On The Topic of Culture (2)

(This the second part of a reedited presentation to the Arts Umbrella community from September 7, 2011. The first part can be found here.)

Digital cultures are hugely democratizing because they encourage many different forms of creative output, but this does not mean that the works being produced will find a significant place in our society. In fact, we now need more and more sophisticated curatorial strategies to even understand the range of what is being produced. So much is being created that we are inverting and dissolving conventional notions of high and low culture and this is leading to what I will describe as a series of micro-cultures. Micro cultures are both an exciting development and also full of pitfalls. They reflect the increasing fragmentation of cultural activity into interest groups often driven by very narrow concerns. At the same time, they represent a profound change in the conditions which drive the production of creative work.   

How is that the creation of cultural artifacts that are so essential to our sense of community and nation exist in such a fragile relationship with the population and government? If there is a consensus that the arts are important why do most cultural organizations struggle and in many instances rely on government funding and public philanthropy for their survival? The only conclusion that can be drawn from these contradictions is that cultural creativity is not that essential, which is why cultural organizations are always the first to feel the sting of government cutbacks. I will return to this point in a moment.

Third, the move to identify the arts in particular as functional parts of a cultural economy carries with it many dangers. One of the most serious is that we conflate the deeply felt desire on the part of a significant number of people in our communities to satisfy their yearning to create with the outcomes of that creativity. It is so important to understand that creativity does not necessarily mean that there will be identifiable and valuable outcomes to the process. The key word here is process. It is the same with learning. If all we are aiming for are outcomes, then we will end up with a linear process, one that is predetermined by what we anticipate from it. Part of the joy of creativity and learning how to be creative particularly in the arts is that we don’t know exactly where we will end up nor do we often know why we even began.

The joy here comes from the quest. And if the final object, process or event reflects our deepest sense of what we want to say and why, then that should be enough. As we know, in the present context, it is not.

We need to sharpen our understanding of this contradiction. In the 18^th century culture meant something very specific, usually related to crafts and to guilds. Although many of the arts were practiced in elite contexts and produced for the elite, the distinctions between creativity and everyday life were neither sharp nor seen as necessary. In other words, the boundaries between the arts and other activities were permeable.

Over the last fifty years or so that permeability has decreased to the point where creative practices are now classified as one of many professions. In fact, from a policy perspective the systems of classification that we have in place are very convenient. However, and quite ironically, if creators are engaged with their work, they are likely to make a mockery of the classifications largely because the voyage of creative engagement often has no clear purpose. This is in fact the opposite of what traditional professions are designed to accomplish which is why the most current word used to explain how people enter various professions is training. Purpose of course has many meanings as well as outcomes. The same issue haunts research. If it is too directed towards outcomes then there will be few surprises and innovation will be stifled.

Part Three is here   

On the Topic of Culture (1)

(This is a reedited version of a speech to the Arts Umbrella Community on September 7, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada)

It is always a challenge to talk about culture, but in particular to offer by way of discourse something new on a subject that is as old as civilization itself. This latter point came to mind when I was viewing Werner Herzog’s new film Cave of Forgotten Dreams which is shot in 3D and takes place in the Chauvet Caves in France. The images in the cave are at least 30,000 years old. They reflect an extraordinary desire to picture the world since they were created under very difficult circumstances, most likely with very little available light but by artists with exceptional talent. The images reflect a deep desire to connect aesthetics with form. They are all closely linked to each other inadvertently creating a narrative that may well have been repeated in many other caves and in many other more distant locations. This suggests that not only is the creation of art fundamental to the human psyche, but also that humans could not survive without it.

As Brian Boyd recently suggested: “A work of art acts like a playground for the mind, a swing or a slide or a merry-go-round of visual or aural or social pattern.” (On the Origin of Stories, 2009: 15)

The integration of play with creativity and curiosity seems transparently clear to those of us who have devoted our lives to the arts, but for reasons that I will discuss today, as much as we recognize the importance of art, we also devalue its role, contribution and voice. This could be one of the great golden ages for the arts. My hope is that it will be. But, there are storm clouds on the horizon that we all need to be watchful about.

Over the last fifteen years, the cultural sector along with the small number of institutions devoted to learning in and for the arts in Canada have been involved in a difficult and challenging debate.

On the one side, some argue that culture is essential to the fabric and nature of Canadian society and that culture defines not only who we are, but also how we live and in some instances how we should live. On the other side, are advocates for what I will describe as the economic argument for the arts using the term Cultural Industries as a catch all for culture’s contribution to the GDP and to the economic well being of our society.

I want to talk to you today about why both positions need revision and rethinking and why we have reached a crucial phase in the broad based discussions that our communities are having about culture and its importance.

First, we need to understand that there are many definitions of culture, so many in fact that the term itself has lost much of its power. This is not a minor issue because in its present usage culture encapsulates nearly everything we do, which means that we have no clear definition for it and no way of distilling what is special about creative engagement and the creative life. This has implications for the role and importance of artistic engagement, because we end up replacing the uniqueness of creativity with assembly line notions of production and consumption.   

Second, it is proving to be very difficult to sustain the argument that creative cultures are essential to our everyday lives. As our economic crisis deepens, various elements of our culture appear superfluous even as people seek out alternative venues to relax, learn and be entertained. Although not a given and very dependent on context, creative work is also meant to challenge, sometimes caustically.

What we are seeing today is a separation among various creative forms with some like interactive gaming appropriating the history of aesthetic expression for popular purposes while others in the fine arts continue to rely on an exclusive gallery system for validation. This separation has its own challenges, not the least of which is the decline of serious art criticism in our newspapers and the almost complete absence of art among mainstream broadcasters.     

At the same time, we are undergoing a massive conversion to digital technologies and it FEELS as if artists are leading the way. I say feels because if you take a close look at what is happening you will notice that cultural creators are still for the most part ensconced in the same fragile relationships that they have always had with the state, the business community and the population at large. Despite all of the discussion of DIY cultures and social media and despite the societal recognition that creativity is at the heart of what we do, the gap between artists and their communities has not changed all that much in the last fifty years.

Part Two can be found here……

I am learner (by John Connell)

I am learner.

Just as no one can see the colours I see, just as no one can hear the music I hear, just as no one can feel what I feel when I hold something in my hand, and just as no one can sense the world as I perceive it around me, no one can teach me. 

No one can teach me.

I am learner.

I am not taught. I learn. I am human and a social animal, so I learn with others. I do learn from others, but what I learn is rarely, if ever, what is taught to me, and rarely, if ever, what others learn at the same time from the same teachers. Often I learn entirely alone.

I am learner.

I perceive. I use my senses to know the world around me. I discern patterns. I shape my understanding through metaphor and analogy. I seek to create purpose in my life. Sometimes I conceive purpose where there is none; often I accept others’ conceptions of purpose in life, others’ conceptions of purpose in the universe. 

I am learner.

I build a universe in my mind and I live there, a universe that changes constantly as I learn. All people, including the people I love, live alongside me in this constantly shifting universe. I see only glimpses of the lives they lead, because, just as they are players in my world, I am a player in all the universes created by every other person alive. 

I am learner.

I connect. I connect with people and ideas in the physical and virtual worlds and discern no boundary between the two worlds. I learn in, across, through, with and from the networks in which I live, work, play and interact. I continually extend my own potential through my connections. I make connections between what I have already learned and what the world chooses to present to me through my own interactions with the world and through the interventions and actions of others.

I connect therefore I learn. 

I am learner.

I am able to recite facts, echo the opinions of others, assume the attitudes of so-called authorities when urged to do so, but I prefer to seek real knowledge of the changing world in which we live, genuine understanding of the realities of the human condition, authentic insight into our intrinsic dependence on one another. My need to know for myself is stronger than my need to recite from or imitate others.

I am learner.

I imagine. I reach beyond the reality of my senses and there I build my own dreams and visions; sometimes I welcome others’ wishful thinking and create my own place in their fantasies, accepting the values they place before me, filtering and refining them to fit my universe. Often, by accidents of time and place and birth, I am conditioned by those around me to accept their social, moral, religious and political values. In these circumstances, I still create my own truth but I struggle to do so freely, constrained by the strictures imposed on me by others. 

I am learner.

I listen to stories from others; I tell my own stories, to myself, to others; I participate in stories, mine and others’. I determine who I am through a prism of dramas, tales, myths, histories, lies, assumed truths, rituals, games and a complex and intricate narrative that I weave around the realities of my life. I live and learn from the drama of the now and I recall and learn from the narratives woven out of past dramas. 

I am learner.

I am not taught. 

I learn.

by John Connell - originally posted at http://www.johnconnell.co.uk/blog/?p=2697

NAFSA 2011: A Parallel Universe by Sharon Joy Bell

(With nearly 10,000 members, NAFSA is the world's largest nonprofit professional association dedicated to international education.)

Many academic colleagues may be unaware but Vancouver, Canada, has just played host (May 29-June 3) to the largest gathering of higher education practitioners in the world, with 8,700 delegates converging on a stunningly beautiful city – a city at this time of year willing summer to take hold. The huge NAFSA delegate presence in downtown Vancouver was only briefly overshadowed by the thousands of fans who converged mid-week for the Vancouver Canucks/Boston Bruins ice hockey match – the first of seven which will determine who wins the coveted Stanley Cup. Fortunately our host city team won the first match with a single goal in the last seconds of the game, so spirits remained high.

With nearly 10,000 members, NAFSA is the world's largest not-for-profit professional association dedicated to international education. NAFSA’s members share high ideals: ‘that international education advances learning and scholarship, builds understanding and respect among different peoples, and enhances constructive leadership in the global community…that international education by its nature is fundamental to fostering peace, security, and well-being’. www.nafsa.org/about.sec/organization_leadership/

The NAFSA annual conference is a place to strengthen global institutional ties. The majority of NAFSA conference delegates are administrative and professional staff with responsibility for international students – from admissions, to study abroad, to internships and migration. These are part of Whitchurch’s (2006) growing ‘third stream’ of professional staff with strategically important roles in our sector. Some delegates are the sales representatives of the service industries that support student mobility, such as insurance companies. Some are government agency officials, such as Austrade representatives. There is a minority of academics.

At times during the week I felt I was travelling over time and space in Dr Who’s Tardis, never knowing where I would next land nor what surprising past-encounters and unlikely academic relationships would be revealed. But when my head stopped spinning from daily back-to-back meetings and a string of wine drenched evening receptions with colleagues from Florida to Stockholm I realised that the highlights of my week sat outside the formal Expo agenda. Foremost, the post-conference visit to the downtown (Woodward) campus of Simon Fraser University, where the courtyard entrance is dominated by a huge, multi-screen, illuminated Stan Douglas image of a violent clash between protesters and police in the 1970s. The image is a centrepiece of the campus and extraordinarily evocative of the 70s student experience in the West – a global phenomenon played out locally over a range of issues from local urban development to the Vietnam War. Douglas’s image entitled Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971, is a representation of a little known but crucial moment in Vancouver's history. On that date, Vancouver police violently broke up a Smoke-In, a peaceful marijuana protest. This event was apparently ‘the climax to heightened tensions between local government, hippies squatting in empty industrial buildings and the predominately blue-collar families that had populated the neighbourhood for over a century’. The striking image has all the qualities of documentary veracity but in fact was created through an elaborate dramatic re-enactment of the scene, echoing Vancouver’s current status as a city of image-makers. http://thetyee.ca/ArtsAndCulture/2010/02/17/GastownRiot/

Yet the image is even more astonishing in terms of its place within this contemporary university setting – the downtown campus often reserved for our most conservative of activities – the interface with the business and corporate worlds, but in this rather funky city that prides itself on its creativity, also the site of the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts. I sat for some time in the SFU courtyard contemplating which Australian Vice Chancellor would take such a bold step to pose, in a very public and radical way, the enduring questions ‘What is the purpose of the university? How does it engage with its community? How do we reflect our place and history?’

At the beginning of the week I had discovered that the well-endowed University of British Columbia does it differently through a lush, open to the public golf course and an extra-ordinary Museum of Anthropology. The museum is an Arthur Erickson architectural and design triumph which offers a beautiful and respectful setting for the display of Indigenous material culture, the most astonishing of which are the monumental totems traditionally associated with Northwest Indian potlatch ceremonies – ceremonies that involved feasting, dancing and giving gifts to all in attendance, until such ceremonies were banned in 1885 by colonial powers.

The museum’s annotation of the potlatch again evoked my own student past – of Franz Boas and an American pre-occupation with material culture.  The ‘potlatch’ was firmly planted as an iconic ceremony in my anthropological discipline base, even though the retained detail was sketchy: recollection of conspicuous consumption, display, status and prestige, and, most important of all, the redistribution of wealth. Without intending disrespect for Indigenous colleagues or in any way underestimating the layers of symbolic and religious significance the ‘potlatch’ has amongst its cultural custodians, by NAFSA’s week end ‘the potlatch’ surfaced as the most obvious analogy for what must be the most extra-ordinary annual higher education event in the calendar.

I was a NAFSA conference ‘first-timer’, although through a fortuitous bureaucratic oversight my nametag was missing the purple satin, gold-embossed ribbon (akin to those one sees at rural shows for winning entries) that should have announced the same.  I did not know quite what to expect as, despite the multitude of emails that swamped me pre-conference, the program seemed to be rather content free unless you were a newbie seeking to build your international education operational skills and leadership base with a clear north-American focus.  I did not anticipate the scale, or the staggering market orientation of the event. If you ever wonder whether higher education has become a global commodity, land your Tardis in the NAFSA Conference Expo Hall – a hanger of a convention space with hundreds of booths in the style of a furniture fair or perhaps most accurately a travel fair. This is education as a commodity par excellence but, with the notable exception of the service industries and the ‘for-profits’ represented, the products for sale are not material goods, or even, as at other educational fairs, academic programs and student places.

At this commodity fair what is being sold is first and foremost the educational destination and student experience. Country exhibits dominate, populated by those who make up their sector – the Canadians showing an atypical degree of sectoral collaboration (or more likely funding) by showcasing their provinces. Most others, including the Study in Australia stand, showcase individual institutions. At the institutional level it is status and reputation that is being sold, and location of course helps.  At the individual level what is being reinforced and interrogated is the robustness of relationships and exchanges.  Students are the currency and they, as ‘incomings’ and ‘outgoings’, are counted, their quality of experience measured, and counted again. Balanced reciprocity is the aim – a particular challenge for those institutions whose student populations are mature age, part-time, and/or low SES.

Between individuals from far-flung institutions there is often a high degree of affection through experience that spans many years underpinned by an evangelical zeal for global student mobility. I do not know if NAFSA has the data but ‘the chat’ tells me that many who work in this field were exchange students themselves and many found their overseas experience life changing.  They are now close witnesses to their students’ life changing experiences: the development of fluency in a new language; the opportunity to study and work in parts of the globe less travelled; and inevitably, the cross-country marriages. What individual exchange students have gone on to achieve is a large part of ‘the chat.’

So, like the ‘potlatch’, this annual ritual revolves around conspicuous consumption (the investment in travel alone for 8,700 delegates is mind-numbing), sometimes quite elaborate display of relationship, status and prestige, and to a degree the redistribution of wealth, if we equate educational experience with wealth.  Also like the potlatch NAFSA is not strictly aligned with the sector’s economic imperatives. Exchange relationships do not necessarily translate into student load, although many hope it will, and research collaboration is more likely to be a precursor to student exchange than an outcome of student mobility.  It should also be noted that NAFSA is, by and large, a ritual of the West – the Americas (including South America) courting Europe and vice versa. Australia is apparently a perennial favourite with north-American students. There is limited engagement by the Middle East and Asia, although this may be changing.

On a ‘green’ planet do the costs (and carbon footprint) justify the benefits? It is hard to say.  It is certainly interesting to see how much colleagues value face-to-face contact and how apparent it is that there are conversations we simply not want to have using technology. Relationships do matter. Does NAFSA change the way we conduct our business in the international sphere? We undoubtedly pick-up examples of best practice but in student recruitment more broadly our ‘value proposition’, which drives the most successful of our exchange partnerships, is yet to dominate the equation. Was NAFSA a learning experience?  Most certainly, but through observation and lots of listening, not through the formal conference program. Is NAFSA 2012 Houston, Texas in my diary? Probably not but I would encourage every Vice Chancellor who has never attended to do so to gain a sense of the ritual hybrid to which our sector has given birth, and to gain a fascinating window into the context in which our international offices work.

The potlatch was banned in the 19^th century partly because the scale of the events being staged grew exponentially and questions were asked by colonial powers about the economic impact – the elaborate preparation necessary, the time expended attending the rituals, and the concomitant spread of contagious disease. This year part of ‘the chat’ was around whether NAFSA become too big and outgrown its purpose? We should at least be asking the question, even if the only disease symptoms being spread seemed to be those associated with jet lag and the occasional case of the common cold.

Sharon Joy Bell is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and International at Charles Darwin University in Australia

A Utilitarian World (2)

Imagine a world in which the daily experience of attending school does not exist. Take that a bit further and imagine learning as an experience that is both lifelong and not constrained by institutions, not necessarily located within institutions, but fundamental to everyday life.

In a utilitarian world, learning is sequestered to one place or one time.

Learning, in my opinion is by definition never finished. Of course there is a narrative to the learning experience — a beginning and an end, but the entire process of learning is always temporary and crucially, contingent.

In a utilitarian world, learning is first of all ‘located’ to some place and then given a particular time, fit into a schedule.

Even online education which should be open and less linear has in many instances been structured into a sequential process. If the digital age has so far taught us anything, it is that sequence should be based on multiple pathways and diverse strategies to learning. Learners want to map their direction based on a vast number of factors from state of mind, to the demands of everyday life.

This need to take control — manifested most fully in the rise of social media — has its own problems. For example, given the wealth of information that now suffuses everything that we do, how can we distinguish between good and bad information? This is a major issue for parents whose children are exposed to any number of questionable web sites and problematic claims from many different sources. But, the need to take control is also essential to the learning experience. After all, learning if it is to be valuable must also be seen to have value. Value is gained when learners feel some degree of empowerment from the process.

In this context, teachers have become curators as well as mentors and guardians of history. The word curator is derived from the Latin, “curator” which means overseer, manager and of importance to this discussion, guardian. Curator also comes from the word, to cure. The challenge is that curators have to be able to teach critical thinking.

In a utilitarian space, there is less and less time for historical and critical engagement with ideas. The rush is on to achieve a great deal as quickly as possible and the notion that for example, it might be important to spend some time on areas of study that seem peripheral to a set of pragmatic goals becomes less and less attractive.

In my next post in this series, I will explore contemplation which marks out a territory that is far more speculative than an overly utilitarian approach could ever permit.

Part 1 can be found here.

A Utilitarian World (1)

The Dilemmas of Learning              

Over the years (17 to be exact), this web site has turned into a vast enterprise. There are now no less than 1200 pages of material on the site and most of the articles and essays are original. I often comment on learning and research in education and industry. Today, I am beginning an occasional series that is part of my new book. So, I would appreciate any feedback and advice on this entry and others as they appear. I would like the book I am writing to reflect and incorporate the concerns and views of the large community of readers who visit Critical Approaches on a regular basis.

The work of research and learning, particularly in applied areas like design can be as pragmatic as required depending on the project or the demands of clients or the general challenge taken to various problems and issues. However, any learning process and research that is entirely governed and judged by pragmatic standards is rarely that useful. In saying this, I am trying to soften current trends and discussions among educational policymakers and the community that suggest that learning without a pragmatic outcome is not valuable and in the end will not add value to society or to the individual learner. The emphasis on outcomes in education has become so dominant that it seems almost heretical to raise some questions about it.

For example, a course in philosophy or ethnography may seem irrelevant to designers or engineers or medical practitioners. In fact, if you take a close look at the professional schools, there is a nod to the humanities in some of them, but for the most part, the curricula have narrowed to reflect the immediate challenges of the professions. Engineering schools often have courses in Technology and Society and do permit their students to take electives. But, the core training focuses on the perceived needs of specialized individuals to the exclusion of what are seen to be courses that are less important to the future employment of professionals. Martha Nussbaum has commented on this situation in her new book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010 Princeton University Press).

Part of the challenge here is that learning should not be narrow but also learning is by definition a process that is always unfinished. The idea that students can earn their qualifications in a linear and direct way actually contributes to failure unless the disciplines are very simple and the skills needed never evolve or change.

Three concepts to keep in mind here:

1. Learning is non-linear, therefore broad based skills provide students with multiple pathways to achieve the goals they set for themselves;
2. Pragmatism is not in and of itself a negative, but pragmatism in the service of limited outcomes decreases flexibility and inhibits creativity;
3. Professional disciplines need to integrate and not just pay lip service to other disciplines. 

Part Two will appear soon…… 

Distractions, distractions……

I love the angst of commentators who deal with YOUTH in the digital age. They always seem to find the most negative things to say about contemporary culture and in particular anything to do with young people and their digital habits. Take as an example, David Carr of the New York Times. In a recent article Paying for Times at SXSW Carr talks about the multi-tasking and often disturbing young person who glances at their iPhone or Blackberry while engaging in conversations with others. I had a visit once from an individual who glanced at his Blackberry for the entire duration of our one hour meeting. Sure, this is disturbing but not because of the technology. Anyone who cannot maintain their connection with an interlocutor (daydreaming incessantly while I say important things!!), is saying as much about themselves as they are about the person they are not listening to. 

Conversations are by their very nature rather elliptical and fluid. This is after all why so much of what we say to each other goes off in many different directions, our words and sentences are often misinterpreted and more often than not we misunderstand each other. Distractions are at the core of the communications process. No one is ever fully attuned to an other and part of the challenge is to wend our way through this repetitive conundrum with some dignity and self-awareness. We need to stop blaming technology for modifying or creating habits that already exist! Perhaps then, we will actually take fuller control of our conversations and try and understand the inherent distortions as wonderful opportunities for further exploration and not as dead ends. Conversations, discussions and presentations gain their strength from our struggle to make ourselves understood which is why from time to time we are actually a little less distracted than usual!

TED Day One