Curriculum

The Collaborative Creative Project

The collaborative creative projects the core of the studio. What does our project look like?

PROJECT DESIGN   Determine your personal objectives and mode of assessment through a Course Contract. Determine this group’s Pillars of Collaboration: common threads that weave through visual and written storytelling. Distribute group tasks through the Collaboration Co-op.

RESEARCH   In the first weeks, through a short reading assignment, we uncover how to research… Themes and Topics Characters and Motivations Places, Props, and Histories Genres and Tropes While in Scotland we will research… Dundee Expo Sessions: Presentations hosted by University of Dundee Aberdeenshire Archaeology Tour: Ancient sites in the Northeast Hairy Coo Highland Tour: Scotland’s Central Belt and the Trossachs

WORKSHOPS     In the first weeks, you’ll explore: Creative Workshops: Use existing skills you already have in untried new ways through creative sessions designed to prepare you for our collaboration with the University of Dundee While in Scotland we will participate in… Dundee Workshops: Creative sessions hosted by University of Dundee Geamannan Dùn Èideann: Workshop your tourism skills in the Edinburgh Games! Compete for prizes!

DELIVERABLES     Out of research and in collaboration with Dundee we create a series of … Canon Elements: Things that belong in the Story World and Canon Prior to visiting Scotland we will will participate in creating… Story Elements: An element or elements based on the Story World and Canon, developed using a media expression of your choice While in Scotland we will participate in… Being Human Prep: Preparing for the debut of our work at the U.K.’s Being Human Festival

PRESENTATION     We’ll present our work in … … the Being Human Festival … a discussion of your options to Level Up by publishing with Abington Review or participating in other post-trip opportunities to promote your work … a live remote group critique gives you feedback from your colleagues, both here and at Dundee … a written self-assessment and reflection at end of term

 

The “Hidden Curriculum”

Our curriculum is about art, obviously, but it’s also about other, less obvious things. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the idea of the “hidden curriculum.” It is simply a bundle of learnable skills that don’t pertain directly to creative work, but can deeply affect how well you can do it. These are “transferable” skills that can be applied to your working life in general, not just your artwork. So even if you never make art again in your life after this studio, you’ll acquire many essential tools and habits that are critical to success in your major field of study.

We’ve identified four “meta-skills” to emphasize and evaluate in addition to your work on the creative project:

• Project Management
• Cloud Management
• Publication
• Self-Reflection

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Project Management

Whatever else we might think about when we think of artists, we don’t often think of them as managers. But all artists are project managers who deal with very tricky logistical, supply, and labor problems when creating work. Creative time is hard to come by, even for professional artists, so it needs to be defended from other distractions. And since we learn by doing, we need to carefully craft a relationship with time that allows us to learn. This is not easy, which is why we talk about it as a skill to secure.

Though project management can run the gamut from budgeting to resource allocation, in our studio you will focus primarily on time management strategies at 3 scales:

• Daily: Recommended flow of activities, as guided by a calendar supplied by me.
• Weekly: a time-blocking exercise that helps you understand patterns of activity, important not just for the studio, but for all your academic, non-academic, and family obligations.
• Semester: the long view of time is guided by a Canvas calendar subscription fed into your choice of a calendaring platform.

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Cloud Management

The “cloud” sounds like computing in pure atmosphere, but it’s really just you using someone else’s server storage. Even though the concept of the cloud is not so new anymore, it’s still a very tricky thing to negotiate.

The cloud has fundamentally changed the way we think of computing. We no longer see our computer as a standalone work-station, but as a node on a network. We often work on a document in an app, neither of which lives on our hard drive! And, we often find ourselves not being the sole author of a work, with several people contributing revisions and refinements to the same thing. It can get extremely confusing very quickly.

You’ll learn about two important things that have changed in our modern creative work environment:

• Archiving and backing up work, including strategies for good file naming and folder structure, so that you can remember and retrieve work you do now, even years from now.
• Collaborating, whether by simply sharing files or working on the same file across a network.

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Publication

The difference between an artist and a person with a hobby is that an artist publishes their work. Publication on the modern web has become a highly decentralized phenomenon. Where in the past artists and authors were at the mercy of publishing houses and galleries, we live in a distributed culture where everyone becomes their own publicist in a DIY ethos. This has fundamentally changed the relationship between a creative person and their audience — for example, I have a blog that I know through site analytics is regularly seen by people in Australia and New Zealand, an impossible reach for a solo, unrepresented author just a generation ago. This is true whether or not you are in the arts! You’ll learn how to work with the following:

• Social media as a means to develop a following and a network.
• Hosting services that store your work for distribution, including documents, videos, images, sound files, and animated gifs.
• Content management systems like WordPress that aid in web development.
• How to “own your search” when people look you up on the web, so that you can be recognized for things you want to be recognized for by potential employers or clientele.

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Self-Reflection

Self-reflection is the ability to candidly and honestly look back on experiences you’ve had and work you’ve done. It sharpens critical thinking and secures neural pathways for so-called “deep learning.” In this course, you’ll engage in self-reflection through:

• Blogging, vlogging, podcasting, or a combination.
• Group critique where you are both a presenter and a contributor to the discussion.
• A personal evaluation administered at end of term.