illustration educators

Reading Group is a reoccurring format where members share and discuss resources used before, during and after teaching illustration. You are welcome to attend the next Reading Group, 17th of May at 1 pm CET (12 am GMT). 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

Syllabus by Lynda Barry (Drawn & Qua rterly, 2014) link 

Making Comics by Lynda Barry (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019) link 

I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own by Michael Taussig (The University of Chicago Press, 2011) link 

Materials Against Materiality by Tim Ingold (Cambridge University Press, 2007) link 

After a short introduction Sara Teleman talked briefly about graphic novelist, cartoonist and teacher Lynda Barry’s books Syllabus and Making Comics. 

'I love Lynda Barry for her unwavering believe in everybody’s ability to write and draw – tell a story through comics. Barry’s books can be used at any level of education. I usually recommend them to students for one of the following three reasons:

1. The student has lost the joy of drawing and/or faith in comics.

2. The student doesn’t know what to draw about.

3. The student needs to practice observing the world outside their own head.

For number 3 I recommend the Daily Dairy exercise first introduced in Syllabus. There are other versions of the daily diary exercise in Making Comics. Here is a link to one of them, shared by Lynda Barry on her blog The Nearsighted Monkey.

Another use for the Daily Diary format is for students’ Degree Projects, to continuously document and reflect over the process, in words as well as drawings.'

Rachel Emily Taylor presented her resources, opening with a short reading from Michael Taussig’s I Swear I Saw This, a book about drawings in anthropological fieldwork notebooks. In the section that Rachel read aloud, Taussig remembers a couple in a freeway tunnel, doubting his observation, and drawing it afterwards:

'What is the difference between seeing and believing? I can write I Swear I Saw This as many times as I like, in red, green, yellow, and blue, but it won’t be enough. The drawing is more than a result of seeing. It is a seeing that doubts itself, and, beyond that, doubt the world of man. (…) This must be where witnessing separates itself from seeing, where witnessing becomes holy writ: mysterious, complicated, powerful. And necessary.’ (Taussig, 2001, p. 1-2). 

This discussion also led to a short reading from Tim Ingold’s Materials Against Materiality, where there is an activity in drawing a ‘wet stone’ (p. 32). In both extracts from anthropological texts, the themes touched on were related to observation, drawing, and time.

The presentations were followed by a lively conversation and a flood of resources was shared by the attendees.

You had to be there for context, but even without the discussion there is a lot to gather from this list of resources and concepts.

Joseph Dumit: Writing the Implosion: Teaching the World One Thing at a Time link

Georges Perec: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces link

Neil Cohn: Who Understands Comics? Questioning the Universality of Visual Language Comprehension link

W.J.T. Mitchell: Picture Theory, Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation link

Phil Carter (Carter Wong): 1057 (Howies, 2011) link
Aphantasia link

Michael Taussig: I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own (The University of Chicago Press, 2011) link

Tim Ingold: Materials Against Materiality (Cambridge University Press, 2007) 

Website that translates and dubs your lectures into other languages link

Hans Ulrich Obrist: Ways of Curating (Penguin Books, 2015) link

Jonathan R Kasstan, Geoff Pearson and Victoria Brooks: Rethinking Research Ethics in the Humanities: Principles and Recommendations (University of Westminster, 2023) link

Rachel Gannon, Mireille Fauchon: Illustration Research Methods (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) link

Exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London: The Cult of Beauty 26 October 2023 –28 April 2024 link

Ester McManus: Elsewhere (self-published, 2017?) link 

Stéphanie Solinas: Dominique Lambert (Édition RVB Books, 2016) link

Members who attended event and contributing to this list of resources

Reading Group: Friday 16th February 2024

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.


SARA CADIMA FEIO   
Things always move slower in institutions than they do and the real world.

John Slade   
Now I guess I'll bring up the last point that somebody brought up. 
There was an interesting point about creating criticality.
Helping first year students understand the difference between, say, critique and criticality.
So I thought that was quite an interesting premise when considering Co creation in an education space.
I'm also speaking about originality and ownership in that space as well.

Gannon, Rachel   
We were really fortunate to have Karen in our group who has been doing work on co-creation.

We spent a bit of time talking about different sorts of co-creation, what it means and how we might classify it.
We talked about the problems of co-creating within an institution and how, as institutions, we need to set up frameworks to enable that to work successfully as well as describe some examples of where co-creation wasn't valid and/or wasn't valued by institutions.
But we also talked about successes.
I think the example that John was talking about was one from Hayfaa about criticality, where the students were able to discuss it and create their own definitions for the term.
But you could do this with anything it seem to enable a better understanding ability to use that term within their own practices.
I guess something that we could learn from.
Yeah, lots there.
Really good conversation.


Darryl Clifton   
Kone I know that you've set something up outside of the normal institutional frameworks that we perhaps are all familiar with.


Darryl Clifton  
I just wondered what your thoughts are on this idea of co-creation with students?
And also what about co-creation with nonhumans?

Kone (Beyond The Gaze)   
So in our group, we were talking about our inherent biases and understanding where the motivations for learning and the curriculums come from?
I've been really interested in my small community who've also felt a traditionally excluded from these spaces.
And by that I don't even mean by skin pigment or agenda, but by social class or social strata not having the language for the ‘art school’.
So another point we had made about the speed between the institution and the real world and how we make sure those work together in lockstep, making sure that we're developing practices and frameworks that actually reflect the world that our learners and students live in.
I'm really interested in championing this idea; that ultimately all folks can co-create.


John Slade   
We're all co-creating all the time.
We're doing it now, we do it when we accept work.
I have been thinking about structuralism again; in terms of what information we get, why we're getting it and where it's come from.

Some of the topics that you mentioned in terms of accessibility to learning and education in particular are really prevalent.
At NCAD we have a massive housing crisis which is really restricting access to the college.
I don't know what a National College is if it doesn't represent the nation.


Darryl Clifton   
Super interesting.
I was listening to somebody yesterday talking about modes of contamination.
How contamination occurs in thought processes and the actions that occur informally or quietly in a classroom. We are perceived to be the architects of a set of events or activities that constitute learning.
But actually the contamination (and construction of the learning) is happening incessantly around you, recognition of the positive aspects of those types of contamination, whether just empathizing with another person's situation or being actively receptive to others’ ideas actually informs the way you construct things.
The challenge is then how you bring those to the surface and recognize them.
A bit like that conversation you have with students about criticality and making.
Sometimes you have gotta make stuff and be in that headspace and then you can engage critically with what you're doing.


Darryl Clifton   
Anyway we've got three more exciting Miro board panels to get through but before we go into discussions let’s hear from Room 3.
We had Chris, Sinead, Philip and Jhinuk. Is there anything that you wanted to mention about Co creation?


Sinead Evans   
We were talking a lot about the structures within and outside of the university and the different pressures and values that enable facilitation or make it feel like creation is possible.

Darryl Clifton   
OK.
In that case, let's do the rooms thing again.

Darryl Clifton   
Everybody is back in.

Let's go to the first room I think it was just Rachel and Philip?

Gannon, Rachel   
We talked about using different terms and why were we asking students to be risky?
What did we mean by that?
And we talked about it being an overused phrase and what other terms might be useful?

We talked about the relationship between risk and trust and how, as educators creating spaces that we all felt safe in would enable us to take the types of risks that we wanted to take.
But I think when we say risk, we probably mean different things.


Philip Kennedy  
I think that sums things up.
Everyone's risks are different. Everyone has their own definition of what risk is, and I think a lot of our conversation was trying to be conscious of the responsibility we have as educators and I was really struck by in the conversation that's posted on the website.
This idea of a safe space, which was something that I was often trying to work towards, creating that environment. But this idea has to be an intentional space and my own sort of struggles, trying to move towards a brave space and what that means when you're trying to create environments around ideas of risk. 

Viv Schwarz   
You need a base safety safe space.
If you're gonna take risks, you've gotta be safe.
The terminology of risk is really quite a safe, well established, white man thing in its nature.

We just choose to look at it through the lens taking risks, which is the most exciting thing to a safe white dude.
Probably that's what I'm thinking.
If we can say we're curious, that would appeal to other people.

Darryl Clifton   
Thank you.
Is there anything from room 2, so that was Karen, Hayfaa, Kone and Jhinuk?


Karen Sung   
Should I just summarize? We talked a lot about institutions taking risks, whether they do take risks and the general consensus was that they don't.
And then we talked about what kind of institutions make students feel safe or what institutions are doing to make educators feel safe in taking risks for their students.
So in particular, we talked about a lot of political events that happened in the recent years, like George Floyd and how institutions very selectively spoke out to certain events.
And a lot of events that, for example, Kone and I went through, they didn't speak to at all.
So being neutral or being risky is a very political move in a way, more so than taking a side in a political agenda.

Hayfaa Al-Chalabi   
We spoke about how institutions have the privilege to not take risks, and then they put educators at risk when speaking up or engaging with what's happening in the world. Where I used to work, they were very vocal about what happened.
I didn't work at UAL.
Back then, they were very vocal about Charlie Hebdo and they were very comfortable taking a political side.
And you know, speaking about it and framing it as not even a political thing.
However, with George Floyd, or with what happened during the evacuations of Shahadah in Palestine, that happened in the same year, then they took action in preventing students from speaking about what was happening, saying that the institution is not political.
But then, with pressures from students, they admitted that they just don't care.
And there was even an email about it that they just don't care about what was happening.
Uh, so yeah, we spoke about what it means for an institution to take risks and how it has to do protecting its reputation.
But that puts educators and students at risk.


Darryl Clifton   
Thank you.
What about Chris?
Sinead, Emma, Olivia?
Anything that you wanted to add?


Sinead Evans   
I can summarize and if anybody wants to add, please do.
We had similar conversations around risk taking.
Some of us saying that risk for some people being smaller, some being bigger. 
It's really rich talking about risk and failure it being a really important and integral part of creative education and learning and how that learning journey really shifts when students see themselves as customers.

Discussion Event edited transcript: Friday 19th January 2024

We are pleased to announce our events schedule for 2024. All members are welcome to attend. Links access online events will be sent out to members the week before the event. 

Discussion Event: Friday 19th January 2024, 12.00 GMT

Reading Group: Friday 16th February 2024, 12.00 GMT

Reading Group: Friday 17th May 2024, 12.00 GMT

Talk Event: Friday 14th June 2024, 12.00 GMT

Annual General Meeting: September 2024 (TBC)

Gathering: (London Venue TBC - this event will be unperson and online) Thursday 21st November 2024, 10.00 - 17.00 GMT 


Note: This will coincide with the 14th Annual Illustration Research Symposium which will be held at University of Arts London on 22-23rd Nov 2024

Membership Events 2024

Hello and a very warm welcome to the illustration educators (ie) website. The hope is to develop a space where insights, ideas, discussions and resources can be shared. ie is designed to acknowledge and support our growing international community of illustration educators defined through mutual care, equality, inclusivity and shared curiosity about one another's educational practices. 

We are delighted to introduce the first submission to our online resource, and very grateful to our friends and colleagues, Jhinuk Sarkar and Hayfaa Al-Chalabi for this insightful and thought provoking inaugural piece in response to the provocation: who educates?

We hope that you enjoy reading, and listening to, this wide ranging discussion between Jhinuk and Hayfaa. Who educates?: A conversation between Hayfaa Chalabi and Jhinuk Sarkar lays the foundation for the forthcoming years activity. The discussion explores, among many other things, ideas of permission and authority, the nature and ‘geography’ of institutions, generational divide, interdependencies, reproductive labour, formal and informal spaces and the role of kindness, gratitude and instinct in educational processes. Hayfaa’s and Jhinuk’s perspicacity and experience are, we hope, ‘permission givers’ to potential contributors. The scope of their conversation preempts that range of responses that we hope to see and we encourage approaches that include all creative and academic forms, from visual essays, to audio recordings, to lesson plans and academic papers.

Welcome Statement

Hayfaa Chalabi

Jhinuk Sarkar

Illustration educators - Hayfaa and Jhinuk discuss who educates- Audio.mp3

In order to unpack some of the rigid ideas and expectations that exist about who educates, we decided to ask each other a few questions. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Jhinuk: I'll start. Hayfaa, who do you think currently educates?

Hayfaa: Hmm. I always think of educators inside big educational institutions with clean white walls, where teachers have specific qualifications and academic backgrounds. And given the geographical context that I'm in right now, I do think of educators in a very Eurocentric manner. This leads me to have a very specific understanding of who educates and educator-student relationships. I think of vertical dynamics in teaching, the transfer of knowledge, rather than exchange of knowledge. I think of big age gaps between educators and students and I think of certain dynamics of power and strong boundaries between educators and students. What about you, who do you think educates? 

Jhinuk: Wow, that's a big answer to follow and I agree with most of what you've said.  My immediate answer is lecturers and teachers in different formal environments throughout my education, from schools to colleges to universities. I also think about those in work that teach each other because university is becoming quite expensive for a lot of people to attend, and so they are exploring different routes into the working world. There's a lot of education occuring for people in work, inducting people into their workplaces for example; this is still what I would call a formal setting. I think there are many other informal settings where people educate. Formal roles I'm talking about might be scientists, lawyers, administrators and artists as well, but then the informal ones might be family members: mothers, sisters or brothers. Since the global events that we've experienced in the last few years, we've started to recognise this a bit more.

Hayfaa: Definitely, I agree with you, even sometimes strangers. A short conversation with a stranger and you can feel that you’ve already transferred or exchanged some form of knowledge. 

Jhinuk: Yeah, exactly. So following on, who has educated you Hayfaa? 

Hayfaa: Well, I do think that I am one of the very lucky people, because every time I meet somebody and they ask me this, I'm like, I loved my teachers and they're like, really, are you serious? I was lucky to have an education that was defined by non-dominant norms. I remember a couple of educators I had, especially female educators, that taught me how to not only become a good illustrator, but also a good human. A better human. I realised later, when I became an educator myself, that those ways of teaching were not spontaneous, and they were intentional, and that kindness itself was a conscious way of teaching. These educators followed educational practicespractises of engaged pedagogy where knowledge needed to be co-created between educator and student rather than transferred from educator to students. I have good memories from my institutional educational journey.

Jhinuk: I’ll start by giving you a picture of my journey through education, both from a student perspective, and now as an educator. I feel like I have been lucky too, but for different reasons to you. 

I attended formal institutions that weren't that diverse and they weren't reflective of who I am. I didn't recognise that until quite late on in my education studying on the PgCert Academic Practice in Art, Design and Communication (UAL). Up until that point, I had experienced largely European white educators, I had maybe two teachers of colour at school. At the point that I did my PgCert it felt like a revelation to have a whole team of staff of colour delivering a unit to me, specifically on inclusivity and diversity in education and that really opened my mind. 

Aside from these formal spaces, I think of my family, both those who are in my immediate vicinity, those I grew up with, and my family that live in Kolkata in West Bengal. They educated me on things to do with life, how you look at things and how you communicate.

But let's not forget about those beings and things that aren't human: animals, plants and things, the technologies around us, have all educated me. I've lived through a special time when the internet began, I can remember before. These things are special and inform how you are educated.

Hayfaa: I agree with that. I also have a special experience with animals as educators. Animals have a very strong value system. I learnt a lot about gratitude, love and compassion from animals. Also family, it's great that you mentioned those forms of education that go beyond institutions because again these questions come with rigid expectations of education. At first we think of education that happens inside of institutions, but it is also important to highlight other forms of education.

That leads on to my next question. I'm wondering Jhinuk, how do you educate?

Jhinuk: There's a lot to learn from those people, places, objects, processes that educated me. The way that I could summarise is that going through those experiences, you might have certain turning points where there was a challenge to get through. Maybe one of my educators presented me something, and I didn’t have the kind of reaction they anticipated me having, but I learnt something very important from the reaction I did have. That is something that I really pay attention to. How I educate is to think through my own experiences of learning, whether informal or formal, paying attention to instinct and kindness. You mentioned kindness before and I think that's really important as a learning tool, and an education tool.

Being up for taking a risk is also important. If there is something that you don't know how it’s going to work out, because you haven't tried it before, it's important to be honest and open about that, but try it anyway. If we stay in our own set approaches to education we're no longer going to be educating effectively for the people around us or supporting our own education. 

Hayfaa: This is an interesting question because I am labelled as an educator by the institution, this gives me confirmation that I do educate. However, I also feel insecure about this term-claiming even though I do educate, I do transfer and exchange knowledge with people. I was introduced to education through a book that influenced me a lot by bell hooks called Teaching to Transgress: Educating as the practice of freedom and I read it when I was a student myself. I was obsessed. She explains the importance of transgressing the rigid boundaries of intellectual information, to share in spiritual growth and compassion. 

I remember I had an encounter once where a student was struggling, they had autism. I asked them ‘what can I do?’. They said, ‘it's okay, it's not your work’. And I replied, ‘no, no, I'm here to create a safe space’. They told me, ‘safe spaces are not important, it’s intentional spaces that are important’. I didn't know the difference and so I went and learnt about intentional spaces. They are the spaces you enter with the intention that everybody may have something they're struggling with that you don't know. Safe spaces only take into consideration the struggles that you know of. 

I am now aware of entering a classroom with my body, a history, baggage and identity; an intersectional identity. Our identities go beyond what we can see, like disabilities for example, which are often invisible, or emotional weights that we might be carrying. Our students are humans and I'm a human. We must acknowledge this and operate accordingly inside any learning space whether a household or a classroom. I aim to educate in these considerate ways. I don't know if I'm there yet, but I try.

I want to ask you, who doesn't get credit for educating - perhaps because they don't have that institutional label? 

Jhinuk: I enjoyed hearing how you draw upon the ideas in bell hooks’ book Teaching to Transgress because it really opens up the idea of vulnerability, that we should be open and exposing; an exchange of that compassion that you're talking about. 

In answer to your question, I was thinking about compassion and exchange which relies on people feeling inadequate or insecure in calling themselves educators. I have also felt that for a while and I came to my role as an ‘educator’ a bit later on in my working life. This gives me an advantage, I can see how the work that I've done previously provides me the need to be compassionate to those around me and showing how I too am learning from them.

People that I've worked with in community groups often don't get the credit for being valid sources of knowledge. Knowledge that they pass on through storytelling or conversational formats. It’s important knowledge that needs to be carried forward to peers or to other generations. Whether a local knitting group that meets once a week, a group that meets because of a shared traumatic experience or a group of people who have moved from a different country and are trying to settle, they all educate but don't get the credit for it. This reminds me of another book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. Friere talks about a banking system of education, where someone with the privilege and power provided by an education is the fountain of all knowledge, passing it down to those that don't have such privileges. We shouldn't use that system. We should be looking for alternative exchanges such as community groups or those with intersectional identities.

Who do you think doesn't get credit for educating?

Hayfaa: I want to speak about qualifications as an indicator of academic achievement and ability. I think a lot about my grandmother, who was illiterate. She could not read.  She didn't go to school at all, not one day. She doesn't know how to use a pen. She was quite old when I was born and she couldn't do much, she couldn't knit or do any of the other things she used to like doing. But she did a lot of storytelling. She used to tell me folkloric tales, myths and stories of hybrids of humans and animals. 

It was not only entertaining but it also educated me and expanded my creativity. It taught me how to create narratives that keep people's attention. I don't know where she got them from, but probably she inherited them from her mother as well. 

Jhinuk: You made me think of my own grandmother and we probably had similar experiences. Her education was not formalised but she taught me so much. 

Hayfaa: We need to consider educators beyond schools and beyond literacy. We think of literacy in a very specific way. My grandmother was very literate in terms of these stories. She had the skill of storytelling and of keeping a child's attention, which is a very difficult mission! She did not get any credit for being an educator. So that is what comes to mind when I try to answer this question, a personal but important story.

Jhinuk: Very important, thank you for sharing it. Who do you think feels uncomfortable claiming their roles or work as educators - although I think we both just said ourselves.

Hayfaa: You mentioned that you started your education career quite late and feel I started mine quite early, when I was a student. That made me closer to students. I always received good feedback from my students because I speak the same language; I speak from their perspective as I’m around their age. It was a great bonding learning experience. I felt very confident being an educator with those students. However, I felt extremely insecure in meetings or around colleagues because I was always the youngest in the team. I always felt uncomfortable claiming the position that I was given by the institution, and this was because of my age.

Jhinuk: I think similarly, I felt uncomfortable in those situations… surprisingly. It took time to feel more confident. It wasn't so much about my age, more the number of years of experience in formalised, education settings. Slowly I'm beginning to realise that my previous work was in education, just not in a formalised setting and it has value. For example communicating complex information in different formats and making it accessible, is one example. 

Understanding that I have knowledge that someone else doesn’t still feels uncomfortable, but then I think that being uncomfortable is a good thing to feel because it means that you are aware of where you need to educate yourself.

What needs to change for ‘informal educators’ to claim their title as educators?

Hayfaa: We have spoken a lot about the expectations of educators in institutions, and the pressure we have felt in claiming our titles as educators. I would like to end this discussion with one last question. What needs to change for ‘informal educators’ to claim their title as educators?

Jhinuk: There is a lot of performance involved in education and once ‘informal educators’ are aware of that then it becomes easier to act into a role they want to become. I recognise that in myself, the performance element of education.

I think back to when I studied drama in secondary school. I was 15 or 16 and an incredibly shy person, but I really enjoyed drama as a subject. I remember my drama teacher saying to me, ‘I can sense that you enjoy the subject but for the exam we need you to demonstrate it through performance because this is drama!’ I took a risk and made myself vulnerable for that exam. This is the type of risk taking and performance grew my confidence, and that has translated to my teaching practice. It was a way of showing something about myself to the people around me.

I talked about performance specifically, but what do you think needs to change for ‘informal educators’ to claim their title as educators? 

Hayfaa: It's unfair to put the responsibility to change on those individuals. I have witnessed a very protective attitude towards education from institutions and some people that work in them; protecting this rigid dominant definition of normative, a definition of who educates. I sense that institutions and some people feel threatened by this alternative or expanded definition of who educates. It’s as if validating informal knowledge will ruin knowledge. It’s time to acknowledge that informal knowledge existed before formal definitions of knowledge. Formal knowledge is the documentation of informal knowledge. 

Hayfaa: They work in parallel and both are needed for education to happen. Institutions and people with privilege who work within institutions need to be less protective around that definition and create space for an expanded definition to exist; acknowledging that the history of education is beyond institutions. 

It is also important to mention that not everybody can afford to attend an institution and we need to acknowledge that as well. What alternatives are we providing for people who do not have access to institutions? Is having an education only a right of the powerful or the person who can afford it financially? Of course not. Education should be a right for everybody and anybody. I think we should end on that optimistic note. 

Jhinuk: Yes, lets end on an optimistic note. It’s good that you mention privilege and access. Lack of access to education can be because of money, but it can also be because of societal norms, cultural practices, class systems, language barriers and gender politics. I hope that through our conversation people will listen to all the different intersections of identity that can affect who educates and who is educated. 

Hayfaa: It's also important for us to acknowledge that there are struggles that we are not aware of as well! 

Hayfaa: Thank you so much for speaking with me. 

Hayfaa Chalabi is an illustrator and educator interested in the role of illustration to re-contextualise narratives, histories, and discussions . Chalabi uses her power as an illustrator and storyteller to spark discussions about different socio-political issues. Her work revolves around the intersections of visual culture, sexuality, gender, and migration. Currently, Chalabi works as a senior lecturer at the University of Arts in London (UAL). 

Jhinuk Sarkar is an illustrator and educator with a practice deeply rooted in and inspired by communities. She explores the messages that illustration can transcend around social justice to communities and co-creation, through the translation of sensory experiences. Jhinuk's practice and research into sensory experiences has come together from roles that she has undertaken alongside work as freelance illustrator (roles have included being an illustration agent, creative programme producer and a museums’ workshop leader). Jhinuk has worked with disabled artists for just over a decade in charity arts organisations such as Shape Arts, as a Disability Adviser for UAL, and as a creative access lead at Turf Projects (an artist-led space based in Croydon). Jhinuk has been a Board Director for the Association of Illustrators since 2021. She currently teaches on the Inclusive Practices unit of UAL’s PG Cert as well as being cross-programme lecturer for the Illustration programme at Camberwell College. 