Darren Raven, Darryl Clifton

We were very pleased to welcome Darren Raven to participate in a conversation about his ongoing ‘Lecture Zine’ project. 

Darryl Clifton
Can you give us an overview of the project?


Darren Raven   
Oh, well, thanks, Darryl. Thanks for asking me.
Really happy to talk about this.
It's my third daily Instagram project.
I did a year of making soup which was about experimenting with food and food culture.

And then, using an iPhone, I made animations from the world around me and applied a techno track to them. This year I decided to do something a bit more related to my day job in education. They are daily Instagram posts of 12 pages. 12 slides called Lecture Zines. It's meant to represent the idea of a fanzine, you know, quick.

They tackle ideas to do with design, design education, professional practise, politics, education theory and whatever grasps me, you know, whatever I see that is shiny and I then ‘whittle’ something down from.
They’re meant to be provocative, slightly flippant and irreverent.
I'm trying to learn as I do them, I'm learning about politics and feminism and the things that a lot of the students are really into. So, it gives me an opportunity to ‘meet’ them and understand things.

I have an ex colleague who claimed she was a professor in wilful amateurism, I love that phrase. So, I borrowed the approach.

I'm playing with the idea of, you know what that platform is.
I am also posting some of them on LinkedIn and it's interesting to see the different reactions from the different participants on each platform. So I don't know if that answers your question, but they're a thing. They're on my Instagram account and they evolve.


Darryl Clifton   
Well, that does more than adequately answer that first question about describing what they are, and I would encourage anyone who's listening to this recording to go and have a look at the work that Darren's been producing.

it's a huge commitment so kudos to you for staying with it. It's an act of devotion!


Darren Raven   
Yeah.
It seemed like a good idea. It was December last year that it [began] and seemed ‘doable’. I thought it would be a lot less work than a one minute 20 animation every day, but in some respects the animations were [easier]. There's thought in them (the animations), but it was the different type of thought, more visual, whereas these have to be a bit more coherent.
They take about an hour to two hours [to produce]


I use small parcels of time.
For many years I [found] it very difficult to make creative outputs because my [energy] was in my educational practise and that sucks a lot of energy out of you. [And then] I got to a point where I was no longer a programme leader. I had time. I was more free to think about my practise.


I started because I was burnt out as an illustrator, as a graphic artist, so I started playing with food, you know, and that's where the soup project came from.


I could I could do a separate talk about that, but I won't. But yeah, the act of doing something daily is really important to me. It's about using the small parcels of time that are often wasted, little moments in staff meetings when you're not active.
You know when somebody else is talking about something that's not really your thing, but you're there in the meeting because you're 4th or 5th on the agenda, so you need to be present. Those little moments where, you know, maybe you'd be tempted to do an Excel spreadsheet or some kind of performative admin. I do these instead.


Darryl Clifton   
That reminds me of John Vernon Lord’s Drawn to Drawing. It’s a fairly comprehensive record of his sketch and note book work and includes incredibly intense doodles produced during meetings at Brighton when he was working as a teacher there.


I'm interested in how you understand the impact of these resources. They function as resources for your postgraduate students and it's an intensive and, almost, incessant stream of information/provocation. But how do you think they respond?


From your perspective what do you think it's doing for them?


Darren Raven   
Part of the project is for my current cohort students who will be finishing soon. They seem to react to the immediacy of them. Some don't necessarily delve as deep into the content as they could and some pick and choose. I asked a few students what they thought and a couple said, oh, they're very difficult to read.
I've shared the zines on LinkedIn and Instagram and there is a link to the Google Slides repository so, if people want to go to the actual slides then they can and if they want to go in and copy and paste the text or click on the links they can also do that.

I’m aware that I’m probably not focused on accessibility as much as I should be. Sometimes I make them and they are in direct response to an assignment, a module or a learning outcome. And sometimes a theme, or a moment or something that's happening in the world. We also have weekly housekeeping with the students, and that's mainly where I've shown them. I've been kind of careful to ensure that aren't classed as core module.
If they were official institutional things I wouldn't be able to make them daily. I'd have to get things signed off or check or make sure that I'm not offending anybody or saying something that's out of step institutionally.
So I usually say, oh, this is my Instagram today do you want to see it? And most of them say yes. I don't do it with every single one.
I think the main thing is sometimes I'm asking them to do very challenging things.
And I'm doing that from my position of someone who's been there, done that. I know it's useful for them. So, they can sort of look at me and go well. What are you doing? You know? And by doing this I, kind of, feel like I'm walking the walk. You know, this process is developmental for me.


I'm hopefully not working in a manner which I'm modelling as the way to work, but  showing students how I am engaging with contextual, theoretical, critical and complex ideas and trying to relate them to visual communication practise, which is something that their MA asks them to do and it's one of the main things that majority of them struggle with.
Particularly coming from undergrad, where a lot of the critical and contextual study aspects have shifted focus towards more employability or professionalisation

Darren Raven   
More recently some of the students are referencing the zines and that's quite funny to see. I always feel a bit weird about that.
But they're not just saying Darren said this or this zine said that they're taking on some of the theories, taking ownership, sometimes misunderstanding them but having a go which is really interesting. We took some international students to the Whitworth where the Women in Riot exhibition was showing. So that opened up conversations in the studios afterwards. So, I was able to point to some of the zines and [talk about some key theories]. So the zines are visual tools at hand to point at, not dusty tomes or links on the institutional web site.


Darryl Clifton   
You said that they are not proposed as a formal resource for the course?

But to see the material from the zines fed back to you in some form or other, and to know that there's some level of engagement, is a very positive thing.


What would you say your vision for positive student engagement is?

And.
Could you just explore the rationale for this particular method? I'm curious to know what the ideology is? What's the philosophy supporting this approach?

I shifted from undergrad teaching to post grad about 2-3 years ago after about 20 years on undergrad and I just thought yeah, that'll be fine but actually it was quite a shift for me. 
The students on the masters where I teach are very diverse in terms of their previous experience and their agendas. So, it's a bit like teaching on foundation to be honest.
In the ways that you can't be as ‘One-size-fits-all’. The modules are shared so I went back to some of my educational theory stuff and looking at Andrew Goggie and ideas relating to the education of adults. He talks about self-learning, you know, I always think of a man in a shed learning how to Weld, you know, without wanting to read any books or anything like that. And I also thought about constructivism. You know, the idea of scaffolding and gradually taking away the support, but this is fast constructivism, because we've only got them for a year. So, I was kind of trying to smash together constructivism and Andrew Goggie.


The zines are in categories and they draw from theory.
So they trick people into doing things which some of them are very fast and some of them are slower. In the last one I worked with a group to create a list of 100 formats so they all submitted ideas and had to pick 10.
The approach is a bit Steiner, giving the students gifts, the idea of prompts, tests, tricks, toys and they can pick and choose from them, which fits with the idea of choice. They need choice and to feel ownership; that they're choosing things which fit with their current idea of where they're going, what they want to do and why they're doing it.

We're really lucky to have a nice studio space with sofas, we all sit around in a sofa, a bit like an encounter group where we all share what we've been looking at that week.


I respond to them. They respond to me, it's cooperative.
What we're doing in the studio doesn't seem like academic activity is happening. You know, like some of the sessions where we make soup, it's a bit like Lego Serious play but with vegetables.


We talk while making the soup and then we'll have lunch together. It's really nice and as they're chatting I'm posing questions. Well, we determine what questions they want to ask or what they want to talk about while we're making soup. And then afterwards they go away, it's much better than sitting around asking everybody what they have you done this week or what have you not done this week or what do you what did you intend to do but now feel bad that you didn't do?

Darryl Clifton   
How would you characterise this approach?


Darren Raven   
So I don't really teach illustration. I teach how to think about your life?
In and around, doing whatever you call illustration is.
I've got a very broad definition of what it (illustration) is. You know, it's not a noun. It's more a verb.
I think I'm quite frustrating to some of the students initially, but they warm to it eventually realise I don't mean them harm.

Darryl Clifton   
That is a real challenge.  I'm conscious of my own bias towards underestimation. And then, all of a sudden you find yourself in a situation where, perhaps you are making soup or you are engaged in an activity which is seemingly unrelated and you realise that's where, you get the genuine engagement and openness to learning.


Darren Raven   
Sometimes we go and sit in the stairwells which are quite transient spaces. But they're quiet, you know, and fun. You know, we try, and let the studio to be their (the students) space.


Darryl Clifton   
Yeah.
That's interesting. So, the teaching space has become everywhere (else), but the studio, is different. Almost social or residential.


Darren Raven   
We're lucky that we've been given this space, it's a whole floor of a 1960/70s art school. We've got a relatively new building at MMU, which is quite nice, but the old building is [also] nice and we're in there. We're on the 6th floor and have a nice view.
We've got a fridge, a microwave and a kettle. So the students, are in there for a while, it's nice, you know, it's proper old school. It's quite rare. Really lucky, really.

 
Darren Raven   
[I used to carry around physical copies of] lots of the regular things like diagrams and theories, and you know, like Scott Macleod's narrative transitions or just anything that I've found myself frequently referring to. I photocopied them down to A6 size. And I carried this with me. The Lecture zine is kind of similar. I can point to stuff. I'm trying to build like a an archive or a legacy, you know, that I think people might refer back to in the future, I don't know.
People keep saying, are you going to publish it? And I'm like, well, it is published.

Darryl Clifton   
That answers the next question in a way, but I’ll ask it all the same. I'm interested in the effects of the speed of transmission of information, it's making evident generational ‘breaks’. The frequency of the Zines feel in step with this wider cultural expectation particularly for a younger generation who seem to expect incessant flows of information through multiple platforms, more and more information and faster. How do you square this with your understanding of how learning happens for post grad students? Do you think that they're completely in lockstep? 
Seems like you've made a decision to use that platform at this speed and rhythm because that is the contemporary expectation and how a generation engage with information.


Darren Raven
Kind of. I don't know if I was that thoughtful about it. You know, because I've done the previous projects and I'm locked into Instagram and it kind of fits with being able to generate the stuff and post it on my phone.
I could pre load things and do all that stuff that influencers do, you know with timed posts, but I don't want to automate it that much. I get a bit of thrill from hitting ‘post’.
I learned from the soup project, which started by accident, after about a month or two, you get the thrill of seeing your grid build on Instagram. You know, it's very pleasing. 
I think you start to understand reflecting on action. You notice patterns that you can't see in an hour or day.
After three months, you're like, oh, God, I always do that, you know? Or I've used a lot of red. What does that mean? 
So the speed of output fits with my speed of thought, but also allows me to log things so I can, over time, understand what I'm doing because I really struggle with reading. You know the material that I'm engaging with to make these things. I can't read those books or articles cover to cover. I have to dip in and out.

Darren Raven   
I do understand that for some people it can be overwhelming, friends have said they struggle to keep up if they are trying to read every single word and engage with it on a deep level. Some of the students have said they find it quite comforting or reassuring that they're appearing every day. They fit my attention span and I think they fit the attention spans of some of the students. Rather than doom scrolling I do this. I use the doom scrolling to feed them, so it's a way of coping, perhaps…

https://www.instagram.com/drnraven/

Darren Raven is a design educator committed to progressive, critical, and radical forms of education. A National Teaching Fellow and founding member of the Graphic Design Educators’ Network, he has over twenty years’ experience as both practitioner and lecturer. Formerly a freelance illustrator, his current work explores creative, experimental approaches to pedagogy. In 2025 he began producing a daily 12-page Lecture-Zine series on Instagram, an ongoing experiment in publishing the scholarship of teaching and learning through accessible, authentic visual, and dialogic forms.

In Conversation with Darren Raven

illustration educators

We are pleased to announce our events schedule for 2026. All members are welcome to attend. Links access online events will be sent out to members the week before the event. 

Breakfast Club: Wednesday 11th February 2026, 08:30 GMT

Reading Group: Wednesday 4th March 2026, 13.30 GMT

Discussion Event: Wednesday 11th March 2026, 13.30 GMT

Breakfast Club: Wednesday 1st April 2026, 08.30 GMT

Reading Group: Friday 24th April 2026, 13.30 GMT

Breakfast Club: Wednesday 6th May 2026, 08.30 GMT

Discussion Event: Friday 15th May 2026, 13.30 GMT 

Breakfast Club: Wednesday 3rd June 2026, 08.30 GMT 

Reading Group: Friday 19th June 2026, 13.30 GMT

Breakfast Club: Wednesday 2nd September 2026, 08.30 GMT 

Reading Group: Friday 18th September 2026, 13.30 GMT 

Breakfast Club: Wednesday 7th October 2026, 08.30 GMT 

Breakfast Club: Wednesday 4th November 2026, 08.30 GMT 

Breakfast Club: Wednesday 2nd December 2026, 08.30 GMT    

Gathering: (Time, Date and Venue TBC - this event will be in-person and online) 

Membership Events 2026

Agitation, Oscillation, Embodiment. The Spaces Between

Our creative and professional conventions, modalities and pedagogies are in flux. The rapid integration of Machine Learning technologies into, well, just about everything that is digitally tethered, is having a radical and destabilising effect. Uncertainty abounds; where, what and how we practice as educators are real and immediate questions. The old paradigm(s) that shaped our practices are being reframed. Ideas like superposition, existing in multiple ‘states’ simultaneously, and entanglement, are no longer abstract or remote scientific concepts. They describe our ways of being; we are physical with/through/in the digital, interdependent, knotty and distributed. In these fluid and dynamic spaces, political and legal rhetoric pushes us toward ideological polarisation, forcing us to pick a side, plant a flag. Outright rejection or brazen adoption become framed as the only viable options. In this fervour, are we losing the critical engagement that as educators we are so good at, do we risk making declarations without the literacies to substantiate them? How might we leverage values of interconnectedness and uncertainty in this multiplicity? Should we claim the cartography of new, complex and shifting Illustration topographies? What tolerances do we have to refuse coherence? How might we sit with this discomfort and is there  value in this space of ambiguity? Could we retool the vulnerability we are experiencing at this moment?

This year’s theme aims to capture the richness, scope and complexity of ideas that emerged at the gathering which took place in November 2025 at Kingston School of Art in London. The quality of the questions developed out of that conversation are inadequately represented above, however we have tried to acknowledge the need to create a discursive space that enfolds some of the specifics of our working practices while recognising that we are living through the most significant and rapid technological evolution in several lifetimes. The challenges presented by this radical turn are extensive and, at times, overwhelming but we might challenge ourselves to to recognise the value in our embodied practices, as educators and creatives. This could be a beginning, or touchpoint, that precedes a radical developmental stage for our discipline which ought not preclude individual or ethical agency but instead offer opportunity. 

Theme 2026: Agitation-Oscillation-Embodiment

We warmly invite you to  the annual 'Gathering' Event for illustration educators! Join us at Town House, Kingston University on Friday 7th November , 2025 for a day of making, discussing, sharing, reflecting and developing.

This is our second in person gathering will offer us the opportunity to consider the years’ activities on the theme 'Vectors of Hope’. We are interested in exploring new ways of teaching and learning that are helping to shape illustration education in a world that feels increasingly uncertain. 

We welcome all educators to book a ticket through eventbite, ie members receive a discounted ticket. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. Please email us directly with  questions, we would love to hear from you. 

Gathering 2025: information and tickets here!

Rachel Emily Taylor, Philip Kennedy

Reading Group is a recurring format where members share and discuss resources used before, during, and after teaching illustration. Do you want to prepare and share something for our next event? Please let us know at: mail@illustrationeducators.org

Through Witnessing: Threading the critiquing, making, teaching of design (Set Margins’, 2025) by Nida Abdullah, Chris Lee, Xinyi Li (Eds.)  https://www.setmargins.press/books/throughwitnessing/

‘The transposing illustrator: Challenges and opportunities meeting the authorial illustrator that interacts, documents and bears witness of the unrepresented and the non-representable; (Journal of Illustration, Volume 10, Issue Transitus, 2023) by Hilde Kramer https://doi.org/10.1386/jill_00060_1

I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own (Chicago University Press, 2011) by Michael Taussig https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo11637787.html

Recording Britain: A Pictorial Domesday of Pre-war Britain (David & Charles, 1990) by Gill Saunders, Patrick Wright, David Mellor https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1500059633

Heimat: A German Family Album (Penguin Books, 2018) Nora Krug https://nora-krug.com/belonging-heimat

Rachel Emily Taylor and Philip Kennedy led the event. It used the recently published Through Witnessing (2025) as a starting point for a broader discussion on the role of witnessing within illustration and illustration education. The session adopted the book’s technique of threading – an approach that allows for multiple narrative strands and interpretive routes, structuring the session to weave together various points of entry and divergence. This method aimed to encourage open discussion, drawing connections across illustration practice and pedagogy.

Rachel opened the session with a short extract from the book’s introduction, in which editors Nida Abdullah, Chris Lee and Xinyi Li define witnessing:

The act of witnessing is interwoven with complicity, corroboration, and contradiction. It implies endurance through time, a demand for accountability, as well as acts of collective memorialization and support that make real something that might have otherwise remained in the shadows, forgotten and not believed. Witnessing is also a way of learning and reflecting. (Abdullah, Lee & Li, 2025, p. 4)

Rachel reflected on Hilde Kramer’s research into illustrating the unrepresentable and on the idea of documentary drawing as testimony – illustration as an act to bear witness. She also revisited Michael Taussig’s I Swear I Saw This (which she discussed in a previous reading group), in which the anthropologist writes about drawing in his fieldwork notebooks as:

“...more than the result of seeing. It is a seeing that doubts itself (...) This must be where witnessing separates itself from seeing, where witnessing becomes holy writ: mysterious, complicated, powerful. And necessary.” (Taussig, 2011, p. 2)

For Philip, the text provided a productive prompt to reflect on his own relationship with the term witnessing, particularly its relationship to other forms of 'seeing' within illustration practice and pedagogy. Terms like observing, looking, or perceiving can often be conflated, but unpacking their intent reveals important distinctions. He, too, referenced Taussig, drawing from a later point in the book:

“If I say that my drawing is an act of witness, what I mean to say is that it aspires to a certain gravity beyond the act of seeing with one’s own eyes. To witness, as opposed to see, is to be implicated in a process of judgment…” (Taussig, 2011, p. 71)

This led Philip to Claire Doran’s recent PhD study, Engaged Witnessing (2024), which examines three Holocaust education texts: Anne Frank’s Diary, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. In her introduction, Doran defines the core concept:

“I define engaged witnessing as addressing the gap between empathy and action and signifying the inspiration of an empathetic response that requires responsibility and can motivate action.”

With this framing in mind, Philip proposed that words like witnessing can function as bridging terms, verbs that connect inner experience with outward action; in the case of Doran, witnessing bridges the gap between empathy and responsibility, prompting an actionable response.

            By extension, he explored how witnessing might be positioned in contrast to a word like gaze, which is often bound up with power. Drawing on John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1973), he recalled how the gaze (particularly the male or imperial gaze) functions to categorise, distance, or claim ownership. He also referenced Susan Sontag’s view in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), which considers how suffering, especially through photographs, does not necessarily foster understanding. The gaze, she warns, can desensitise; only witnessing, with context and intent, holds the potential to mobilise.

Building on these conceptual distinctions, Philip brought along two books to explore how terms like seeing, recording, and witnessing might operate in practice.

The first, Recording Britain, speaks more to the act of documentation than to witnessing in the ethical or accountable sense outlined earlier. The word "recording" is central here – not just in the title, but in the project's purpose. Commissioned by the British government during World War II, it employed artists to produce topographical watercolours of the British landscape at a time when a Nazi invasion felt imminent. The initiative functioned as both documentary and propaganda: an attempt to preserve a vision of Britain worth defending.

In the context of this reading group, Recording Britain prompts reflection on the politics of preservation. Does it present an idealised, even sentimental view of a nation at war? Philip proposed the book as a way to consider recording as a bridge between seeing and keeping: “I saw this, and now it is kept.” To record is to conserve, appreciate, and often to remember. But this act is never neutral. It’s bound up in values and ideologies: What gets remembered? Who decides what is worth recording? Through witnessing, by contrast, we might say: “I saw this, and now I am responsible.”

This led naturally to Nora Krug’s 2018 graphic memoir Heimat, which explores themes of identity, inherited guilt, and belonging through her lived experience as a second-generation German reckoning with her country’s Nazi past. Through a blend of personal narrative and archival research, Krug confronts the silence and ambivalence that shaped postwar German attitudes to history.

Importantly, Heimat is not simply a record of her family’s past. Krug defines her work as a form of witnessing. Her illustrations aren’t neutral artefacts; they are visual testimonies of moral inquiry. Constructed from family archives, interviews, and found ephemera, the book acknowledges its gaps, contradictions, and uncomfortable truths. It dwells in the complexities of intergenerational responsibility.

In May, Philip attended a talk by Krug at the International Literature Festival in Dublin, where she emphasised that witnessing is central to her practice. In her words: “By making history visible, we commit to it – we make it visible to others, and in doing so, we become witnesses, and we make our readers witnesses too.”

After sharing this work, Rachel and Philip introduced projects by two recent graduates. As leaders of BA Illustration courses – Rachel at Camberwell College of Arts and Philip at the National College of Art and Design – they aimed to highlight how the notion of witnessing may already be emerging within their teaching practices, and to reflect on the value of embedding it more intentionally into illustration curricula. Philip presented Tommy Myles' work, which uses blind drawing and sculpture to create abstracted memorials of buildings under threat of demolition - visual acts that both record and mourn. Rachel shared Ayshe-Mira Yashin's four-part visual essay on British Overseas Territories in Cyprus. Developed through on-site research, her sketchbooks formed the basis of refined visual translations that highlight power, place, and presence.

The presentation was followed by a lively discussion that questioned how the concept of witnessing might be explored or challenged in our roles as illustration educators. Attendees also shared a rich collection of related resources.

Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering, The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

Claire Doran, Engaged Witnessing: An Ethical Framework for Teaching the Holocaust (PhD, 2024)

John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Penguin, 1972)

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others  (Penguin, 2004)

Forensic Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London,

Nick Willing, Paula Rego, Secrets & Stories (BBC, 2017)

Daniel Torrent, One day, two weeks, three months… (Edicions Cal·lígraf, 2015)

Saidiya Hartman, Venus in Two Acts (Small Axe, 2008)

Nora Krug, Diaries of War (Penguin, 2022)

Timothy Snyder and Nora Krug, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Penguin, 2021)

Saidiya Hartman, Gallery 214: Critical Fabulations (MoMA, 2021) 

Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman – Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth (Verso Books, 2021)

James Bridle, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence (Penguin, 2022)

Members who attended the event and contributed to this list of resources

Reading Group: Friday 13th of June 2025

This year’s theme looks at how new ways of teaching and learning are helping to shape illustration education in a world that feels increasingly uncertain. Through a series of online events, workshops, and conversations, we’ll share ideas and approaches that respond to change, and explore how we can support creativity at every stage of life. By bringing together educators, practitioners, and researchers, we hope to build an open, supportive space for learning, making, and sharing—one that’s inclusive, adaptable, and forward-looking.

Sharing ideas and resources is central to what we do. The Illustration Educators website acts as a platform to connect us, and to publicly advocate for our shared interests and concerns. We also invite members to contribute resources they’ve created in response to this year’s theme.

We chose the word hope for the theme title after much discussion—it wasn’t a decision we took lightly. But when I read Rebecca Solnit’s latest book, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain (2025), her use of the word hope really struck a chord. It captured exactly the feeling we were trying to express.

… I’ve cherished unpredictability as the other face of possibility — if you already know what's going to happen, then there's nothing more or nothing else possible, a view that often leads to disengagement and passivity. But mostly we don’t know; those proclamations about inevitability are often false prophesies. Hope in this sense is just the recognition that in that uncertainty there may be the space in which we move towards the best and away from the worst of those possibilities, that the future is not a place that already exists, towards which we are trudging, but a place that we are creating with what we do (or don’t) in the present. Or, rather, hope is that recognition and a commitment to the peruse of the better possibilities within the spaciousness of the unknown, the not yet created. As Audre Lorde said “To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security, (they don’t mean me), or by despair, (there’s nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it.” - Rebecca Solnit, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uncertain Times (2025)

Theme 2025: Vectors of Hope

Reading Group is a reoccurring format where members share and discuss resources used before, during and after teaching illustration. Reading Group takes place on Zoom and lasts for about 1.5 hrs.

Do you want to prepare and share something for our next event? Please let us know at mail@illustrationeducators.org

Together by Richard Sennet (Penguin Books 2013) link

Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border-Thinking Approach to Design by Danah Abdulla in Design Struggles Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives Claudia Mareis and Nina Paim (eds.) (Valiz 2021) link

The event was led by Darryl Clifton who introduced two readings; an excerpt from Richard Sennet’s Together and another from Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border-Thinking Approach to Design by Danah Abdulla, an essay included in Design Struggles Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives which is edited by Claudia Mareis and Nina Paim.

The focus for the first reading comes from a chapter in Sennet’s book that explores the ‘spectrum of exchange’. Here Sennet is essentially describing what motivates individuals to participate in cooperative activity. The spectrum he refers to ranges from altruism to Winner-takes-all. The so-called sweet spot in the middle of the spectrum is the differentiating exchange, ‘the province of dialogics’.

Sennet refers to the history and development of coffee houses, cafés and pubs in eighteenth century England that were designed to encourage customers to talk to one another. Mutual exchange encouraged customers to stay longer and buy more, but equally these chance encounters enabled ‘valuable, unexpected information through gossip,’ where ‘a chance remark may suddenly open up a new vein of endeavour…’. It is this aspect of the dialogic encounter that resonated with me in relation to the provocation ‘who educates’. Chance encounters and informal conversations were prevalent in the studio as it formerly existed in British Art Schools. Here it is also necessary to acknowledge the research of Duna Sabri. Work undertaken while Sabri worked at UAL revealed that opportunities to engage in chance encounters and informal discussion radically improved a student’s chances of achieving at a high level – Sennet’s claim that this degree of informal dialogic exchange might offer new conceptual and practical avenues would seem to have a bearing on this seemingly prosaic (but significant) outcome. So, the ‘who’ of who educates in these scenarios transcends the obvious tutor student (transactional) dynamic, chance encounters, incidental conversations and informality between all participants would seem to offer more to the potlatch of learning – we might all educate one another.

In the text Sennet also refers to the importance of edges and boundaries, he says: “Edges come in two sorts: boundaries and borders. A boundary is a relatively inert edge; population thins out at this sort of edge and there is relatively little exchange among creatures. A border is a more active edge, as at the shoreline dividing ocean and land; this is a zone of intense biological activity, a feeding ground for animals, a nutrient zone for plants. In human ecology, the eight-lane highway isolating parts of the city from each other is a boundary, whereas the mixed-use street at the edge between two communities can be more of a border.”

Sennet’s description of the difference between borders and boundaries segued neatly on to the second reading from Danah Abdulla’s essay in a section called Border-Thinking as method. Here Abdulla contends that “Border-thinking is a decolonial concept “focuse[d] on changing the terms of the conversation and not only its content.”55 Decoloniality crosses borders of thought to craft another space for the production of knowledge.56 ” Abdulla goes on to reference the work of Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry and speaks about border thinking as systemic, requiring a ‘rethinking’ of disciplines in order to challenge the hegemony of Eurocentric modernism. Abdulla, alluding to Arturo Escobar, is proposing an erosion of the disciplinary boundaries by first exploring the capacity for Design (and Illustration) to embrace a ‘set of practices attuned to the relational dimension of life’.

Design in the Borderlands: An introduction by Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry

Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing by Walter D. Mignolo

Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking by Walter D Mignolo

World-System Analysis in the Context of Transmodernity, Border Thinking and Global Coloniality by Ramón Grosfoguel

Learning to Unlearn: Decolonial Reflections from Eurasia and the Americas by Madina V. Tlostanova and Walter D. Mignolo

Extinction: A Radical History by Ashley Dawson

Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise by Arturo Escobar

The Disimagination Machine and the Pathologies of Power by Henry A. Giroux

Reading Group: Friday 17th May 2024

illustration educators Gathering November 21st 2024

Hello everyone we are really excited to announce the details of our first annual  iIllustration educators ‘Gathering’ event which will take place at the Royal College of Art’s Rausing Research & Innovation building in Battersea, London on Thursday the 21st of November 2024. 

We are also very pleased to share with you that Dr Catrin Morgan from Parsons New School, Kunyalala (Kone) Ndlovu practitioner and founder of BCAS and Sinead Evans, from University of the Arts, London, will act as ‘facilitators’ for activities that include discussion, making and sharing, throughout the day. Catrin, Kone and Sinead have thoughtfully prepared these short, enlivening sessions and participants will have the opportunity to experience each one throughout the day.. 

The day will run from 10am – 4pm, including breaks and lunch. 

Catrin Morgan is Assistant Professor in Illustration at Parsons School of Design. She is an Illustrator, artist and designer whose practice is concerned with mathematical, architectural and theoretical systems. Catrin has an MA in Communication Art and Design from the Royal College of Art in London and a PhD in Visual Communication also from the RCA.

 Morgan is the author of Phantom Settlements (Ditto Press, 2011), the Age of Wire and String, was published by Granta Books in 2013, Studies for Studies and Jerome’s study, a further collaboration with Max Porter published by Test Center Books in London.

 Catrin’s workshop will take Paolo Friere's ideas about liberatory teaching as it's jumping off point. Starting with Friere's assertion that teacher student relationships are 'narrative in character' we will think about the narratives that we bring with us to our teaching and the narratives that we create through our pedagogy. Emphasis will be placed on teaching in this phase of the pandemic and the tension between empowering students and institutional benchmarks for their learning,

Kone Ndlovu is a polymath whose practice is concerned with democratization, critique and engagement of high culture through narrative. He is a writer, filmmaker, culture critic, visual artist, designer, archivist, educator, producer, historian, speaker and philosopher. 

 Ndlovu continues to work with the best in class brands and businesses globally in various capacities, including Nike, Reebok, adidas, Wimbledon, Sony, Levi’s and Lego. He has also worked for/with global cultural icons such as Kendrick Lamar, Stella McCartney, Warwick Thornton, Sean Tresvant, Ortis Deley and Ziwe.

His 2021 film, Two Pictures, created as a reflective response to the tragic events surrounding George Floyd, received special mentions at a number of film festivals and launched his film company Epigraph Films.

 In early 2023 he began a new educational practice named BCAS, as an amalgamation of his practice in both commercial creative, design and cultural spaces by building a curriculum that champions democratic high culture beyond the western gaze. 

 Kone’s workshop will introduce a number of provocations for open discussion; extrapolated from the annual theme of ‘who educates’ and developing questions that consider where the ‘centres’ for current critical debate might be, who owns these and how might they be challenged and more justly realigned?

Sinead Evans is currently working with ceramics, film and photography to explore how haptics work in images to illustrate shared experiences and memories. Her teaching practice is grounded in the position that illustration is a relational discipline, transdisciplinary and parasitic. She has previously contributed to publications such as Varoom, The Journal of Illustration and was a contributing editor of Limner Journal. She is a founding member of illustration educators, an organisation focussed on the communal development of illustration practices.

Previously she has taught on courses at Kingston University, Norwich University of the Arts, London Metropolitan University, University of the Creative Arts and the Royal College of Art.

Full Price (non-membership) - £44.04
Members - £33.22
Independent practitioner - £25.08
Student - £19.67

Tickets can be purchased from eventbrite here and include refreshments and a sandwich lunch. Please contact us at mail@illustrationeducators.org if you have any questions.

RCA Rausing Research & Innovation Building
15 Parkgate Road
London
SW11 4NL

Gathering 2024: information and tickets here!

Rachel Davey

Exploring Illustration Pedagogy through Illustration Practice by Rachel Davey:

This study explores illustration pedagogy through illustration practice, providing the unique opportunity to consider the entanglement of three academic identities: teacher, illustrator and researcher. The aims of this research were to surface findings that can begin to restructure a sense of self within Higher Education, to better understand student experience of illustration pedagogy and to uncover a more nuanced focus for future research. 

Between September 2023 and June 2024, a body of practice-based research was generated, documenting moments of teaching from BA Illustration and Visual Media at London College of Communication. The slow visual documentation of an academic year allowed the abstract nature of this study to become more tangible and within this essay, practice acts as the foundation for further research and analysis. Informed by the methodologies of practice-based research, visual ethnography and arts-based research, methods include field notes, illustrative ethnographic fictions, focus groups and visualising illustrative ethnographic fictions. Research findings are explored through the analysis of three salient strands of interest: ‘Scenes of Affect’, ‘Question of Value’ and ‘Embodied Self’. 

Upon conclusion, this study explores ways in which the research findings can actively enter the landscape of which they were initially inspired and argues that the project itself both defines and acts as an example of academic research that uses sensory affect to explore encounters within learning spaces, questioning the impact this has on learning experiences.

Submission: Rachel Davey

The following is an edited transcript of the discussion conducted between members in response to a number of prompts derived from an initial conversation between Jhinuk Sarkar and Hayfaa Al-Chalabi.

What does co-creation in illustration education look like?

Risk and risk taking is claimed, by some, an integral part of creative education.

But how viable is risk in increasingly managed, predictable and governed educational environments?
Is risk in education a myth anyway? 

Is there a hyperstition of new illustration education forms?

How do we find the places of alternative exchange?

Who are the contemporary illustration gyrovagues?

We used a Miro Board to capture thoughts and ideas here: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVN4S9ZhM=/ 


Darryl Clifton  
Hello everyone my name is Darryl Clifton. I'm one of the co-directors of illustration educators. 

Gannon, Rachel  
I am also co-director with Darryl.
Its really nice to have the first event and meet you all.
I currently work at Kingston University and am the acting head of the school of design.
But prior to that I was head of illustration and animation.


Rachel Emily Taylor  
Hi everyone I'm Rachel Emily Taylor and I'm the course leader of the BA in Illustration at Camberwell.
I've also been involved with Illustration educators from the start 
I'm joining you from the London metropolitan archives on a year three trip at the minute.

But I'm excited for the event today and I'll hand over to Sinead.


Sinead Evans  
Hi, I'm Sinead.
I'm another member of the management Committee for the IE and I work at Camberwell as well and I’m the course leader of the MA illustration at Camberwell.


Darryl Clifton   
I should mention that there are a couple of other people who've been involved in this process as well.
One is Peter (Nencini) who's based at the Royal College of Art and heads the illustration pathway within the visual communication course and Katie Jones Barlow, who's based at Leeds.
Katie is unable to join us today. 
We are really pleased that Hayfaa Al Chalabi is able to join us as today.
Jhinuk is going to try and join us as well, but she is teaching today so will attempt to join remotely.


As you know the purpose of today is to scrutinize the conversation that Hayfaa and Jhinuk had in response to the prompt ‘Who Educates?’

I would imagine the majority of us are people who are formally connected to educational institutions or have some aspect of our working lives which requires us to be educators.


We're really interested in formal institutional spaces and how education, for this particular subject happens, but also the informal spaces and how people learn in less obvious, sometimes autocratic, sometimes hierarchical, bureaucratic environments and spaces.


So, the theme emerged from that initial set of concerns and ideas Hayfaa and Jhinuk gave us much to think about in that conversation.


And what we've tried to do is take some points that we think might be useful for all of us to discuss and categorise them in order to help generate some thoughts or further provocations.

I think the purpose of this organization is to forge links, not necessarily via a management committee or any other structure, but between one another and find synergies and potential future projects, conversations, discussions, partnerships, whatever you want to call them ,that may emerge from those interactions, I think that feels like it's one of the most positive potential outcomes of this endeavor.
I've waffled on a little bit here, but a good way to start before we actually get into the nitty gritty is for people to introduce themselves.

Darryl Clifton   
I'll just invite you to say a few words about yourself and what role you have in an institution or outside of an institution, if any, and ask you to say what you're hoping to get from this initial conversation.
So let's start with Karen Sung.
Hi, Karen.


Karen Sung   
Hello.
Thank you for inviting me.
My name is Karen.
I'm currently a postdoc research associate at Loughborough University, talking about digital creativities particularly education within the Metaverse and the use of it, I'm just finishing my PhD thesis on Co creation and participatory creation within illustration, practice and hopefully I'll be done very, very soon.
So the conversation kind of resonated for me.
Hopefully I can resolve that kind of conundrum within myself through this discussion today.


Darryl Clifton   
Thanks, Karen.
So you are our ‘go to’ expert on co-creation?
That's good.
No pressure,


SARA CADIMA FEIO  
Hi.
Well, I'm Portuguese.
I'm teaching on the MA illustration (?), but most of my experience is teaching illustration in Portugal.
Hopefully by October I'll be doing a PhD in Loughborough, so I'll get to meet Karen in person if all goes well. I think that's about it.
I've worked mainly well, obviously teaching here, but also worked in the industry. I studied in the UK for most of my 20s and then came back to Portugal and I've been working between countries as a commercial illustrator.


Darryl Clifton  
Great.
Thank you.
Next we have Viv Schwarz.
Hi there.


Viv Schwarz   
Oh, hey.
Hello, can you hear me OK?


Viv Schwarz   
I am currently an hourly lecturer in Kingston on the illustration animation course. I mostly do the game related stuff there.
My general work is a lot to do with facilitating people's creative endeavours with things like installations and museums.
So interactive installations, ways for people to improvise their own games, their own board games, their own physical games and building stuff. Sometimes involving electronics, it's quite broad.
I also make picture books I’m a picture book author and illustrator

But yes, picture books and facilitating creativity and interactivity, that's me.


Darryl Clifton   
Brilliant.
Thank you.
Hayfaa?


Hayfaa Al-Chalabi   
Of course.
Hello everyone.
My name is Hayfaa.
I am lecturer and coordinator for integrated practice at UAL, Camberwell, and I contributed to the discussion around who educates with Jhinuk that you can find on the website.
I'm very much interested in taking part in this conversation, just learning about how different people and different educational institutions approach education.
I have a practice myself as an illustrator as well and I'm really looking forward to this discussion and to more events arranged by this organization.


Darryl Clifton   
Thank you. 
Chris Draper.


Draper, Chris   
Yeah.
Hi everyone.
Nice to meet you.
My name's Chris Draper.
I currently run the course the illustration course at Cambridge School of Art, part of Anglia Ruskin.


Draper, Chris   
We've got the children's book MA, which I have no involvement in.
We've got an illustration MA and illustration and animation BA, so I'm just kind of reporting back.
My own background is in editorial, publishing and advertising, but these days it's more about alternative photographic processes, collecting, taxonomy and cabinets of curiosity.
It's nice to meet you all.
Look forward to hearing everyone else.
Cheers. Bye.


Philip Kennedy 
I yeah, I'm Philip and I'm in Dublin where I lead the BA illustration program with the National College of Art and Design (NCAD)
I’ve been doing that for about six and a half years and prior to that I spent a good part of a decade working in the cultural sector, doing education.
So my background is quite broad and sort of patched together from working in different cultural spaces, museums and galleries and stuff like that, I have no formal qualifications within the space of pedagogy or education or anything like that.
So I am really interested in a sort of a non-formal understanding of what it (education) is.
So yeah, I kind of have been balancing that alongside my own practice as an illustrator.
I think this is a great opportunity and I guess one of my main purposes being here relates to that thing that everyone I imagine is experiencing where they don't really feel like they have the time or the space the to, sort of, explore this. So I think that this is a wonderful space to just say, OK, I've got 2 hours on a Friday.
I'm gonna just actually have the opportunity to have that.
So yeah, I'm really thankful that this has been set up because it's really given some structure to do that.
I'm really looking forward to this and enjoying everyone in this conversation.
Thanks very much.


Darryl Clifton   
Alright, thanks for Philip.
I'm going to move to Olivia next.

Olivia Ahmad   
Hi sorry I was just moving away from my washing.
It's really nice to see lots of lovely, familiar faces

It's really nice to see you and I'm looking forward to being part of this.
My name's Olivia.
I work for an arts charity called the Quentin Blake, Centre for illustration, which is a relatively young charity.
It was established (?) years ago and it aims to set up a public space for illustration in the sort of civic museum model which is really different from formal education and lots of ways, but has a lot of the same anxieties, I guess, and kind of issues around power and all of that stuff.
So I'm always really interested in like the academic space for illustration and formal education.
I always feel like I'm slightly outside it, so it's going to be so interesting to hear more about it from you all.

Darryl Clifton   
Thanks, Olivia. Emma?


Emma Dodson   
I'm Emma Dodson and I'm Co course leader currently, of illustration BA at University of Westminster.
I am very excited to be here, a bit like Philip.
I just feel I'd love some fresh ways of looking at how we educate, how we get students engaged as well and just sharing some ideas of where they're coming from and how I can meet them and do something meaningful with them.
I have a background as the prop maker.
I also do Kids books.
I mean, I cover lots of territory, but I'm really interested in new ways of looking at this subject. So yeah great to be here.
Thank you.


Darryl Clifton   
Next on my list is ‘museum creative’.
There's no name there, but museum creative over to you.

Museum Creative   
Hello.


Gannon, Rachel   
Louise (Museum Creative) was the student on the BA illustration animation course and went to the RCA to do visual communication course and has been back for the last year and a bit teaching on the illustration animation course, haven't you Louise?


Museum Creative   
Yes.
This platform is extremely important for people like me that who are passionate about teaching and facilitation.
I recently worked for Wimbledon Museum, a really small local museum to help with curation and facilitation.
And I just got Kingston students to collaborate with the museum as a creative project.
So that is what I'm passionate about, linking people, institutional cross institutional and bringing new creatives into the local community, yes and I'm so sorry I couldn't contribute much today because I'll be flying away later.
But thank you so much.


Darryl Clifton   
No problem, it shows real commitment.
Thank you very much.
Hopefully they'll be something of interest to you from the conversation.
Let's move on to Steph.
Hi Steph.


Black, Stephanie   
Hi 
I must confess I do need to head off very shortly, so I'm afraid I can't stay for the conversation, but I just wanted to drop in and say hello and see what was what because obviously I'm like everyone else.
I'm very curious about the network and interested to see what comes out of it.
I work at Kingston on the MA and also at Plymouth on BA and MA illustration.
Umm, and that's all you're getting from me now.


Darryl Clifton   
Fair enough.
It was short but sweet.
Thank you very much and thanks for coming.
Next we have Kone. Kone, are you there?


Kone (Beyond the Gaze)  
Hi, can everyone hear me OK?


Kone (Beyond the Gaze)   
Hi everyone, my name's Kone.
I guess starting backwards I studied very proudly under Darryl many years ago when I had hair.
and Peter (Nencini) as well.
So wonderful to meet you.
I'm an independent artist producer and, in more recent years, moving into education.

I've worked in agencies and cultural branding as well as producing shows in museums and writing.
It's become increasingly apparent that there is a need for visual education in the post-colonial space.

Personally, I grew up in southern Africa.
So part of that first generation calling for the statues of Rhodes to come down around the world, etcetera.
So last year I started to formalize this educational practice into something called Beyond The Gaze, which looks beyond the Victorian (Art School) project.
So really I'm here to learn from other educators.
You've been in the space much longer than me.
I'm quite clear about what I'd like to teach, but I want to understand different pedagogies and approaches.
So I'm really curious to connect on that and see what everyone how everyone approaches it really.
But that's me.


Darryl Clifton  
Right.
Thanks Kone.
Great to see you after a long time.
And finally, John Slade.
Hi John.


John Slade  
Hello sorry I'm new to teams, it's causing me problems.
My name is John.
I'm in Dublin.
I work with my colleague Philip at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD).
I'm a lecturer in illustration.
My background is in commercial logo illustration and graphic arts and I'm just really excited to be here to experience this group and see what it can offer in terms of what it can teach me more than anything else really, and how I can maybe help others and impart what I learned here, you know, to the broader community and to students as well.
But yeah, that's all I'd say really keep short.


Darryl Clifton   
Great to see you, John.
And thanks everybody.
I think that is everybody on the list please shout out if I've missed anyone.


So as as we mentioned previously, the one of the big messages that came through from the original survey that we put out to people who expressed an interest in joining this group was that they wanted to have more opportunities to talk to one another about stuff that concerned them relating to how they teach, who teaches, what processes and methods might be effective in a contemporary (learning) space.


As well as the concerns that they have about approaches to teaching. Hopefully you will all have had the time to have a look at the content on the website.
You'll see that the idea is that it's an aggregating resource. We start with one piece of material and then hopefully people will feel at liberty to submit further resources.


As we have said this is very open, the only caveat being that there's an attempt to try and map the submission content against the values that are stated on the website.

So it's operating differently to a more sort of conventional academic submission and peer review space.
It's intended as a different kind of resource.
We hope that this proposes a new mode of knowledge creation to achieve collectively. We also want to do is produce something out of today's discussion that is authored by all of us, where we are able to give ourselves equal credit for its production. This feels like the most appropriate way to approach the initial stage of the project.


I'm going to ‘cut to the chase’ and suggest that what we do now is break out into rooms because we're a large group.

So I'm going to put us into four rooms of four people and ask that each one of those groups address the four key questions/provocations that are listed on the Miro site.


Darryl Clifton   
So, shall we say 15 minutes for the first provocation, for this idea of Co creation.
And then we'll come back into the room and I'll rotate us into new rooms.

Can I ask that we try and capture as much as possible, whether it's references, images, or just general thoughts.

Darryl Clifton   
Do we want to have a little bit of a moment of feedback?
Key points. From what I could see we had room one with and Sara, Rachel Taylor, Emma, Kone and Viv.
And then Room 2 had Rachel Gannon, Karen Olivia, John, Hayfaa.
Room 3 was Chris, Sinead, Philip and Jhinuk
So we can start with room one.
Does someone want to elect themselves as spokesperson, or do you want to all chip in room 1?


Darryl Clifton   
I'll nominate.
What about Sara?
What was interesting from that conversation for you?


SARA CADIMA FEIO   
Uh, well, we spoke about different things.
What the boundaries are with Co creation and also how arts education isn't meeting the arts industry
and how those two things should merge a little bit better.
We also spoke a little about how the themes that we have in in the curriculum are changing and maybe we could hear the students voices a little bit more and build around the themes that they are interested in discussing or creating. These new (student) voices are more up to date with all the things that are being talked about through the instagrams and tick tocks space. They (students) have different points of view.