After our workshop with Academic Support’s “Who do we think we are” was postponed until the fall because of Covid, Poojitha Lal and I applied to give a Lightning Talk at the conference portion of the event. A day-long conference at Chelsea College, it functioned as a platform for staff projects and initiatives around UAL.
In our talk, we were reflecting on our shared experience of meeting in Adam Ramejkis’s Communication through Intercultural Lenses, a pilot series of sessions for students from Culture & Enterprise that ran 7 sessions from January through June, 2022. We presented some of what we appreciated about the pilot program as well as a student perspective on why creating these sorts of spaces are important. We wanted to include some aspect of experiential learning and had a small exercise, and concluded with a challenge to the staff there.
Poojitha Lal is on the Innovation Management MA and it was a delight to collaborate with her. She has a background in things like UI/UX design and used organizational tool Miro in our planning stages. We met 3 times in anticipation of this talk, for ~2 hours each time, and Adam Ramejkis supported us throughout as well. Poojitha also made the presentation below.
Script from the slides I presented:
Slide 2: Introduction
We are going to give a snapshot of our student experience as it relates to community building in the university system and how this connects with identity and well-being.
We have noticed a disconnect between what is discussed at an administrative or theoretical level and the on-the-ground experience for students, especially around terms like community, collaboration, and holistic learning.
Slide 5: Why is this space important?
One of the first things I noticed when I started at Central Saint Martins was the distinct lack of support for collective engagement in my course and department, as well as a lack of access to other students or courses or departments. There is a deficit of spaces for interactions and community building, and no networks for student-to-student communication.
I immediately stepped in to do what I could to provide support for the social space, hosting informal socials with different courses in the Culture & Enterprise department and beginning to work on new initiatives with the Arts SU. But I am a student on a yearlong program: there is only so much I can do. So now I’m working to call attention called to these sorts of frustrations and legitimizing areas like community building and social learning as important to focus on.
As we emerge from the shadow of the pandemic, I think we can all recognise how isolation is a form of siloization—part of what is missing from the online experience is exactly that ability to create space for personal connection. Support for community building can provide avenues for transdisciplinary exchange, and for feelings of membership that can influence identity formation and wellbeing.
Creating space for connection is also an act of inclusivity in the same way—an emphasis on the shared social and holistic experience can create a sense of belonging rather than being outside.
And this emphasis on connecting with others facilitates components of the social theory of learning: learning as belonging, becoming, experiencing, and doing. These echo UNESCO’s 4 pillars of learning: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be.
If we acknowledge and support the connective tissues between courses, departments, and people we can begin to support students’ whole learning experience. With collectivity in mind, we can move beyond the mindset of only an individual learning journey.
Slide 6: Look Around
To very briefly bring this to an experiential level in the room with you, I’d like for us to engage together for a moment. Part of what together collectively means is that all of us are physically in the same space together. In somatics, there is the idea that settling your body allows you to connect or harmonise with those around you.
To begin, if you could close your eyes and hear the sound of your breath, and feel your heart beating. Feel yourself sitting, the chair supporting you, and the place where your feet meet the ground. Notice the people sitting to either side of you, their sounds, and their physical presence. Notice how it feels to be physically present with other people.
Now I’d like to ask everyone to take one breath together.
So together now, breathe in through your nose, filling your lungs to capacity and into your belly, pausing in the fullness. and then out through your mouth in a long whoosh, letting go.
Notice how your body relaxes in the process.
Sit for a moment in this stillness, then let your eyes open, and turn to the person next to you and look at them, acknowledging their presence for a breath, or even two, to see that we are here in this space together. And turn the other direction and do the same thing.
Notice how it feels to be here in tandem with other people. Notice how even a small exercise can create the beginnings of a connection.
Slide 7: Final Thoughts
After this noticing, listening, taking in, and experiencing, we want to leave you with a final thought:
We as students are hungry for belonging, connection, and community in the university. I have been doing what I can as a student to help foster these connections, and programs like Adam’s indicate that there is much potential for more of these spaces. We need the wider academic support audience here to take these deficits seriously and work towards more spaces, resources, and support for the social space of learning and community.
To end, we’d like to offer this as a question or jumping-off point for discussion (perhaps to be continued in the afternoon break-out session):
How can we actively facilitate opportunities for Community and social learning?
Reflection
When a collaboration works well, it is such a joy—getting to experience some of Poojitha’s skills in organization was tremendous for me as I am more of a creative and less organized in structured ways.
It was exciting to get to raise these issues to more staff, especially presenting in person and to have further discussions ripple out from it. We met and briefly raised these issues with UAL President and Vice Chancellor James Purnell. He said he was aware, but that communication was more pressing to solve first.
I’m not sure of the lasting impact of these conferences, but I do have follow up conversations scheduled with multiple people as a result. Shahzeena Ahmada, Academic Support Associate Dean said that we could have some of this on Academic Support’s website.