Changes (Lecture Greatest Hits & Discussion)

Another thing I enjoy about Allison's lectures is the way they detail the art world as it changes. She does a really excellent job of painting the transitions between movements and how one movements shifts into another. It's also fascinating hearing how much the movements can borrow from each other whilst seemingly want nothing to do with their predecessors. It's sometimes quite amusing.

It's also been a nice way of ushering in the change in my work. My style has shifted all over the place, and there was a time I'd be worried about that. About losing my current style altogether. But as time's gone on I've stopped thinking of this as a negative. I mean sure my style changes. My method of drawing people is completely different from this time last year. Even my robot drawing style has shifted into completely new territory and I'm so happy about all of these. It's taught me that change is necessary and should be appreciated.

It's also made me think about what I would like to change about other things, including the course. And as (I'm really hoping) this will be read by tutors this feels like a good place to say some of these things.

The biggest gripe I've not mentioned here so far is my concerns with the grade weighting of the course. Not to sound patronising or rude, but it looks at the moment like they picked three focuses and gave them all equal gradings without too much thought about the work that goes in. I'll elaborate a little. For our studio we're expected to work for around eight hours on a tuesday. Tracy has also expressed that she wants us working about twice that again at home over the week. The equates to somewhere in the region of twenty hours on studio work in a week. 

By contrast, we spend a scheduled four hours a week on production, with the expectation to fill a couple more with expanded studies. Even by doubling the production time, this gives us a number of eight hours. Something's feeling a little bit off here. This figures also reflected in the attention tutors place on our studio projects. There's nary a mention of production from any of our tutors all year. It's reflected as a really small part of our year. So why is it weighted the same as studio work? The part of the course we spend hundreds of hours on just to scrape a pass. It's such a strange way of working and feels somewhat unrefined and poorly thought out.

I still feel like theory deserves its place in the grading system at about the same value it is now. there's a lot of work that's thrown into that section and theory always tends to have a slightly amplified weighting due to its nature in most courses and disciplines.

So that's a lot of big talk. So what would I propose here? If the workload stays the same and I feel it should. The balance here feels quite appropriate. Admittedly I would love more production workshops but I can't see that happening in the current schedule. So I would propose a new weighting:

50% - Studio Work
20% - Production
30% - Theory

I feel this is a far more appropriate weighting of the units and is far more respectful of the workload required for the units. The studio work now carries the emphasis it should for such a huge part of our year whilst production is dropped to a far smaller part. Production is a massively useful part of this course and most of the time is the most rewarding session of the week. But I don't feel it needs to have a high weighting as it's all for our benefit. It's about learning new skills rather than creating polished outcomes. As I've mentioned in the last Discussion, it puts emphasis on the wrong things which seems to be a key flaw of this course.

Out of all of the points I have made about the course and the way it is run, this is the one I truly stand by the most as I feel that if this were addressed most of the other issues would fix themselves. As a result the context would be delivered resulting in less strain on the contextual portfolio allowing it to be delivered in the current way without as much pressure. It would even hopefully fix the weak parts of production, as those sessions would be more geared towards the method than the outcome, which is one of the key problems it faces.

To conclude, I'm aware this is a huge shift, but I feel it would greatly benefit the course and make things a lot clearer for students, and help make the aims of the production aspect of the course far clearer.