IP. Proposal.

Leveraging Cultural Capital through Sharing Language.
How can the MADAD course leverage the Cultural Capital of the student’s native vernaculars to further celebrate the diversity in the classroom through multilingual approach and critical pedagogy?

UAL Data Dashboards 23/24.
Information breaking down Home and International Students. Macro to Micro scale. Institution, School, Program, Course.
 

(Dashboards, Enrolment and Profiles, Student Profiles, 2024).
Like all diverse groups, they may have varying levels of linguistic and communicative abilities and confidence with English. (Odeniyi, V. 2021) On UAL International Students.

Opportunity.
MA Design for Art Direction has 60 students, 47 of which are International, and 13 classified as Home students. Home status means they have a place of residence in the UK, but does not necessarily mean that they are of British Citizenship. Out of the 13 Home students, two student identify as British, one of which is dual nationality. This means 58 students are from diverse none British backgrounds.

Who.
My role at UAL LCC is as Course Leader for MA Design for Art Direction. I have acted within the role from the first year of the courses inception. The course has around 60 students annually that come from diverse cultural, creative, educational and professional backgrounds. The application pool is between 700-800 applications. Art Direction can be employed in a variety of industries, from fashion editorial shoots, to game design, and the courses student body represents this vast interest. To cater to this broad interest we leverage critical pedagogy and set a foundation of good practice through research. As the vast majority of the students are not from an Art Direction background, unlike similar MAs such a Graphic Design where the vast majority of students will be from a Graphic Design related background. We leverage this diverse skill set through peer collaboration throughout the year, starting in the first week of their academic year.

What is Art Direction?
We define Art Direction as communicating a narrative or feeling through the work. This is commonly through visual communication, but any medium that impact the senses are within the Art Directors toolkit. Acting within the role of an Art Director within industry requires communicating between different creatives, and noncreative stakeholders to guide and ensure a cohesive creative vision is delivered. From conception and pre-planning, to output and wrap-up.

Positionality.
I am a native English speaker, born and raised in a nonaffluent socioeconomic setting. Access to education helped deliver a broader variety of opportunity for me. As a child I had a speech impediment, which impacted my language development, and later in life it was identified that I had Dyslexia. New languages and sounds are something that I often struggle with comprehending. Meaning this proposition around language and vernacular is of a particular challenge to me, the protocols I put in place for me, can be migrated across for others that share such challenges.

Original Outline Proposition.
Link here.

Introduction to Proposition.
Research Question.
How can the MADAD course leverage the Cultural Capital of the student’s native vernaculars to further celebrate the diversity in the classroom through multilingual approach and critical pedagogy?

Hypothesis statement.
Similar to the original outline, the proposal is to use the existing Art Direction Lexicon workshop where that we co-create with the students each year, and expand and improve upon the inclusive nature of it through a multilingual, ethnolingual approach. This is in the context of a series of other community building activities employed by the MADAD team which also leverage the student’s cultural capital and diversity in the teaching space. The improvements to this workshop shop will be inspired by personal insights, expert interviews with colleagues, workshop with students, peer review with participants on the PGcert course, and research and theory.

The Lexicon. History and Context.  
The Lexicon was introduced at the start of the second year of the running of the course. After the initial year of MADAD with 22 students, there was a team realisation of the vast interest in the application of the subject matter in each of the students practices, and the many different conceptions around what the professional was. There was a desire to respond to this and engage meaningfully with the students in a discourse. The original idea was through critical pedagogy and cocreation we could together establish a collective understanding of what Art Direction meant to us, establish individual understandings, and for the students to generate an appreciation of a context with their peers diverse interests and practices in the profession represented. This is the fifth year the workshop has been ran. The intention is to review and make changes for the sixth.

Lexicon Workshop.
In the first week of starting the course students are briefed on the shared Lexicon in Unit02: Defining Design for Art Direction, and asked to consider a word, a description and a visual image they associate with Art Direction. This is then added to a live digital document. These words are discussed in two workshops, alongside a manifesto the student generate for their practice. Then the shared Lexicon is revisited near the conclusion of the week 13 in the unit, where the students presents their unit work, and reconnect to the then printed document and choose words that may not be their own to reflect upon.
 
Developing the Lexicon.
The intention is to refine and improve this experience by leveraging Cultural Capital through the students diverse vernacular, and articulate the decolonisation nature of the activity further.

Areas of improvement.
Diversity of languages shared.
Articulation of Decolonisation.
AN holistically more inclusive approach.

Research.
Theory.
The multilingual backgrounds of students and tutors should be seen as a pedagogic resource and as a legitimate part of classroom and creative practice. (Odeniyi, V. 2021). This comes from Dr Victoria Odeniyi Reimagining Conversations with Multilingual Students, a Research Fellow at UALs Decolonisation Arts Institute. Within the paper Odeniyi, V. writes about the benefits of incorporating into the curriculum the multilingual, ethnolinguistic students and staff offer and by doing this how we can ‘lay the groundwork for UAL as a whole to be recognised as a multilingual space’.

Pierre Bourdieu Cultural Capital refers to the social and cultural resources, knowledge, and experiences that individuals or groups possess, which can be used to gain advantages or access to social opportunities, goods, and services (Bourdieu, P. 1986). In the context of academia it is about leveraging this cultural resources, specifically cultural linguistics as a device for intercultural exchange and learning. (Bond, B. 2022).

UAL’s disability services advise on how to include glossary terms as best practice Guidance for Inclusive Teaching and Learning, 2019., Lexicons and glossary’s serve similar purposes. In an Anglonormative environment, leveraging the Cultural Capital of the multilingual student to decolonise the language through Translanguaging (Wand, D. 2022)

It is important to approach all of this inclusively regarding ability and be aware of Speech Sound Disorders. Language and learning a new word or phrase in a different language can be difficult for some, even for established multilingual students and staff. As mentioned earlier I am one of those people. We will ensure a multimedia approach through sound and text alongside patience and time (Santos, J. Vairinhos, M. Jesus, L, M T 2019). This is not about perfecting anything but sharing.

Peer conversation and Review with PgCert colleagues.
Meeting with Emma, and Joao.

The conversation with Emma and Joao, was an inspiring opportunity to hear others exploration, and receive feedback on the outline.

Feedback Points.


A feedback point was, is Lexicon or Glossary the correct term. It was suggested that Glossary may be the more inclusive term, but there was also the feedback not to simplify things too far. Learning a new word such as a Lexicon has is also a worthwhile action.

Definition of Lexicon.
the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge.

Definition of Glossary.
an alphabetical list of words relating to a specific subject, text, or dialect, with explanations; a brief dictionary.
Oxford Dictionary, 2024)

Upon reflection, the use of Lexicon will remain as it the more accurate word in this context and it does provide the students an opportunity to stablish a new word for those that are not familiar with it.

Workshop with students.
Meeting with four 23/24 MADAD students that had completed the Lexicon and who were working as the Copy Team for the MA Showcase 23/24.
Students. Alex, Jimin, Maria and Violette.

The selection of participants represented a variety of cultures and languages. From Cypriot, South Korean, Italian and Australian. It was insightful for the conversation to have none native English speaks but also a native English speaker with a different cultural vernacular.

The students remembered the Lexicon fondly, and described the care they took to engage with it as it being one of the first activities in class. There had been a prior conversation with the group on how a multilingual approach could be implemented for the MA showcase.

Student Self Identities. 


Quote Extracts.

Feedback Discussion Points.


There were lots of great suggestions around how the Lexicon project could be further developed in the future. There were also great insights in how the students have been unofficially sharing languages and phrases recreationally.

Expert interviews.
MADAD Lecturer Louise Healy.
Louise Healy is Unit lead for Unit02: Defining Design for Art Direction, so is often leading the Lexicon workshop.

In conversation with Louise there was an agreed understanding this workshop could be further refined, and that a multilingual approach taken. Unit02: DDAD is one of the first units of the course, but there was also the idea of how in Unit05: Final Major Project a workshop could be produced to revisit these words to help in the students thesis critical reflections.


Reevaluated Proposition.
How we setup the workshop in the future verbally and through the slides will put a greater emphasis on a multilingual approach. We will further contextualise the discourse around the conversation around decolonisation and link to our class trip on decolonisation later in the term.
Phonetic spellings of words will be encouraged alongside small audio recordings embedded.

The knowledge will be accumulative, as each year we will preserve as share the Lexicon of previous students.  

Proposed Lesson plan including Moodle entry and documents.
Moodle entry of for 26^th September 2024. What is Art Direction.

Learning Aims and Objectives.
Aim:

 Objectives:

Link. Annotated Outline for running the session included.
Link. Template document for the session included.

Conclusion Reflection.
I am appreciative I took this opportunity to critically re-evaluate a familiar practical component of the course. It is often instinct to try and generate something new, when iterations and improvements on something existing can be incredibly beneficial. Language and linguistics are out of my comfort zone due to the nature of my speech sound disorder and dyslexia, designing this workshop to accommodate others with similar challenges has been enlightening.

Appreciations go out to Carys Kennedy, who has been incredibly supportive, and to all of the participants of this research, Alex, Emma Hamshare, Jimin, Joao Maraschin, Louise Healy, Maria, and Violette.





Reference List.
Antonia, D. (2018). ‘The Student Guide to Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed’. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Bourdieu, P. (1983). ‘The Forms of Capital’. In J. G. Richardson. ‘Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education’. New York: Greenwood Press.

Browning, P. Highet, K. Azada-Palacios, R. Douek, T. Gong, E.Y. Sunyol, A. (2022). ‘Conspiring to decolonise language teaching and learning: reflections and reactions from a reading group’. London Review of Education, 20 (1), 42. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.20.1.42.

Dashboards, Enrolment and Profiles, Student Profiles, (2024). Available at https://dashboards.arts.ac.uk/dashboard/ActiveDashboards/DashboardPage.aspx?dashboardid=5c6bb274-7645-4500-bb75-7e334f68ff24&dashcontextid=638573471260687090 . Last accessed 11th July 2024.

Guidance for Inclusive Teaching and Learning, Disability Inclusion Toolkit, (2019). Canvas UAL. Available at https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/sites/explore/SitePage/45680/disability-inclusion-toolkit . Last accessed 11th July 2024.

Kahn, P. E. Misiaszek, L, I. (2022). ‘Educational Mobilities and Internationalised Higher Education’. Available at www.doi.org/10.4324/9781003358626 . Last accessed 11th July 2024.

Oxford Dictionary, (2024). Available at https://www.oed.com/?tl=true . Last accessed 11th July 2024.

Santos, J. Vairinhos, M. Jesus, L, M T 2019. ‘Treating Children With Speech Sound Disorders: Development of a Tangible Artefact Prototype’. National Library of Medicine. Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6923759/ . Last accessed 11th July 2024.

Victoria Odeniyi, (2022). ‘Reimaging Conversations with Multilingual Students’. London: UALs Decolonisation Arts Institute.

Wang, D. (2022). ‘Translanguaging as a decolonising approach: students’ perspectives towards integrating Indigenous epistemology in language teaching’. Wiley Online Library. Available at https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/applirev-2022-0127/html . Last accessed 11th July 2024.