I taught my first in-person sessions on CCW Foundation in Art and Design on 9th February.
I ran 3x 1.5 hour long experiemental and interdisciplinary photography ‘Documenting Your Work’ workshops for the Communication, Design and Art Pathways.
Each was attending by around 10 students. They were asked beforehand via email and a online BBC lecture I gave the week prior to bring an piece of their work, plus an item from home or their bag that they found interesting.
In the first 10-15 minutes I asked them to remove their object and work and place it on the table or in the space. I explained the idea was to work collaboratively in small groups to documenting a momentary exhibition of your work, exploring how a change of perspective can help see your work in new light, but equally how a experimental approach to documentation often produces new standalone work itself – seeing documentation as practice.
The group was then split into 5 mini groups. I had brought with me 3 Medium format 1960 Rollei TLR cameras, loaded with colour film and 2 remote controlled cars with a duct tape mount (the perfect size for mobile phones). The idea for the workshop was for the 3 groups to spend 25 minutes photographing their work using the Rollei’s (with me assisting them technically) and then 2 groups to be driving the remote controlled cars around (unassisted as it is simple) using their mobile phones video capability to capture exciting moving image documentation.
All of the sessions went very well indeed and without a hitch. The students engaged extremely well and achieved some fantastic images using the cameras. I was surprised how little the camera’s technical intricacies slowed me or the students down. They were very happy to just be able to capture the images and weren’t over-curious about how and why the camera worked the way it did.
I became so energised by the results produced. Some of the images are absolutely stunning examples of documentation existing as practice.
The final workshop of the day overran by a 45 minute margin as a mini group of students had spread out into the corridor and taken the materiality and equipment of the workshop into their own hands and produced some fantastic work. A pair of students had opted to tape marker pens to the back of the remote controlled cars, and had taped down sheets of paper and began painting a large mural. Several Foundation lecturers walked past and exclaimed how great the idea and final work was. I really enjoyed seeing this happen as it showed the students were comfortable and confident enough to use their own initiative and innovate, directing their experience of the workshop in their own hands. As the workshop had overran this didn’t affect other students experience and they then documented their finished works using the cameras and their new skills with it. I had great conversations with the students and would enjoy running the session again.
A couple of observations I have following the session are that there was a huge amount of pre-planning involved in delivering the workshops, including preparing equipment, transporting it, organising loan-store access (for the tripods, the cameras were my own). This workload continued as I then delivered the film to the processors for it to be developed, later collected it and then spent a day scanning the film, editing the scans and uploading them so that they could be shared with the teaching team and students. All in all, it was somewhat of a ambitious passion project which may not be sustainable to repeat every week. However I still am overjoyed with the energy and how much I enjoyed the process. I learnt a lot and look forward to improving my teaching in the near future.