Located in iniva on the site of Chelsea College of Arts, the Stuart Hall Library is an excellent resource, holding collections which centres art and theory publications from the Global Majority, African, Asian, Caribbean, Polynesian, Latinx, and Diaspora perspectives. This collection is woefully underused by BA Fine Art cohorts and not well promoted to students.
For the intervention, I would like to organise a workshop designed for BA Fine Art 2nd year students.
My hope is that this workshop can provide:
- an introduction of the resources available for reference. This ranges from zines to books to audiovisual material
- open up conversations about the way that curriculum is shaped in art universities, addressing intersectionality and positionality
- introduce a library space outside of the institution which is quiet, calm and more inclusive
- an opportunity for students who would like to, to sign up for a free membership
I believe this would work best as a sign up workshop of a smallish group of around 15 students – both in terms of accommodating the group size within the physical library space, and for generating more potential for conversation. BA 2nd year also seems to be the most ideal time for students to encounter this resource as many will be starting a more independent research practice. In the past, when I have recommended the library to 3rd year dissertation students, they have often come back to me saying “I wish someone told me about this before”.
The workshop should have a practical angle as well as time for discussion. For example an activity could be to build a reading list in pairs around a specific topic, designing a zine inspired by the collection or something like this.
Since there is a programme of exhibitions and talks, another approach could be to tie the workshop into whatever is concurrent at the space.
Proposed reading list:
Barthes, R. 2013, How to live together: novelistic simulations of some everyday spaces, Columbia University Press, New York.
Bayeck, R.Y. “Positionality: The Interplay of Space, Context and Identity”, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, vol. 21, pp. 16094069221114745.
Chateigné, Y., Füchtjohann, D., Hoth, J., Miessen, M. & Schmid, L. 2016, The archive as a productive space of conflict, Sternberg Press, Berlin.
Chiang, S. (2016) Inclusive Pedagogy: Research & Practice Contributing to Policy. University of Edinburgh. [Online]. Available at: https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/electionbriefing7-inclusive-pedagogy-15-05-16.pdf
Cowden, S. and Singh, G. (2013) Acts of knowing: Critical pedagogy in, against and beyond the university. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Crenshaw, K. 1991, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color”, Stanford law review, vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 1241-1299.
Freire, P. & Freire, A.M.A. 2014, Pedagogy of hope: reliving Pedagogy of the oppressed, Bloomsbury Academic, London, England, New York, New York.
Gabriel, D. and Tate, S. (eds.) (2017) Inside the ivory tower: Narratives of women of colour surviving and thriving in British academia. London: UCL IOE Press.
Haraway, D. 1988, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, Feminist Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 575-599.
Home – iniva (2018) Institute of International Visual Arts. Available at: https://iniva.org/ (Accessed: 02 May 2024). hooks, b. 1994, Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York, New York.