Maliha Miriam PGCert 2024/25

Intervention: Formative Assessment

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by

Maliha Miriam
in

Intervention around Self Initiated Projects

Although we weave EDI loosely into every Live Brief that we do, the one area that we can really focus on it thoughtfully and deliberately is the students’ Self Initiated Projects. These are projects that are individual projects, that students can complete in the DPS year or beyond.

Every year we work with a group called Creative Conscience. I first came across this group at a Screen School Away Day. The have an annual competition that creatives across the UK can apply to. Their annual awards are based around the UN 14 sustainability goals. I reached out to them to see if they would come to LCC to speak about their work and their awards to students. The basis for this collaboration was that Creative Conscience is an incredibly inspiring organisation, supporting varied, relevant, revolutionary work in EDI.  I would also like to utilise my own research interests and promote representation both on and off screen that match the demographics of London and the UK. This would certainly help me integrate my research into the programme – and make me feel like I am teaching!

Whilst this is offered every year, it has not been fleshed out into a formal programme and because of this, students are not engaged in this part of the programme. I would like to re-establish this as a core of the student experience on DPS and promote it further.

Here is an outline of the timetable, which I feel would be feasible:

September
Students invited to submit ideas for their SIPS over the summer. Feedback on all of these is given at this point to strengthen its relevance to the UN Sustainability goals.

October
Staff sessions with students to flesh out ideas. Zoe Tynan Campbell talks about charting values. I can speak about the importance of embedding EDI in our work, representation on and off screen. I can ask someone from the Climate Change group to speak around sustainability.

November
Creative Conscience comes in to speak to students about their organisation, the awards, past winners.

December
Tutorials to discuss ideas individually.

January
Students pitch ideas to Creative Conscience, staff and peers. At this point, students are able to recruit other students or promote their work to gain

February – May
Monthly meeting to support progress plus tutorials if needed

June
Screening/showcase of final projects with Creative Conscience

Past students work that can highlight the variety of what students can do:

Tears of a Clown: A film championing neurodiverse talent both on and off screen.

Children’s Book: This book was tailored for children growing up with domestic violence and was picked up by the Isle of Wight Council as a resource for them to support families.

Games Arts projects: A series of costumes designed for women and Global Majority based on Games characters.

Desi Heels X: A filmed dance project showcasing the fusion of traditional Indian dance and contemporary dance.

Comments

4 responses to “Intervention: Formative Assessment”

  1. Carys Kennedy Avatar
    Carys Kennedy

    Thank you Maliha for sharing your proposed intervention, which involves futher formalising the existing collaboration with Creative Conscience to support students to embed EDI into their self-initiated projects.

    It’s great that your idea builds on an existing strength in DPS, as well as drawing upon your own expertise and research interests. I also really enjoyed reading briefly about previous students’ work, which gives a strong sense of how the SIP can connect with inclusion.

    The main elements of feedback I have at this stage are things I am confident you will develop when you get to your reflective report:

    • Be prepared to articulate the evidence base for your intervention’s importance. I recommend using dashboards.arts.ac.uk to look at relevant data for your course, such as awarding gaps, retention/continuation gaps, and NSS data. You might also want to draw upon Dr Duna Sabri’s research*.

    • When you get to your reflective report, you will need to articulate about your own positionality further (you touch upon this briefly in your formative). How does your positionality influence the choices you make, and what potential biases may you need to mitigate against?

    I’m also curious about how students respond to embedding EDI into their self-initiated projects. Is this optional, or embedded in the Learning Outcomes? I ask because I am imagining that some students may not be as interested in Climate, Racial and Social Justice as others – what if students choose not to engage with this?

    I’m also wondering about the pitch in January, which I am imagining has some parallels to a crit. How will you work to ensure that students can talk safely and openly about their ideas if they venture into sensitive or personal topics? I imagine you will have seen The Room of Silence** (if not, it’s definitely worth a watch) and it would be great to hear how you plan to create a safer space for students to share their work.

    I look forward to chatting this through with you at our upcoming tutorial.

    *Dr Duna Sabri’s research: https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14370/1/year%204%20report%20-%20%20final.pdf

    **The Room of Silence: https://www.eloisesherrid.com/the-room-of-silence

    Reply
  2. Guan-Wen Shen Avatar
    Guan-Wen Shen

    Hi Maliha,
    It is very nice to know there is an organisation – Creative Conscience – to reward, encourage and promote valuable EDI work in arts.
    The integration of EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) and sustainability (via the UN SDGs) strongly reflects UAL’s mission and wider sectoral goals so it is a very strong intervention plan.
    I am curious about your approach to encourage students to take part in this competition as there is an admin fee before entering it. For some students, this may be the first hurdle. I would imagine students may ask would their schools/programmes/courses be able to pay this for them?
    It is also very good to see you already think about the additional support or tutorials for students between February and May. I am also curious how would you allocate the tutors to students? Would they be matched based on the EDI area or the art work itself, I guess what I am trying to ask is what the mechanism here if students wish to discuss issues or impact more related to social justice, and some may prefer to discuss environmental impact?
    I like the timeline approach that you presented your plan. It shows you thoroughly ‘plan’ it and with clear educational merit. I enjoy reading it. Thank you.

    Reply
  3. Grace O'Driscoll Avatar
    Grace O’Driscoll

    Hi Maliha, this sounds like such an exciting prospect for students. I am not sure if this is across all sites and courses but at Camberwell there has been a move to expect Fine Art students engage with a wide interpretation of Social Justice in almost all their project work. This is more stretching for some students than others but overall it really does seem to have introduced a strong premise for theory and criticality that might otherwise have been difficult to draw into some student research topics. As someone who meets students at the research stage of their work it has been really helpful to be able to explore this as a formal strand of each project rather than trying to shoe-horn it in. It sounds like your approach of giving clarity to this brief and making the expectations explicit, in addition to supporting the students knowledge base with more input from the Creative Conscience organisation – equipping students and giving them confidence to succeed even if it’s outside of their current passions – will make this brief much more central to their learning and potentially to some students overall outlook. Involving external bodies like this, especially if they can come and contribute as speakers sounds like a really powerful experience to deliver. I wonder if there is a parallel opportunity for any students who might not want to participate in the competition but might want to delivery an alternate project in some way.

    Reply
  4. Hatie Mapudzi Avatar
    Hatie Mapudzi

    Maliha, your intervention plan is rich in potential and reveals a strong commitment to meaningfully embedding EDI in student-led creative work. Indeed, this would allow an exclusive opportunity for students to meaningfully explore identity, representation, and social issues in a self-directed way, thus moving from light-touch EDI in live briefs to a more thoughtful and scaffolded approach during SIPs. I applaud the strategic external collaboration with Creative Conscience, which is a major strength and their alignment with the UN SDGs brings real-world relevance and a values-based framework, while also offering students access to an inspiring external platform and wider audience for their work. The timelines are achievable, and it balances organised or structured input (talks, tutorials, pitching) with enough time for students to develop and refine their ideas independently. Something I would like to know, will these projects be assessed, credited, or showcased more formally? If not credit-bearing, are the students going to effectively participate (they are often motivated by the rewards)? In terms of sustainability, is this going to be embedded as a formal thread within the DPS year moving forward? How are you going to measure success? Otherwise, this is an exciting and meaningful intervention that positions EDI and sustainability at the heart of creative education, not just as an add-on, but also as a core creative driver.

    Reply

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