College 30th January: the great assessment day

Well, the day dawned and I was at college very bright and early in order to hang my huge writing pieces on the wall.  But in fact we had lots of time to get ready, as the art history lecture was postponed so we could concentrate on being nervous.   Everyone put their work up on walls and on tables, so we could all see everyone else's work.

We were all of us  in two groups in the big life room,  rather than two rooms separately, because some of the rooms were too cold to work in, and some staff were absent too, so it was a bit noisy at times and hard to hear everything that was said.  We each had 10 minutes or so to explain our work in the two Pathway projects, and then a further ten minutes for questions and discussion, with points raised both by the tutors and by fellow-students.  The day was intense and long, but extremely interesting, as we had not seen much of each other's work over the past few weeks and it was good to see completed projects and hear people explaining their intentions, and the challenges and triumphs on the way.

Possibly because my writing work was so enormous, this second project took up most of the time in my slot (and the maps project rather less- although this had been 'peer appraised' a month or so ago).   People seemed to genuinely like what I'd done.

This was my huge piece, done at home, on the wall in the life room....

... and my accordion books also hung on the wall together.

I think the various bits of my writing project did, in the end, have coherence and purpose when seen together and with the range of approaches and scale.  The images themselves, especially the bigger ones, looked pretty good.

I'm not sure how much notice the tutors took of my sketchbook work or my research, which was extensive, because a lot of it was recorded in this blog.  I had copied quit a lot of it into my notebooks and files.  But I think I was able to explain myself fairly well.

I hope it all made sense to the tutors.  We will get written feedback next week, and until then must think about the other task for completion now, which is Portfolio Building.

College 16th January: Sharing ideas

Today we had a group tutorial with Mark, which was in part a nudge about the whole raft of work we have to complete in the next two weeks - the two Pathway Projects, our essay, and our portfolio presentations.  So much to do!

Bravado from most of us, "yes, we'll be fine" but privately I was thinking "Help!  Where did all the days go?".

A couple of people have already heard about interviews for BA courses next year, and have interviews booked.  So for them, portfolios are suddenly very important.

James had brought his in for a shared critique, very bravely.  He had lot of very interesting work, and drawings, and altogether it looked pretty impressive.  There was almost too much material, although selecting things to discard will be hard.

But it was also illuminating.  How must admissions tutors (or QR assessors?) cope with looking quickly at dozens of these things in a day or two?  How do you show your bit of work to best effect?  What kind of impression are we trying to make? Do you try and showcase a little bit of everything we've done, or do you focus on just a few areas where you really want to concentrate future work?  All decisions we'll have to face soon.

I haven't even begun to think about what to include in my portfolio, and in a way it is harder since I have no specific focus in mind.  I'm not, at least at present, thinking about applying to another course, degree or otherwise,  although I suppose I just might be wanting to do so next year.    Luckily we have a week after the Pathway assessment to assemble our portfolios for a separate assessment session on 6th Feb (although I'll be away over the preceding weekend so in reality I will only have a couple of days to get mine done).  Oh help!

We also looked at my blog - this blog!  - which I've been banging on about all last term, so it was very nice to have everyone take a peek.  No-one else in the group is keeping a log, although several have their main research resources on laptops rather than in paper folders.  General reaction was favourable, so I felt rather pleased, not least because I am the least technically competent among us, but have learned to do this.

College week 13, Pathway Assessment, 5th December

Today we had our first Pathway Project Assessment,  which I had been increasingly anxious about, and had done a lot of work in the pat week to take my project forward and have something to show which I felt reasonably happy with.
We were split into groups of 3 or 4 and had to take one person's project materials and look at ti all carefully and provide them with verbal and written feedback, against the assessment criteria (which are written in a very formal assessment geek style, hard to translate into real language).   I had some very positive comments about my map project, people seemed to like the stitched pieces particularly.  I felt I had done quite a lot in terms of documented research and experimentation, at least compared with some people who didn't have much of that to show.  Because we worked in groups, it wasn't possible to see very much of what other people had done, although there were one or two tremendous pieces,  people really pushing into adventurous approaches, materials, ideas.
This was just the right launch-pad for the second pathway project, which we have to complete by end January, with four full Monday's in college between now and then.  I have chosen the theme Writing/Word, and had a helpful tutorial with Abi.  I'm not yet very clear what I will produce, but we talked about the relationship between what I'm doing now, in art and more generally, and the old work and study life I used to lead, where the formal written word was king.  Lots of wild ideas about making a quilt out of words, or at least a series of quit led pockets into which words could be put, or making books with (or without) words,  Scale is an issue, still, but perhaps I will just decide that small is beautiful, and not strive to make a colossus when none is needed.
Anyway, overall, I had a good day, and came home enthusiastic about getting started on the next project.

Later, Lizzie and I went to listen to Terry Eagleton talking about Marxism at St Georges, part of the Bristol Festival of Ideas.  He is a good speaker, lively, relaxed, a few decent jokes, good at fielding questions. He pointed out that it is becoming increasingly ok for people to talk about the end of capitalism, or at least a radical change in the way capitalism works.  Also ideas about the shifting balance of economic power from the West towards China, India and Africa; the challenge of post-colonialism for western nations and multinationals, as well as for the (mainly) African states grappling with debt.