rachel I wonder if we should look at these dynamics from a different perspective. There’s been a lot of talk about the world outside of education and entering into society, as if we were in a bubble and were going into something else. For me, it’s interesting to think about how work has changed, and is constantly changing. Stuart The country boundary is another issue to bring in then. If the academies shift away from public funding and move towards private funding, what academies do becomes irrelevant to the state of a country. If Red Bull decides it is going to send someone to space, it doesn’t need to consult any particular government. They are not looking for “Oh is this going to be good for your GDP?” They are more inclined to be thinking along the lines of “We’re going to send this guy to space and we’re going to put Red Bull on it and we’ll pay for it with soft drinks!” Rosario What we understand now is that the educational model that considers education as a simulation of reality is a dysfunctional one, however the government continues to advance and promote this model as a solution without taking into account how the nature of work and what design will produce in the
(Right) Projected During Conversation – Youtube surgery class, Delia Smith’s Cookery Course BBC 2009, film making with zaunka, and more internet surgery.
Trasnscipt
19
AND FOR SPAGHETTI 8 MINUTES GIVES YOU JUST THAT AMOUNT OF BITE
WE’RE GONNA PRACTICE PUTTING THE SUTURES ACROSS THE TOP OF THE WOUND
CULTURAL PRODUCERS CONNECTIONS
present, let alone the future, has already irrevocably changed, and will continue to do so. Universities feel that their courses need to be more like apprenticeships and internships so that students are already indeed “working”. However, the problem is that you will be working in a job that is yesterday’s job, because industry moves faster than universities in terms of technological access, etc. The big question then is what will we design in the near future? I think it’s an important question because until now we have always known what we will design, and what we will produce, and this knowledge has created a certain educational system that implements what we design. Volker But there are other models out there for operating as a cultural producer in a wider setting. Students tend to be quite young in this country but, actually, they’re quite well-informed as to what they want to get out of their education. So a lot of them are quite realistic, they can see what they are getting and what they want to do with it outside of university and they usually do
that already as students, whether that’s through bands or their own collectives or things they organize through the Internet, like fanzines. Annelore What interests me is that you have all this different content with different purposes but no real answer of how to connect this content. However, if a lecturer is there to help you connect it all, then you trust them. It’s this idea of trust, the stamp of Yale is there for you to trust this kind of content. Rachel It sounds like a value system that you’re describing; it’s about endorsement and how much weight the endorsement has in different fields. So is an endorsement of YouTube hits as good as having a very selective process of allowing students to enter institutions such as Yale? Where does the value system lie? Annelore Yes it’s actually two things, this idea of value and also this idea of having so much knowledge that you can find it anywhere. Therefore, the question is how to connect the information and what to do with it. You can use anything you want but how does this connection work? Is it something that we should be teaching, studying? Tony Today, internet learning is already juxtaposed with more formal education. When internet learning flows
Tony The sampling I think is formed by a kind of unique worldview. I think you need conflicting and contrasting worldviews embodied in different people and then the student, exposed to them, has to figure out his or her own view.
Tony In education, you need to be exposed to conflicting and contrasting world-views embodied in different people; then, through exposure to these intellectual, moral and cultural contradictions the student can figure out their own view. Volker For me much of art education is about throwing students off that path and distorting their navigation and how they resolve things. This whole idea of being instructed all the time, I find rather problematic. Rosario I think that right now there are two kinds of education: the first is a kind of education that is based on everything we already know about
TYPES OF EDUCATION
Roberto I think tutors were also limited by the amount of content that they could access. In the past they would tend to teach the things that they knew. Now, as a teacher, you go well beyond what you know, and it becomes easier to constantly renew yourself and to acquire more information. But do you think tutors will then come from different fields of education and practice? Will they need to be more like Pilots or team leaders or negotiators? Do you think tutors will come more from the art and design practices or from academia? Or do we need other people who are just as good at sampling.
Julia I think teaching is going to be a meta-educational skill. You’ll need to have your special skills, as does an architect or designer, but other skills could be like that of a moderator, or someone who has a particular ideology, or a certain view of the world, like a compass, giving students a direction.
ROLE OF TUTOR WITHIN INTERNET LEARNING- PILOTS- SAMPLERS
into a formal setting the tutor takes on a different role, almost like a coach. The teaching is different because you’re helping the students choose the best information to work with. In the past, as a tutor, you’d provide lots of material, bringing books in, showing students things and making the connections you talked about. The challenge now is how to make intelligent and unique connections between stuff when you have the whole world coming to your screen.
ONE VOICE vs MULTIPLE
art and design, that is, its history, and the craft you employ in design and art. The other is when you are raking the traditions of what you know into what you do not know yet. What is ideal for us is that design education would take the traditions of design and from it generate something new. What we don’t know yet is whether the university will be a place where students would go to advance the culture of the practice or whether this will happen in some other place in the future. It may be that universities decide to focus solely on teaching the skills and traditions of the past in art and design. So what happens if these models become the norm, where more and more content comes from the Internet, and we find that content choice is based on a value system? Would everybody then choose the more prestigious and accredited universities such as Yale and the RCA? These schools will be giving online courses to millions and millions of people. What will be the consequences of education when it is driven by only a few very powerful and dominant voices? How would the rest of education
respond to that? Volker It’s quite interesting to see what the White Cube is doing in London, how huge it has become: museum-size with different branches. The cultural activity that it offers would have traditionally been provided by the public sector, publicly funded galleries and exhibition spaces, but now this activity is happening somewhere else. Julia For example, if you consider big software companies and compare them to Open Source software I think that a lot of really good software developers do choose to do Open Source. They’re not going for the big names and big companies – nor the well-paid jobs either – but instead they want to be part of the kind of community personified by Open Source companies. They really want to contribute to something. I think that if you apply that analogy to the university setting, in which the only universities in existence are those which are privately owned, then the good students and the interesting people would tend not to take part in those institutions, mainly because they see through them. Roberto For me, the Internet is still mainly a library, but other people see it as something more personal. I was talking about MOOCS, the Massive Open Online Courses, with Mike Patrick and he was telling me how people started
organizing assemblies or found groups in which to discuss the content of the course. Obviously, there is a way-in through there, somehow.
Volker But in terms of making art this would be the same as making design. You could go back to history, and with education you can go back to different moments in time where there was something quite exciting going on but for some reason, either political or economic, it didn’t survive, it didn’t get to the next week, but is instead buried there. And we can re-activate that.
Stuart I also think that we’re in a transitional phase where the Internet has removed a lot of obstacles, although it’s about to bring them back. I think there’s a whole bunch of stuff at play here. Not only in terms of legality but also in the numbers of things. Although there’s more stuff available, it’s becoming harder and harder to get at it. It’s also becoming harder and harder to filter things out. Julia I think re-activating is really good because you shouldn’t lose that string, that connection to what was there already. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. You can enrich what’s already there.
END OF ABRIDGED DIALOGUE
REACTIVATING
Tony It’s not about one model replacing another. The current model of education will continue as it is, which is fine, some of it is good and some of it isn’t. At the same time, we need to look beyond this to imagine new educational possibilities. But we also need the existing model to evolve, this is what’s missing for me. We need to build on the strengths of the existing academic environment (intellectual freedom, etc.) and explore new roles for design
MOOC (MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES)
Volker I think the same can be said for music and bands. You think about the way in which you consume the music scene: you’re with people, you have a shared experience. The same applies to the way we learn: you sit together during a lecture with people in order to consume something together.
within the academy for the 21st century, maybe even new forms of academy.
BE
KIND
REWIND
PROTOCOL
During the next few hours, you and your group, will pan, shoot and screen a film. It’s important that the group read and follow all the instructions. Have fun and don’t worry about making mistakes, remember that imperfection is your ally.
The group should talk about their ideas for the film’s storyline. The cameraperson will put all the ideas on the board. The group should vote on which ideas to keep. The group should then take all the ideas they have chosen and turn them into a complete storyline.
4- The following will be decided at this point: storyline, night/day setting, set/location, action, character names, roles, accessories/ costumes, narrative cards.
INSTRUCTION SHEET A
NOTE Your storyline must be from 8 to 12 sentences. Don’t worry about who will play what part of how to shoot certain parts, instead, focus on creating a complete stroryline with a beginning, middle, and end.
5- Feel free to utilize all the props your group brought, locations around the area, and the craft materials to make anything that you might need.
1- Choose a cameraperson As a group, vote on who should be the cameraperson. It is crucial that the camera person be vocal, assertive, and confident. They must never appear in front of the camera. CHOOSE WISELY! 2Choose timekeeper As a group, vote on who should keep track of time. That person must remind the group of how much time is left every 15 minutes. 3Propose genre Propose different genres. The cameraperson will put each genre on the board. When all of the suggestions have been written, choose one by voting, remember that you can combine multiple genres. Each member can vote as many times as they would like. 4Propose a title Everyone is invited to suggest a title. The cameraperson should write the titles on the board. It’s OK if the group likes multiple titles because you can combine titles. 5Choose title The group must vote on which title(s) to use. Once the group has voted on a title, the cameraperson must erase everything on the board except for the chosen title. 6- Propose various storylines
7- Write your storyline Once your group has decided on a final storyline, the cameraperson should select an assistant to write it down. 8- Read storyline out loud The cameraperson should read the storyline out loud to the group to make sure that everyone is happy with the final version. Once the group is finished with the storyline, they should move on to Stage Two.
STAGE TWO 1- This stage provides your group with a storyline grid to help plan out each scene. The grid should act as a detailed map for the group, containing all the important information to complete the shoot. 2Once again, the cameraperson will discuss ideas with the group. In the interest of time, one group member should be in charge of writing on the grid, while other members should create narrative cards. 3- Please read the description of each column before you fill in the corresponding box.
NOTE A well balanced grid is a well directed movie.
6Once the group has completed the grid, they should begin filming. Time
limit:
45
minutes
HOW TO USE THE GRID 1- Storyline: Each of the 8-12 sentences of your storyline from Stage One should be individually placed into each of the storyline boxes. Each sentence should represent one scene. If a long sentence requires more space, you can divide it into multiple boxes. 2- Day/Night: Determine the time of day of the scene. 3Set/Location: Choose a location in to shoot each scene, but remember that you only have 45 minutes to shoot so it must not be too far away. 4- Action: Provide a more detailed description of the action and details within the scene. The scene MUST reflect the sentence that it is illustrating. 5- Character Names: Determine which characters will appear in each scene. Be imaginative
Curating Space for Pilots
From the outset Rosario and Roberto were characteristically committed to using the opportunity to look forward, which led to discussions about what forms of support designers might require in the future, and how our Fellowship programme and the Gallery venue itself could evolve to nurture, accommodate and respond to future shifts in practice.
Gallery could provide a flexible platform for Pilots to develop, away from more traditional spaces of education and learning. The design of the physical spaces, the technical set-up and the practical mechanisms of the sessions were all carefully considered to permit the programme both structure and fluidity. The main challenge was to create a constructed environment that participants felt comfortable enough talking openly and experimenting within, whilst fully aware the sessions were being documented, but that also provided opportunities for a visiting public to have a direct experience of what was happening, without distracting the participants themselves or directly influencing the proceedings. We created an auxiliary space we called the Pilots Observatory, where members of the public could enter and observe, whether for just a few minutes or entire sessions. The space was divided by a one-way mirror that allowed the activity in the main space to take place without
David Falkner
We started developing ideas for new ways of utilizing our physical space as an expandedresource, workshop or laboratory, embedded in a geographic locality but internationally networked, both physically and virtually, from where we could start to imagine testing new forms of design practice and education, and Pilots as a concept began to emerge. The premise was to explore how the Internet could be used as a complementary resource integrated into practical design activity and group-based learning, which developed into what became a kind of “Pilots Manifesto�. Pilots was developed as an ongoing experiment, or set of experiments, but very much within a broader context, that could take what had previously been learnt, adapted and rolledout within different locations and environments. The Stanley Picker Gallery formed an exploratory launch pad for Pilots, with the Manifesto’s variable factors of Content/Control/Context providing a concise framework to permit its form to evolve. It was important that the
interference, but also allowed members of the public to have a distinctly intimate experience of observing proceedings. On the days that no live activity took place, we replayed the full sound-recordings of the previous session, as well as unedited video-footage of the Pilots tabletop with participants’ notes, sketches and other doodles (which appeared in real-time during the live sessions); so even on these days visitors could have a different but still tangible
experience of the programme of Pilots activities. In the Gallery’s adjoining lobby area we displayed edited “trailers” of the previous sessions (also posted weekly on our website) alongside selected web-based resources and other material for visitors to study.
Given the Gallery’s university context and its purpose as a public venue, it is important we try to expand on who our programme is serving, to test and explore how our resources can best be utilized, and how we can activate our physical spaces in challenging and innovative ways. By staging this first manifestation of Pilots at the Stanley Picker Gallery rather than in a traditional seminar room or classroom, we hoped to open-up the speculative potential for accommodating
the diverse ideas and energies of the various Pilots leaders and the visiting participants; the resulting programme managed, in many ways, to turn the venue “on its head” and demonstrate new operational models for our Gallery, and others, to continue to pursue in the future.
Curating Space for Pilots
We ran the live workshops on Tuesdays and Thursdays over the course of 4 weeks; Tuesdays predominantly for invited participants, and Thursdays open for others to participate. Each week both sessions were run by one of the invited Pilot leaders – Daniel Charny, Ronen Kadushin, Matt Ward and El Ultimo Grito – so that the same experience was on offer to all participants but with a different emphasis depending on the session at hand and the individual contributions made. The Pilot-Leaders devised their own strategies for the days they led, utilizing the spaces and resources as they required whilst sourcing all thematic content from the Internet. On the final week, Alex Milton ran a parallel Pilots session at the Science Gallery in Dublin, to experiment with staging the same activity in two isolated locations, connecting the two simultaneous sessions via a web-link.
Happening soon enough:
MULTIPLEXER THE ONLY DESIGN JOURNAL WORTH YOURS ‘N’ OUR FUCKING TIME So why not contribute something: info@multiplexer.net
www.stanleypickergallery.org www.stanleypickergallery.org
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Spetember 2014
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Pilots: Navigating Next Models of Design Education took place at the Stanley Picker Gallery from 23 April to the 25 May 2013. Over this time educators and design professionals were invited to meet around a table to discuss the future of design education. For ‘regular’ Pilots updates visit www.pilotschannel.org or follow us on Twitter @pilotschannel
Participants Johanna Agerman Ross James Auger Stuart Bannocks Ben Barker Roane Bensch-Duff Marloes ten Bhomer Zowie Broach James Cadogan Offer Canfi Daniel Charny Sunil Chhatralia Jen Chia-Lun Alexandra Clarke Rebecca Davies Fred Deakin Francesco Draisci Anthony Dunne Volker Eichelmann Charlie Evans Rachel Falconer David Falkner Roberto Feo Nick Ferguson Henry Flitton Tee Byford-Flockhart Cathy Gale Erico Gondim Oliveira Camille Grandaty Bob Gray Christina Guardiola Caro Halford Forrest Hall Mark Harris Rupert Hartley Grit Hartung Catja de Haas Greta Hauer Liam Healey Jessica Hemmings Sam Hill Julia Hinderink Alix Holden Rory Hudson Marguerite Humeau Rosario Hurtado Markos Ioannides Julia Jarvis
Ronen Kadushin Tuğçe Karataş Con Kennedy Brian Kirkby Barhad Koby Margaret Lam Uj Lee Elodie Mallet Suzanne Martin Peter Maxwell Catherine McDermott Harriet McDougall Derek Mc Garry Alon Meron Tania Messell Alexandra Midal Alex Milton Paddy Molloy Alice Moloney Eelko Moorer Sorcha O’Brien Enda O’Dowd Rafel Oliva Serra Mike Patrick Joseph Pipal Laura Potter Lizzie Reid Lucy Renton Liliana Rodriguez Catharine Rossi Florian Schmidt Annelore Schneider Jana Scholze Andrew Slatter Rachel Song Juliet Sprake Eve Stirling Ornella Stocco Ionna Theiakou Tasha Thomas James Thomson Harry Trimble Noam Toran Matt Ward Tat Whalley Louise Wilson