Just finished week 3 of teaching. I am really enjoying being back in the classroom, even if it’s virtual. After having spent a year writing a book about teaching, actually talking with students again and practicing critical-creative pedagogy feels energizing and stimulating.
Like everybody else, I have had to adjust my teaching to online interactions: pre-recording lectures that I would have delivered in person, translating in-class activities into zoom breakout-room exercises and setting up padlets and jam boards to capture knowledge co-creation. However, while preparing an activity for my third year undergraduate Urban Futures module I realized that I have to make more than technology adjustments. The activity is called Writing a Brighton Manifesto, and I describe it in chapter 1 of my book to show the importance of students locating themselves and their learning in specific places. The first part of the activity, which is the focus of this post, asks students to become more aware of their lives as Brighton residents. They then record their findings in the form of creative artifacts that become an experiential basis from which students collectively write their manifestos to make Brighton a more equitable and livable city.
Artifacts of Brighton lives
The last time I had taught that activity was in the autumn of 2019. Back then, I had asked students to pay more conscious attention to their daily routines, travels and interactions in Brighton over the course of a week and then create an artifact that would reflect their lives in the city. During the following class, students shared their artifacts. These included lots of photos on phone screens – of places of work, shopping or entertainment, of a view from a room and of a group of friends hiking in the South Downs. Several students had created maps tracing their daily routines. There was a home-made T-shirt, a pack of playing cards, bus tickets and (imaginary because the student had not actually build them) scales attempting to balance academic and leisure life.
Maps of their Brighton routes created by students in the fall of 2019, reproduced with their permission
When I planned this activity again in January of this year, I knew that quite a few students were not actually living in Brighton now, and that those who were had very different lives from a year ago. I realized very quickly that I needed to adjust the activity, not only by asking students to upload images of their artifacts on a padlet but also by acknowledging the changes that had happened over the last year due to the COVID pandemic. I suggested that the students explore and document these changes, and pay attention to the emotions to which they have been giving rise – inviting them to also remember, reminisce or grieve. In this way, I opened the door for whole-person learning, one of the strands of critical-creative pedagogy, that allows students to bring not only their intellects but also their bodies, emotions and experiences into the classroom.
What we miss
The padlet, which I am sharing here with the permission of the students, shows the potential of expanding what counts as knowledge to include students’ experiences. There are photos of social activities that used to be commonplace – celebrations, eating together, having a game of pool, walking the city, going to sport and cultural events – and that are now sorely missed. There are photos that showed what makes Brighton Brighton – the many quirky pubs and coffee shops, the beachfront and its wildlife, the abandoned pier, the murmurations. One student posted a pictures of the shoes that ground her and another shared his experiences working in social housing during the pandemic. Students also wrote about quiet and contemplative spaces. Above all, the posts convey a sense of conviviality, created by everyday encounters and togetherness that are now impossible, that is missed and mourned. But they also show what students draw strength from in these trying times as they continue to live and learn.
I invite you to explore these images and stories for yourself – they speak to students’ creativity and imagination that can be brought into classrooms as expanded spaces that acknowledge students lives outside their four walls as important sources of learning. And I thank all my Urban Futures students for sharing their reflections and allowing me to show them here. Thank you!!
Students then used these reflections and artifacts to write their Brighton Manifestos, drawing on the rights to the city framework that they had learned about in class, to collectively think how to make Brighton a more just, equitable and sustainable city. Below is one such manifesto that was created in 2019, when students could sit and work together with paper, pencils and paint. That is one thing zoom break-out rooms can’t facilitate.