Interrogating Spaces is a podcast series that examines ideas around inclusivity and attainment in Higher Education. Each episode will explore democratic and decolonised teaching practices through dialogue with practitioners as well as staff and students from University of the Arts London.
This podcast is brought to you by the Academic Enhancement team at UAL.
For more information and resources please visit:
https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/teaching-and-learning-exchange/resources/academic-enhancement-resources

Interrogating Spaces Podcast

This episode is with Eunike Gloria Setiadarma and Perdana “Pepe” Roswaldy

Jangan ketinggalan, ayo dengar tentang riset Pepe dan Nike yang luar biasa penting, tentang perkebunan ekstraktif dan konsep-konsep seputar keluarga dan rumah, tantangan baik di Indonesia maupun di luar negeri sebagai perempuan Indonesia di dunia akademik, dan pentingnya persahabatan yang jujur untuk kebertahanan hidup. Episode ini dalam Bahasa Indonesia, dengan transkrip dalam Bahasa Inggris dan Bahasa Indonesia. 

Don’t miss Indonesian scholars Pepe and Nike on the incredibly vital research they’re doing on extractive plantations and ideas of family and home, the challenges in Indonesia and abroad of being an Indonesian women in academia, and the importance of honest friendships in our survival. This episode is in Indonesian, with transcripts in both English and Indonesian.

Perdana “Pepe” Roswaldi is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Northwestern University in the United States. Pepe is currently studying plantations in Southeast Asia and extractive colonialism. She likes to nap under shady trees and also on park benches. 

Eunike Gloria Setiadarma, or Nike, is Pepe's friend. She is currently a PhD student at Northwestern University studying ideas and feelings, emotions, around family and the concept of home in Indonesia's past.  

Nike and Pepe have created a zine and podcast called Terminal Bus. 


Transcripts

View and download the transcript for this episode:
https://www.arts.ac.uk/ual-decolonising-arts-institute/publications-and-podcasts

Links

Khairani Barokka - https://twitter.com/mailbykite

Ultimatum Orangutan Radio | Episode 4 | Plantations, Making Home, and Academic Colonisation

BA (Hons) Fashion Pattern Cutting 
0:00 Introduction 
2:05 Why I'm sharing my story 
3:28 Overcoming difficulties and hardships 
9:24 How fashion is the art of storytelling 
12:03 Creative influences 
13:45 Multiculturalism and London
15:34 Being nominated for Course Rep of the Year award 
17:48 Taking advantage of the university’s resources
20:17  Final thoughts 

© 2022 University Arts London. All Rights Reserved

UAL Student Voices: Nelson

Te on critical thinking

In this episode of interrogating spaces, Dr Emily Salines takes us on an exploration of feedback practice, and how we might take a more compassionate approach.

The impact of feedback on student learning is well documented in educational literature. We also know that it is a critical area of practice where the emotional impact of assessment is at play. We speak with a number of practitioners, teachers and students to set out to map a framework for compassionate feedback practice and how we might enact it 

The questions we are asking are:

How can we harness feedback to support learning in a way that does no harm and supports students?
How can we use feedback to foster belonging?
Can compassion help us? And what would compassionate feedback look like?
This work is part of the QAA collaborative enhancement project on ‘Belonging through assessment: pipelines of compassion’ with UAL, Glasgow School of Art and Leeds Arts University.

Compassionate Feedback

This panel discussion on pass/fail assessment in arts higher education took place online during the ‘Belonging through assessment: Pipelines of compassion’ symposium on 21st October 2021. The symposium forms part of the QAA Collaborative Enhancement Project 2021 and is a partnership between University of the Arts London (UAL), Glasgow School of Art and Leeds Arts University (LAU). The discussion between invited speakers: Professor Sam Broadhead (LAU), Dr Neil Currant, (UAL) and Peter Hughes, (LAU) is facilitated by Dr Kate Mori (Academic Engagement Manager, QAA).

The discussion explores the potential of pass/fail as a compassionate approach to assessment and explores the challenges in changing practice and policies from the perspective of staff, students and the wider institution. A fascinating conversation that explores the complexities of feedback and assessment and implications for student belonging.

For more information please visit: https://belongingthroughassessment.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

Pass/ fail assessment in arts higher education

This polyvocal podcast tells the story so far of Inquilab / Ink-Lab; an alternative reading group based at University of the Arts London.
 
Outraged by the brutal murder of George Floyd many individuals within higher education (HE) were incensed, leading to a collective realisation of the imperative for transformative action. In response, Dr. Gurnam Singh, Jheni Arboine, and a small cohort of UAL staff and students made a decisive commitment to establish a distinctive reading group—Inquilab. This group distinguishes itself by embracing an unapologetically radical approach, with its foundation rooted in the principles of decolonisation, anti-racism, and flattened hierarchies. Inquilab's primary objective is to foster an authentic space where UAL staff and students can converge, encouraging the exploration and contemplation of radical pedagogy and practices within a supportive, open, and organic space.
 
In this podcast we hear from Inquilab’s founders about the context, values and ideas that were behind its beginnings and how it has since developed into its 3rd year. Participants and contributors tell us what brings them back and how the unique qualities and approaches that Inquilab embraces makes it a very different kind of discursive space. We hear about what it means to be able to bring your true self to a studio setting and how that fundamentally reconfigures hierarchies to create a greater sense of belonging and community for both staff and students.

Contributors:
Jheni Arboine
Nadia Idle 
Deshna Mehta
Dr Gurnam Singh
Dr. Manrutt Wongkaew

Music:
Thank you to Shaheed Bhai Mewa Singh for allowing us to use their music in this podcast

Sound recording credits: 
Tim Kahn for the recordings of a Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, Oregon, 7th June 2020

Production and Editing:
This podcast has been created and edited by Gemma Riggs

About Inquilab (Full podcast)

In this episode, Benji Jeffrey chats to Christoph Jones and Melanie King from the Working Class Collective (WCC).

The WCC is a student-run society, founded by Jennifer McMillan and Cristoph Jones in 2020 with an aim to uplift and provide solidarity for working-class students at the RCA.

The WCC acknowledges and celebrates the varied lives and experiences of working-class people through talks, events, exhibitions and social gatherings, and has produced two triumphant summer shows.

At the time of recording, Melanie King is the Interim Chair.

Listen as Benji, Christoph and Melanie discuss:

The formation and growth of the society
What it means to be ‘working class’, intersectionality and cultural identity
How being working class influences artistic practice


About the guests
Christoph Jones is an award-winning conceptual artist based in London. He graduated from the RCA with an MA Contemporary Art Practice in 2023. During his time as a student, he co-founded the RCA Working Class Collective with Jennifer McMillan. His practice encompasses a diverse range of mediums, including 3D digital design, video essays, painting, sculpture, performance, installation, and speculative fiction writing. With a focus on recontextualization, aesthetic abstraction and geographic relocation, his current work explores the transformative power of these processes on ostensibly axiomatic ideological, political and social concepts.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_christophjones/
Website: https://www.christophjones.com/

Melanie King is a working class artist and curator, originally from Manchester, and is now based in Kent, UK. She is a practice-based PhD Candidate in the School of Arts & Humanities at the Royal College of Art. Melanie is co-Director of super/collider, Lumen Studios and founder of the London Alternative Photography Collective. She is also a Lecturer In Photography at Canterbury Christ Church University. She is represented by the Land Art Agency.
Instagram: https://www.melaniek.co.uk/research 
Website: https://www.instagram.com/melaniekatking/
Learn more about the Working Class Collective
Instagram: @RCAWCC
X (Twitter) @RCAWCC
Website https://www.rcasu.org.uk/organisation/6281/ 

Mentioned in the episode
Jacob Talkowski @jacobtalkowski
Zofia Skoroszewska @zofiaskoro
RCA2022 & RCA2023 curated collections:
RCA2022
RCA2023
Working Class Artist Network Collective Instagram
Article: ‘Impostor syndrome’ is a pseudo-medical name for a class problem, Nathalie Olah
Book: Chavs by Owen Jones
Book: Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber 
Essay: What’s the point if we can’t have fun? David Graeber
Resource: Working Class Creative Database
Resource: White Pube Successful Funding Application Library

Learn more about the Royal College of Art
Visit: www.rca.ac.uk
Find out about scholarships and funding available: https://bit.ly/3mEaQjv

RCA Podcast: Being a working-class creative

In this series of three recordings curator Cristiana Bottigella talks to artists about their motivations and experiences setting up self-initiated residencies. This interview is conversation with Cash Aspeek who self-organised a Residency at the Vispring mattress factory in Plymouth.

Cash Aspeek is a London based Artist and Artist Educator. Her practice focuses on overlooked & often discarded materials from scaffolding to seed-heads. She picks apart & forensically analyses, re-doing and re-purposing everyday objects. Her work involves ephemeral sculptures, interventions, performance & photography. Cash has recently been working on her, ‘Developing your Creative Practice’ (DYCP) project, funded by Arts Council England, focusing on her parents 60 year old mattress. She exhibits in group exhibitions in and around London.

With an MA in Inclusive Arts Practice Cash develops and delivers art and design education for schools, community groups and families in museums and galleries specialising in SEND participants. In 2011 she set up Redstart Arts a learning-disabled art group for young adults. Recent works resulted in being exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibitions, 2021&22 and at The Horniman Museum permanent collection. Cash worked with SEND families and curated an exhibition in response to architect, John Hejduk in the McAulay Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts July-October 2022

DIY Residencies – Cash Aspeek in conversation with Cristiana Bottigella

Oral history interview 10/89/24 with Professor Emeritus Jeremy Till, a British architect, educator and writer, and Head of Central Saint Martins and Pro Vice-Chancellor of University of the Arts London from 2012 to 2022.
 
The opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee, and do not represent the views of any other party.

Jeremy Till - Oral History

Decolonising Narratives

A- - -Z presents ‘16-bit’, an installation by David Blandy. Blandy’s work interrogates facets of post-millenial identity through the lens of globally influential pop cultural forms such as arcade games, hip hop and manga.

The project is set at Four Quarters in Peckham (187 Rye Lane, SE15 4NF), a bar which has built its reputation hosting arcade games and consoles. Two works by David Blandy will be presented. 
The 2015 Workweek Prize has been awarded to David Blandy and A—Z for 16-Bit.
http://www.artquest.org.uk/articles/view/workweek_prize

One is an arcade game made by the artist, the other will be a film screened on the opening night of Art Licks Weekend.

- ‘Duels And Dualities: Battle Of The Soul’ (2011) enters the realm of the 90’s arcade games with Blandy’s alter-egos facing each other in a never ending battle 

- the game will be installed from the 30th of September to the 7th of October 

- ‘Backgrounds’ (2013) will be screened on the 1st of October at 7pm and on the 7th of October at 8pm. This 16-bit aesthetic film looks at the artist and his father’s virtual identities - both represented as their alter-egos, they walk through lo-res landscapes and discuss their respective practices. 

The choice of these two works reflects the artist’s play on identities, the retro-virtual, and the question of art and boundaries - operating outside of the classic parameters. 

This project is part of A—Z’s ongoing research project around the display and dissemination of artwork and adds to the morphic and viral forms of the platform.

www.davidblandy.co.uk

David Blandy Interview at Four Quarters + A---ZMix

This panel discussion, chaired by Artquest and hosted by Shipment, brought together new and established artist-led spaces to consider the financial pressures of this precarious way of working, asking whether the changing economic context of London brings new ethical opportunities to sustainability. The panel consisted of Daniel Kelley of DKUK, Jennifer Lewandowski of French Riviera, Roland Fischer of SET.

Adaptation strategies of artist led spaces

This episode of Interrogating Spaces profiles the latest Decolonising the Arts Curriculum exhibition at Central St Martins library, curated by Rahul Patel (Lecturer on MA MA Culture, Criticism and Curation at Central St Martins and Educational Developer at UAL’s Teaching and Learning exchange).

It features conversations with the five featured artists (Maria Bendixen, Dr Jo Shah, Tobi Falade, Siyan Zhang and Joanna Mamede) about their displays within the exhibition. Through the ideas at play within each of their artworks, we gain insights into diverse positions on decolonisation.

The feature is introduced by Rahul Patel.

Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Personal Narratives

This episode of interrogating spaces features a conversation between South African filmmaker Rehad Desai and Sandra Janette Poulson who studies Fashion Print at Central St Martins. They come together after a screening of Rehad’s film ‘Everything Must Fall’ which charts the #feesmustfall movement that took South Africa’s Higher 
Education institutions by storm in 2015. They discuss the film and its implications for universities and pedagogy from a global perspective.
The film screening was programmed by Rahul Patel, Lecturer on MA MA Culture, Criticism and Curation at Central St Martins and Educational Developer at UAL’s Teaching and Learning exchange.

Everything Must Fall: A conversation between Rehad Desai and Sandra Janette Poulson

Editor Ian Farr discusses the diverse roles of memory in art practice and theory from early modernism to the present, on the occasion of the Whitechapel Gallery’s latest Documents of Contemporary Art book. With video documentation of Stan Douglas’ Inconsolable Memories.

This event launched Memory, the latest title in the Documents of Contemporary Art series, published by Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press. With thanks to Stan Douglas and Victoria Miro Gallery.

Talk: Documents of Contemporary Art: Memory

Interrogating Spaces examines ideas around inclusivity and attainment in Higher Education. In each episode we speak with staff, students and practitioners to explore democratic and decolonised teaching practices.

Interrogating Spaces is brought to you by the Academic Enhancement Team within the Teaching and Learning Exchange at the University of the Arts London.


For more information please visit 
https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/teaching-and-learning-exchange/academic-enhancement

Compassionate Feedback

Interrogating Spaces / Academic Enhancement at UAL

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