Rachel Emily Taylor, Philip Kennedy

Reading Group is a recurring format where members share and discuss resources used before, during, and after teaching illustration. Do you want to prepare and share something for our next event? Please let us know at: mail@illustrationeducators.org

Through Witnessing: Threading the critiquing, making, teaching of design (Set Margins’, 2025) by Nida Abdullah, Chris Lee, Xinyi Li (Eds.)  https://www.setmargins.press/books/throughwitnessing/

‘The transposing illustrator: Challenges and opportunities meeting the authorial illustrator that interacts, documents and bears witness of the unrepresented and the non-representable; (Journal of Illustration, Volume 10, Issue Transitus, 2023) by Hilde Kramer https://doi.org/10.1386/jill_00060_1

I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own (Chicago University Press, 2011) by Michael Taussig https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo11637787.html

Recording Britain: A Pictorial Domesday of Pre-war Britain (David & Charles, 1990) by Gill Saunders, Patrick Wright, David Mellor https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1500059633

Heimat: A German Family Album (Penguin Books, 2018) Nora Krug https://nora-krug.com/belonging-heimat

Rachel Emily Taylor and Philip Kennedy led the event. It used the recently published Through Witnessing (2025) as a starting point for a broader discussion on the role of witnessing within illustration and illustration education. The session adopted the book’s technique of threading – an approach that allows for multiple narrative strands and interpretive routes, structuring the session to weave together various points of entry and divergence. This method aimed to encourage open discussion, drawing connections across illustration practice and pedagogy.

Rachel opened the session with a short extract from the book’s introduction, in which editors Nida Abdullah, Chris Lee and Xinyi Li define witnessing:

The act of witnessing is interwoven with complicity, corroboration, and contradiction. It implies endurance through time, a demand for accountability, as well as acts of collective memorialization and support that make real something that might have otherwise remained in the shadows, forgotten and not believed. Witnessing is also a way of learning and reflecting. (Abdullah, Lee & Li, 2025, p. 4)

Rachel reflected on Hilde Kramer’s research into illustrating the unrepresentable and on the idea of documentary drawing as testimony – illustration as an act to bear witness. She also revisited Michael Taussig’s I Swear I Saw This (which she discussed in a previous reading group), in which the anthropologist writes about drawing in his fieldwork notebooks as:

“...more than the result of seeing. It is a seeing that doubts itself (...) This must be where witnessing separates itself from seeing, where witnessing becomes holy writ: mysterious, complicated, powerful. And necessary.” (Taussig, 2011, p. 2)

For Philip, the text provided a productive prompt to reflect on his own relationship with the term witnessing, particularly its relationship to other forms of 'seeing' within illustration practice and pedagogy. Terms like observing, looking, or perceiving can often be conflated, but unpacking their intent reveals important distinctions. He, too, referenced Taussig, drawing from a later point in the book:

“If I say that my drawing is an act of witness, what I mean to say is that it aspires to a certain gravity beyond the act of seeing with one’s own eyes. To witness, as opposed to see, is to be implicated in a process of judgment…” (Taussig, 2011, p. 71)

This led Philip to Claire Doran’s recent PhD study, Engaged Witnessing (2024), which examines three Holocaust education texts: Anne Frank’s Diary, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. In her introduction, Doran defines the core concept:

“I define engaged witnessing as addressing the gap between empathy and action and signifying the inspiration of an empathetic response that requires responsibility and can motivate action.”

With this framing in mind, Philip proposed that words like witnessing can function as bridging terms, verbs that connect inner experience with outward action; in the case of Doran, witnessing bridges the gap between empathy and responsibility, prompting an actionable response.

            By extension, he explored how witnessing might be positioned in contrast to a word like gaze, which is often bound up with power. Drawing on John Berger’s Ways of Seeing (1973), he recalled how the gaze (particularly the male or imperial gaze) functions to categorise, distance, or claim ownership. He also referenced Susan Sontag’s view in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), which considers how suffering, especially through photographs, does not necessarily foster understanding. The gaze, she warns, can desensitise; only witnessing, with context and intent, holds the potential to mobilise.

Building on these conceptual distinctions, Philip brought along two books to explore how terms like seeing, recording, and witnessing might operate in practice.

The first, Recording Britain, speaks more to the act of documentation than to witnessing in the ethical or accountable sense outlined earlier. The word "recording" is central here – not just in the title, but in the project's purpose. Commissioned by the British government during World War II, it employed artists to produce topographical watercolours of the British landscape at a time when a Nazi invasion felt imminent. The initiative functioned as both documentary and propaganda: an attempt to preserve a vision of Britain worth defending.

In the context of this reading group, Recording Britain prompts reflection on the politics of preservation. Does it present an idealised, even sentimental view of a nation at war? Philip proposed the book as a way to consider recording as a bridge between seeing and keeping: “I saw this, and now it is kept.” To record is to conserve, appreciate, and often to remember. But this act is never neutral. It’s bound up in values and ideologies: What gets remembered? Who decides what is worth recording? Through witnessing, by contrast, we might say: “I saw this, and now I am responsible.”

This led naturally to Nora Krug’s 2018 graphic memoir Heimat, which explores themes of identity, inherited guilt, and belonging through her lived experience as a second-generation German reckoning with her country’s Nazi past. Through a blend of personal narrative and archival research, Krug confronts the silence and ambivalence that shaped postwar German attitudes to history.

Importantly, Heimat is not simply a record of her family’s past. Krug defines her work as a form of witnessing. Her illustrations aren’t neutral artefacts; they are visual testimonies of moral inquiry. Constructed from family archives, interviews, and found ephemera, the book acknowledges its gaps, contradictions, and uncomfortable truths. It dwells in the complexities of intergenerational responsibility.

In May, Philip attended a talk by Krug at the International Literature Festival in Dublin, where she emphasised that witnessing is central to her practice. In her words: “By making history visible, we commit to it – we make it visible to others, and in doing so, we become witnesses, and we make our readers witnesses too.”

After sharing this work, Rachel and Philip introduced projects by two recent graduates. As leaders of BA Illustration courses – Rachel at Camberwell College of Arts and Philip at the National College of Art and Design – they aimed to highlight how the notion of witnessing may already be emerging within their teaching practices, and to reflect on the value of embedding it more intentionally into illustration curricula. Philip presented Tommy Myles' work, which uses blind drawing and sculpture to create abstracted memorials of buildings under threat of demolition - visual acts that both record and mourn. Rachel shared Ayshe-Mira Yashin's four-part visual essay on British Overseas Territories in Cyprus. Developed through on-site research, her sketchbooks formed the basis of refined visual translations that highlight power, place, and presence.

The presentation was followed by a lively discussion that questioned how the concept of witnessing might be explored or challenged in our roles as illustration educators. Attendees also shared a rich collection of related resources.

Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering, The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

Claire Doran, Engaged Witnessing: An Ethical Framework for Teaching the Holocaust (PhD, 2024)

John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Penguin, 1972)

Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others  (Penguin, 2004)

Forensic Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London,

Nick Willing, Paula Rego, Secrets & Stories (BBC, 2017)

Daniel Torrent, One day, two weeks, three months… (Edicions Cal·lígraf, 2015)

Saidiya Hartman, Venus in Two Acts (Small Axe, 2008)

Nora Krug, Diaries of War (Penguin, 2022)

Timothy Snyder and Nora Krug, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Penguin, 2021)

Saidiya Hartman, Gallery 214: Critical Fabulations (MoMA, 2021) 

Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman – Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth (Verso Books, 2021)

James Bridle, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence (Penguin, 2022)

Members who attended the event and contributed to this list of resources

Reading Group: Friday 13th of June 2025

illustration educators

This year’s theme looks at how new ways of teaching and learning are helping to shape illustration education in a world that feels increasingly uncertain. Through a series of online events, workshops, and conversations, we’ll share ideas and approaches that respond to change, and explore how we can support creativity at every stage of life. By bringing together educators, practitioners, and researchers, we hope to build an open, supportive space for learning, making, and sharing—one that’s inclusive, adaptable, and forward-looking.

Sharing ideas and resources is central to what we do. The Illustration Educators website acts as a platform to connect us, and to publicly advocate for our shared interests and concerns. We also invite members to contribute resources they’ve created in response to this year’s theme.

We chose the word hope for the theme title after much discussion—it wasn’t a decision we took lightly. But when I read Rebecca Solnit’s latest book, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain (2025), her use of the word hope really struck a chord. It captured exactly the feeling we were trying to express.

… I’ve cherished unpredictability as the other face of possibility — if you already know what's going to happen, then there's nothing more or nothing else possible, a view that often leads to disengagement and passivity. But mostly we don’t know; those proclamations about inevitability are often false prophesies. Hope in this sense is just the recognition that in that uncertainty there may be the space in which we move towards the best and away from the worst of those possibilities, that the future is not a place that already exists, towards which we are trudging, but a place that we are creating with what we do (or don’t) in the present. Or, rather, hope is that recognition and a commitment to the peruse of the better possibilities within the spaciousness of the unknown, the not yet created. As Audre Lorde said “To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give up. Do not be misled into passivity either by false security, (they don’t mean me), or by despair, (there’s nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it.” - Rebecca Solnit, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uncertain Times (2025)

Theme 2025: Vectors of Hope

Reading Group is a reoccurring format where members share and discuss resources used before, during and after teaching illustration. Reading Group takes place on Zoom and lasts for about 1.5 hrs.

Do you want to prepare and share something for our next event? Please let us know at mail@illustrationeducators.org

Together by Richard Sennet (Penguin Books 2013) link

Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border-Thinking Approach to Design by Danah Abdulla in Design Struggles Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives Claudia Mareis and Nina Paim (eds.) (Valiz 2021) link

The event was led by Darryl Clifton who introduced two readings; an excerpt from Richard Sennet’s Together and another from Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border-Thinking Approach to Design by Danah Abdulla, an essay included in Design Struggles Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Perspectives which is edited by Claudia Mareis and Nina Paim.

The focus for the first reading comes from a chapter in Sennet’s book that explores the ‘spectrum of exchange’. Here Sennet is essentially describing what motivates individuals to participate in cooperative activity. The spectrum he refers to ranges from altruism to Winner-takes-all. The so-called sweet spot in the middle of the spectrum is the differentiating exchange, ‘the province of dialogics’.

Sennet refers to the history and development of coffee houses, cafés and pubs in eighteenth century England that were designed to encourage customers to talk to one another. Mutual exchange encouraged customers to stay longer and buy more, but equally these chance encounters enabled ‘valuable, unexpected information through gossip,’ where ‘a chance remark may suddenly open up a new vein of endeavour…’. It is this aspect of the dialogic encounter that resonated with me in relation to the provocation ‘who educates’. Chance encounters and informal conversations were prevalent in the studio as it formerly existed in British Art Schools. Here it is also necessary to acknowledge the research of Duna Sabri. Work undertaken while Sabri worked at UAL revealed that opportunities to engage in chance encounters and informal discussion radically improved a student’s chances of achieving at a high level – Sennet’s claim that this degree of informal dialogic exchange might offer new conceptual and practical avenues would seem to have a bearing on this seemingly prosaic (but significant) outcome. So, the ‘who’ of who educates in these scenarios transcends the obvious tutor student (transactional) dynamic, chance encounters, incidental conversations and informality between all participants would seem to offer more to the potlatch of learning – we might all educate one another.

In the text Sennet also refers to the importance of edges and boundaries, he says: “Edges come in two sorts: boundaries and borders. A boundary is a relatively inert edge; population thins out at this sort of edge and there is relatively little exchange among creatures. A border is a more active edge, as at the shoreline dividing ocean and land; this is a zone of intense biological activity, a feeding ground for animals, a nutrient zone for plants. In human ecology, the eight-lane highway isolating parts of the city from each other is a boundary, whereas the mixed-use street at the edge between two communities can be more of a border.”

Sennet’s description of the difference between borders and boundaries segued neatly on to the second reading from Danah Abdulla’s essay in a section called Border-Thinking as method. Here Abdulla contends that “Border-thinking is a decolonial concept “focuse[d] on changing the terms of the conversation and not only its content.”55 Decoloniality crosses borders of thought to craft another space for the production of knowledge.56 ” Abdulla goes on to reference the work of Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry and speaks about border thinking as systemic, requiring a ‘rethinking’ of disciplines in order to challenge the hegemony of Eurocentric modernism. Abdulla, alluding to Arturo Escobar, is proposing an erosion of the disciplinary boundaries by first exploring the capacity for Design (and Illustration) to embrace a ‘set of practices attuned to the relational dimension of life’.

Design in the Borderlands: An introduction by Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry

Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing by Walter D. Mignolo

Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking by Walter D Mignolo

World-System Analysis in the Context of Transmodernity, Border Thinking and Global Coloniality by Ramón Grosfoguel

Learning to Unlearn: Decolonial Reflections from Eurasia and the Americas by Madina V. Tlostanova and Walter D. Mignolo

Extinction: A Radical History by Ashley Dawson

Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise by Arturo Escobar

The Disimagination Machine and the Pathologies of Power by Henry A. Giroux

Reading Group: Friday 17th May 2024

illustration educators Gathering November 21st 2024

Hello everyone we are really excited to announce the details of our first annual  iIllustration educators ‘Gathering’ event which will take place at the Royal College of Art’s Rausing Research & Innovation building in Battersea, London on Thursday the 21st of November 2024. 

We are also very pleased to share with you that Dr Catrin Morgan from Parsons New School, Kunyalala (Kone) Ndlovu practitioner and founder of BCAS and Sinead Evans, from University of the Arts, London, will act as ‘facilitators’ for activities that include discussion, making and sharing, throughout the day. Catrin, Kone and Sinead have thoughtfully prepared these short, enlivening sessions and participants will have the opportunity to experience each one throughout the day.. 

The day will run from 10am – 4pm, including breaks and lunch. 

Catrin Morgan is Assistant Professor in Illustration at Parsons School of Design. She is an Illustrator, artist and designer whose practice is concerned with mathematical, architectural and theoretical systems. Catrin has an MA in Communication Art and Design from the Royal College of Art in London and a PhD in Visual Communication also from the RCA.

 Morgan is the author of Phantom Settlements (Ditto Press, 2011), the Age of Wire and String, was published by Granta Books in 2013, Studies for Studies and Jerome’s study, a further collaboration with Max Porter published by Test Center Books in London.

 Catrin’s workshop will take Paolo Friere's ideas about liberatory teaching as it's jumping off point. Starting with Friere's assertion that teacher student relationships are 'narrative in character' we will think about the narratives that we bring with us to our teaching and the narratives that we create through our pedagogy. Emphasis will be placed on teaching in this phase of the pandemic and the tension between empowering students and institutional benchmarks for their learning,

Kone Ndlovu is a polymath whose practice is concerned with democratization, critique and engagement of high culture through narrative. He is a writer, filmmaker, culture critic, visual artist, designer, archivist, educator, producer, historian, speaker and philosopher. 

 Ndlovu continues to work with the best in class brands and businesses globally in various capacities, including Nike, Reebok, adidas, Wimbledon, Sony, Levi’s and Lego. He has also worked for/with global cultural icons such as Kendrick Lamar, Stella McCartney, Warwick Thornton, Sean Tresvant, Ortis Deley and Ziwe.

His 2021 film, Two Pictures, created as a reflective response to the tragic events surrounding George Floyd, received special mentions at a number of film festivals and launched his film company Epigraph Films.

 In early 2023 he began a new educational practice named BCAS, as an amalgamation of his practice in both commercial creative, design and cultural spaces by building a curriculum that champions democratic high culture beyond the western gaze. 

 Kone’s workshop will introduce a number of provocations for open discussion; extrapolated from the annual theme of ‘who educates’ and developing questions that consider where the ‘centres’ for current critical debate might be, who owns these and how might they be challenged and more justly realigned?

Sinead Evans is currently working with ceramics, film and photography to explore how haptics work in images to illustrate shared experiences and memories. Her teaching practice is grounded in the position that illustration is a relational discipline, transdisciplinary and parasitic. She has previously contributed to publications such as Varoom, The Journal of Illustration and was a contributing editor of Limner Journal. She is a founding member of illustration educators, an organisation focussed on the communal development of illustration practices.

Previously she has taught on courses at Kingston University, Norwich University of the Arts, London Metropolitan University, University of the Creative Arts and the Royal College of Art.

Full Price (non-membership) - £44.04
Members - £33.22
Independent practitioner - £25.08
Student - £19.67

Tickets can be purchased from eventbrite here and include refreshments and a sandwich lunch. Please contact us at mail@illustrationeducators.org if you have any questions.

RCA Rausing Research & Innovation Building
15 Parkgate Road
London
SW11 4NL

Gathering 2024: information and tickets here!

Rachel Davey

Exploring Illustration Pedagogy through Illustration Practice by Rachel Davey:

This study explores illustration pedagogy through illustration practice, providing the unique opportunity to consider the entanglement of three academic identities: teacher, illustrator and researcher. The aims of this research were to surface findings that can begin to restructure a sense of self within Higher Education, to better understand student experience of illustration pedagogy and to uncover a more nuanced focus for future research. 

Between September 2023 and June 2024, a body of practice-based research was generated, documenting moments of teaching from BA Illustration and Visual Media at London College of Communication. The slow visual documentation of an academic year allowed the abstract nature of this study to become more tangible and within this essay, practice acts as the foundation for further research and analysis. Informed by the methodologies of practice-based research, visual ethnography and arts-based research, methods include field notes, illustrative ethnographic fictions, focus groups and visualising illustrative ethnographic fictions. Research findings are explored through the analysis of three salient strands of interest: ‘Scenes of Affect’, ‘Question of Value’ and ‘Embodied Self’. 

Upon conclusion, this study explores ways in which the research findings can actively enter the landscape of which they were initially inspired and argues that the project itself both defines and acts as an example of academic research that uses sensory affect to explore encounters within learning spaces, questioning the impact this has on learning experiences.

Submission: Rachel Davey

The following is an edited transcript of the discussion conducted between members in response to a number of prompts derived from an initial conversation between Jhinuk Sarkar and Hayfaa Al-Chalabi.

What does co-creation in illustration education look like?

Risk and risk taking is claimed, by some, an integral part of creative education.

But how viable is risk in increasingly managed, predictable and governed educational environments?
Is risk in education a myth anyway? 

Is there a hyperstition of new illustration education forms?

How do we find the places of alternative exchange?

Who are the contemporary illustration gyrovagues?

We used a Miro Board to capture thoughts and ideas here: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVN4S9ZhM=/ 


Darryl Clifton  
Hello everyone my name is Darryl Clifton. I'm one of the co-directors of illustration educators. 

Gannon, Rachel  
I am also co-director with Darryl.
Its really nice to have the first event and meet you all.
I currently work at Kingston University and am the acting head of the school of design.
But prior to that I was head of illustration and animation.


Rachel Emily Taylor  
Hi everyone I'm Rachel Emily Taylor and I'm the course leader of the BA in Illustration at Camberwell.
I've also been involved with Illustration educators from the start 
I'm joining you from the London metropolitan archives on a year three trip at the minute.

But I'm excited for the event today and I'll hand over to Sinead.


Sinead Evans  
Hi, I'm Sinead.
I'm another member of the management Committee for the IE and I work at Camberwell as well and I’m the course leader of the MA illustration at Camberwell.


Darryl Clifton   
I should mention that there are a couple of other people who've been involved in this process as well.
One is Peter (Nencini) who's based at the Royal College of Art and heads the illustration pathway within the visual communication course and Katie Jones Barlow, who's based at Leeds.
Katie is unable to join us today. 
We are really pleased that Hayfaa Al Chalabi is able to join us as today.
Jhinuk is going to try and join us as well, but she is teaching today so will attempt to join remotely.


As you know the purpose of today is to scrutinize the conversation that Hayfaa and Jhinuk had in response to the prompt ‘Who Educates?’

I would imagine the majority of us are people who are formally connected to educational institutions or have some aspect of our working lives which requires us to be educators.


We're really interested in formal institutional spaces and how education, for this particular subject happens, but also the informal spaces and how people learn in less obvious, sometimes autocratic, sometimes hierarchical, bureaucratic environments and spaces.


So, the theme emerged from that initial set of concerns and ideas Hayfaa and Jhinuk gave us much to think about in that conversation.


And what we've tried to do is take some points that we think might be useful for all of us to discuss and categorise them in order to help generate some thoughts or further provocations.

I think the purpose of this organization is to forge links, not necessarily via a management committee or any other structure, but between one another and find synergies and potential future projects, conversations, discussions, partnerships, whatever you want to call them ,that may emerge from those interactions, I think that feels like it's one of the most positive potential outcomes of this endeavor.
I've waffled on a little bit here, but a good way to start before we actually get into the nitty gritty is for people to introduce themselves.

Darryl Clifton   
I'll just invite you to say a few words about yourself and what role you have in an institution or outside of an institution, if any, and ask you to say what you're hoping to get from this initial conversation.
So let's start with Karen Sung.
Hi, Karen.


Karen Sung   
Hello.
Thank you for inviting me.
My name is Karen.
I'm currently a postdoc research associate at Loughborough University, talking about digital creativities particularly education within the Metaverse and the use of it, I'm just finishing my PhD thesis on Co creation and participatory creation within illustration, practice and hopefully I'll be done very, very soon.
So the conversation kind of resonated for me.
Hopefully I can resolve that kind of conundrum within myself through this discussion today.


Darryl Clifton   
Thanks, Karen.
So you are our ‘go to’ expert on co-creation?
That's good.
No pressure,


SARA CADIMA FEIO  
Hi.
Well, I'm Portuguese.
I'm teaching on the MA illustration (?), but most of my experience is teaching illustration in Portugal.
Hopefully by October I'll be doing a PhD in Loughborough, so I'll get to meet Karen in person if all goes well. I think that's about it.
I've worked mainly well, obviously teaching here, but also worked in the industry. I studied in the UK for most of my 20s and then came back to Portugal and I've been working between countries as a commercial illustrator.


Darryl Clifton  
Great.
Thank you.
Next we have Viv Schwarz.
Hi there.


Viv Schwarz   
Oh, hey.
Hello, can you hear me OK?


Viv Schwarz   
I am currently an hourly lecturer in Kingston on the illustration animation course. I mostly do the game related stuff there.
My general work is a lot to do with facilitating people's creative endeavours with things like installations and museums.
So interactive installations, ways for people to improvise their own games, their own board games, their own physical games and building stuff. Sometimes involving electronics, it's quite broad.
I also make picture books I’m a picture book author and illustrator

But yes, picture books and facilitating creativity and interactivity, that's me.


Darryl Clifton   
Brilliant.
Thank you.
Hayfaa?


Hayfaa Al-Chalabi   
Of course.
Hello everyone.
My name is Hayfaa.
I am lecturer and coordinator for integrated practice at UAL, Camberwell, and I contributed to the discussion around who educates with Jhinuk that you can find on the website.
I'm very much interested in taking part in this conversation, just learning about how different people and different educational institutions approach education.
I have a practice myself as an illustrator as well and I'm really looking forward to this discussion and to more events arranged by this organization.


Darryl Clifton   
Thank you. 
Chris Draper.


Draper, Chris   
Yeah.
Hi everyone.
Nice to meet you.
My name's Chris Draper.
I currently run the course the illustration course at Cambridge School of Art, part of Anglia Ruskin.


Draper, Chris   
We've got the children's book MA, which I have no involvement in.
We've got an illustration MA and illustration and animation BA, so I'm just kind of reporting back.
My own background is in editorial, publishing and advertising, but these days it's more about alternative photographic processes, collecting, taxonomy and cabinets of curiosity.
It's nice to meet you all.
Look forward to hearing everyone else.
Cheers. Bye.


Philip Kennedy 
I yeah, I'm Philip and I'm in Dublin where I lead the BA illustration program with the National College of Art and Design (NCAD)
I’ve been doing that for about six and a half years and prior to that I spent a good part of a decade working in the cultural sector, doing education.
So my background is quite broad and sort of patched together from working in different cultural spaces, museums and galleries and stuff like that, I have no formal qualifications within the space of pedagogy or education or anything like that.
So I am really interested in a sort of a non-formal understanding of what it (education) is.
So yeah, I kind of have been balancing that alongside my own practice as an illustrator.
I think this is a great opportunity and I guess one of my main purposes being here relates to that thing that everyone I imagine is experiencing where they don't really feel like they have the time or the space the to, sort of, explore this. So I think that this is a wonderful space to just say, OK, I've got 2 hours on a Friday.
I'm gonna just actually have the opportunity to have that.
So yeah, I'm really thankful that this has been set up because it's really given some structure to do that.
I'm really looking forward to this and enjoying everyone in this conversation.
Thanks very much.


Darryl Clifton   
Alright, thanks for Philip.
I'm going to move to Olivia next.

Olivia Ahmad   
Hi sorry I was just moving away from my washing.
It's really nice to see lots of lovely, familiar faces

It's really nice to see you and I'm looking forward to being part of this.
My name's Olivia.
I work for an arts charity called the Quentin Blake, Centre for illustration, which is a relatively young charity.
It was established (?) years ago and it aims to set up a public space for illustration in the sort of civic museum model which is really different from formal education and lots of ways, but has a lot of the same anxieties, I guess, and kind of issues around power and all of that stuff.
So I'm always really interested in like the academic space for illustration and formal education.
I always feel like I'm slightly outside it, so it's going to be so interesting to hear more about it from you all.

Darryl Clifton   
Thanks, Olivia. Emma?


Emma Dodson   
I'm Emma Dodson and I'm Co course leader currently, of illustration BA at University of Westminster.
I am very excited to be here, a bit like Philip.
I just feel I'd love some fresh ways of looking at how we educate, how we get students engaged as well and just sharing some ideas of where they're coming from and how I can meet them and do something meaningful with them.
I have a background as the prop maker.
I also do Kids books.
I mean, I cover lots of territory, but I'm really interested in new ways of looking at this subject. So yeah great to be here.
Thank you.


Darryl Clifton   
Next on my list is ‘museum creative’.
There's no name there, but museum creative over to you.

Museum Creative   
Hello.


Gannon, Rachel   
Louise (Museum Creative) was the student on the BA illustration animation course and went to the RCA to do visual communication course and has been back for the last year and a bit teaching on the illustration animation course, haven't you Louise?


Museum Creative   
Yes.
This platform is extremely important for people like me that who are passionate about teaching and facilitation.
I recently worked for Wimbledon Museum, a really small local museum to help with curation and facilitation.
And I just got Kingston students to collaborate with the museum as a creative project.
So that is what I'm passionate about, linking people, institutional cross institutional and bringing new creatives into the local community, yes and I'm so sorry I couldn't contribute much today because I'll be flying away later.
But thank you so much.


Darryl Clifton   
No problem, it shows real commitment.
Thank you very much.
Hopefully they'll be something of interest to you from the conversation.
Let's move on to Steph.
Hi Steph.


Black, Stephanie   
Hi 
I must confess I do need to head off very shortly, so I'm afraid I can't stay for the conversation, but I just wanted to drop in and say hello and see what was what because obviously I'm like everyone else.
I'm very curious about the network and interested to see what comes out of it.
I work at Kingston on the MA and also at Plymouth on BA and MA illustration.
Umm, and that's all you're getting from me now.


Darryl Clifton   
Fair enough.
It was short but sweet.
Thank you very much and thanks for coming.
Next we have Kone. Kone, are you there?


Kone (Beyond the Gaze)  
Hi, can everyone hear me OK?


Kone (Beyond the Gaze)   
Hi everyone, my name's Kone.
I guess starting backwards I studied very proudly under Darryl many years ago when I had hair.
and Peter (Nencini) as well.
So wonderful to meet you.
I'm an independent artist producer and, in more recent years, moving into education.

I've worked in agencies and cultural branding as well as producing shows in museums and writing.
It's become increasingly apparent that there is a need for visual education in the post-colonial space.

Personally, I grew up in southern Africa.
So part of that first generation calling for the statues of Rhodes to come down around the world, etcetera.
So last year I started to formalize this educational practice into something called Beyond The Gaze, which looks beyond the Victorian (Art School) project.
So really I'm here to learn from other educators.
You've been in the space much longer than me.
I'm quite clear about what I'd like to teach, but I want to understand different pedagogies and approaches.
So I'm really curious to connect on that and see what everyone how everyone approaches it really.
But that's me.


Darryl Clifton  
Right.
Thanks Kone.
Great to see you after a long time.
And finally, John Slade.
Hi John.


John Slade  
Hello sorry I'm new to teams, it's causing me problems.
My name is John.
I'm in Dublin.
I work with my colleague Philip at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD).
I'm a lecturer in illustration.
My background is in commercial logo illustration and graphic arts and I'm just really excited to be here to experience this group and see what it can offer in terms of what it can teach me more than anything else really, and how I can maybe help others and impart what I learned here, you know, to the broader community and to students as well.
But yeah, that's all I'd say really keep short.


Darryl Clifton   
Great to see you, John.
And thanks everybody.
I think that is everybody on the list please shout out if I've missed anyone.


So as as we mentioned previously, the one of the big messages that came through from the original survey that we put out to people who expressed an interest in joining this group was that they wanted to have more opportunities to talk to one another about stuff that concerned them relating to how they teach, who teaches, what processes and methods might be effective in a contemporary (learning) space.


As well as the concerns that they have about approaches to teaching. Hopefully you will all have had the time to have a look at the content on the website.
You'll see that the idea is that it's an aggregating resource. We start with one piece of material and then hopefully people will feel at liberty to submit further resources.


As we have said this is very open, the only caveat being that there's an attempt to try and map the submission content against the values that are stated on the website.

So it's operating differently to a more sort of conventional academic submission and peer review space.
It's intended as a different kind of resource.
We hope that this proposes a new mode of knowledge creation to achieve collectively. We also want to do is produce something out of today's discussion that is authored by all of us, where we are able to give ourselves equal credit for its production. This feels like the most appropriate way to approach the initial stage of the project.


I'm going to ‘cut to the chase’ and suggest that what we do now is break out into rooms because we're a large group.

So I'm going to put us into four rooms of four people and ask that each one of those groups address the four key questions/provocations that are listed on the Miro site.


Darryl Clifton   
So, shall we say 15 minutes for the first provocation, for this idea of Co creation.
And then we'll come back into the room and I'll rotate us into new rooms.

Can I ask that we try and capture as much as possible, whether it's references, images, or just general thoughts.

Darryl Clifton   
Do we want to have a little bit of a moment of feedback?
Key points. From what I could see we had room one with and Sara, Rachel Taylor, Emma, Kone and Viv.
And then Room 2 had Rachel Gannon, Karen Olivia, John, Hayfaa.
Room 3 was Chris, Sinead, Philip and Jhinuk
So we can start with room one.
Does someone want to elect themselves as spokesperson, or do you want to all chip in room 1?


Darryl Clifton   
I'll nominate.
What about Sara?
What was interesting from that conversation for you?


SARA CADIMA FEIO   
Uh, well, we spoke about different things.
What the boundaries are with Co creation and also how arts education isn't meeting the arts industry
and how those two things should merge a little bit better.
We also spoke a little about how the themes that we have in in the curriculum are changing and maybe we could hear the students voices a little bit more and build around the themes that they are interested in discussing or creating. These new (student) voices are more up to date with all the things that are being talked about through the instagrams and tick tocks space. They (students) have different points of view.


SARA CADIMA FEIO   
Things always move slower in institutions than they do and the real world.

John Slade   
Now I guess I'll bring up the last point that somebody brought up. 
There was an interesting point about creating criticality.
Helping first year students understand the difference between, say, critique and criticality.
So I thought that was quite an interesting premise when considering Co creation in an education space.
I'm also speaking about originality and ownership in that space as well.

Gannon, Rachel   
We were really fortunate to have Karen in our group who has been doing work on co-creation.

We spent a bit of time talking about different sorts of co-creation, what it means and how we might classify it.
We talked about the problems of co-creating within an institution and how, as institutions, we need to set up frameworks to enable that to work successfully as well as describe some examples of where co-creation wasn't valid and/or wasn't valued by institutions.
But we also talked about successes.
I think the example that John was talking about was one from Hayfaa about criticality, where the students were able to discuss it and create their own definitions for the term.
But you could do this with anything it seem to enable a better understanding ability to use that term within their own practices.
I guess something that we could learn from.
Yeah, lots there.
Really good conversation.


Darryl Clifton   
Kone I know that you've set something up outside of the normal institutional frameworks that we perhaps are all familiar with.


Darryl Clifton  
I just wondered what your thoughts are on this idea of co-creation with students?
And also what about co-creation with nonhumans?

Kone (Beyond The Gaze)   
So in our group, we were talking about our inherent biases and understanding where the motivations for learning and the curriculums come from?
I've been really interested in my small community who've also felt a traditionally excluded from these spaces.
And by that I don't even mean by skin pigment or agenda, but by social class or social strata not having the language for the ‘art school’.
So another point we had made about the speed between the institution and the real world and how we make sure those work together in lockstep, making sure that we're developing practices and frameworks that actually reflect the world that our learners and students live in.
I'm really interested in championing this idea; that ultimately all folks can co-create.


John Slade   
We're all co-creating all the time.
We're doing it now, we do it when we accept work.
I have been thinking about structuralism again; in terms of what information we get, why we're getting it and where it's come from.

Some of the topics that you mentioned in terms of accessibility to learning and education in particular are really prevalent.
At NCAD we have a massive housing crisis which is really restricting access to the college.
I don't know what a National College is if it doesn't represent the nation.


Darryl Clifton   
Super interesting.
I was listening to somebody yesterday talking about modes of contamination.
How contamination occurs in thought processes and the actions that occur informally or quietly in a classroom. We are perceived to be the architects of a set of events or activities that constitute learning.
But actually the contamination (and construction of the learning) is happening incessantly around you, recognition of the positive aspects of those types of contamination, whether just empathizing with another person's situation or being actively receptive to others’ ideas actually informs the way you construct things.
The challenge is then how you bring those to the surface and recognize them.
A bit like that conversation you have with students about criticality and making.
Sometimes you have gotta make stuff and be in that headspace and then you can engage critically with what you're doing.


Darryl Clifton   
Anyway we've got three more exciting Miro board panels to get through but before we go into discussions let’s hear from Room 3.
We had Chris, Sinead, Philip and Jhinuk. Is there anything that you wanted to mention about Co creation?


Sinead Evans   
We were talking a lot about the structures within and outside of the university and the different pressures and values that enable facilitation or make it feel like creation is possible.

Darryl Clifton   
OK.
In that case, let's do the rooms thing again.

Darryl Clifton   
Everybody is back in.

Let's go to the first room I think it was just Rachel and Philip?

Gannon, Rachel   
We talked about using different terms and why were we asking students to be risky?
What did we mean by that?
And we talked about it being an overused phrase and what other terms might be useful?

We talked about the relationship between risk and trust and how, as educators creating spaces that we all felt safe in would enable us to take the types of risks that we wanted to take.
But I think when we say risk, we probably mean different things.


Philip Kennedy  
I think that sums things up.
Everyone's risks are different. Everyone has their own definition of what risk is, and I think a lot of our conversation was trying to be conscious of the responsibility we have as educators and I was really struck by in the conversation that's posted on the website.
This idea of a safe space, which was something that I was often trying to work towards, creating that environment. But this idea has to be an intentional space and my own sort of struggles, trying to move towards a brave space and what that means when you're trying to create environments around ideas of risk. 

Viv Schwarz   
You need a base safety safe space.
If you're gonna take risks, you've gotta be safe.
The terminology of risk is really quite a safe, well established, white man thing in its nature.

We just choose to look at it through the lens taking risks, which is the most exciting thing to a safe white dude.
Probably that's what I'm thinking.
If we can say we're curious, that would appeal to other people.

Darryl Clifton   
Thank you.
Is there anything from room 2, so that was Karen, Hayfaa, Kone and Jhinuk?


Karen Sung   
Should I just summarize? We talked a lot about institutions taking risks, whether they do take risks and the general consensus was that they don't.
And then we talked about what kind of institutions make students feel safe or what institutions are doing to make educators feel safe in taking risks for their students.
So in particular, we talked about a lot of political events that happened in the recent years, like George Floyd and how institutions very selectively spoke out to certain events.
And a lot of events that, for example, Kone and I went through, they didn't speak to at all.
So being neutral or being risky is a very political move in a way, more so than taking a side in a political agenda.

Hayfaa Al-Chalabi   
We spoke about how institutions have the privilege to not take risks, and then they put educators at risk when speaking up or engaging with what's happening in the world. Where I used to work, they were very vocal about what happened.
I didn't work at UAL.
Back then, they were very vocal about Charlie Hebdo and they were very comfortable taking a political side.
And you know, speaking about it and framing it as not even a political thing.
However, with George Floyd, or with what happened during the evacuations of Shahadah in Palestine, that happened in the same year, then they took action in preventing students from speaking about what was happening, saying that the institution is not political.
But then, with pressures from students, they admitted that they just don't care.
And there was even an email about it that they just don't care about what was happening.
Uh, so yeah, we spoke about what it means for an institution to take risks and how it has to do protecting its reputation.
But that puts educators and students at risk.


Darryl Clifton   
Thank you.
What about Chris?
Sinead, Emma, Olivia?
Anything that you wanted to add?


Sinead Evans   
I can summarize and if anybody wants to add, please do.
We had similar conversations around risk taking.
Some of us saying that risk for some people being smaller, some being bigger. 
It's really rich talking about risk and failure it being a really important and integral part of creative education and learning and how that learning journey really shifts when students see themselves as customers.

Discussion Event edited transcript: Friday 19th January 2024

Reading Group is a reoccurring format where members share and discuss resources used before, during and after teaching illustration. You are welcome to attend the next Reading Group, 17th of May at 1 pm CET (12 am GMT). Reading Group takes place on Zoom and lasts for about 1.5 hrs.

 Do you want to prepare and share something for our next event? Please let us know at mail@illustrationeducators.org

Syllabus by Lynda Barry (Drawn & Qua rterly, 2014) link 

Making Comics by Lynda Barry (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019) link 

I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own by Michael Taussig (The University of Chicago Press, 2011) link 

Materials Against Materiality by Tim Ingold (Cambridge University Press, 2007) link 

After a short introduction Sara Teleman talked briefly about graphic novelist, cartoonist and teacher Lynda Barry’s books Syllabus and Making Comics. 

'I love Lynda Barry for her unwavering believe in everybody’s ability to write and draw – tell a story through comics. Barry’s books can be used at any level of education. I usually recommend them to students for one of the following three reasons:

1. The student has lost the joy of drawing and/or faith in comics.

2. The student doesn’t know what to draw about.

3. The student needs to practice observing the world outside their own head.

For number 3 I recommend the Daily Dairy exercise first introduced in Syllabus. There are other versions of the daily diary exercise in Making Comics. Here is a link to one of them, shared by Lynda Barry on her blog The Nearsighted Monkey.

Another use for the Daily Diary format is for students’ Degree Projects, to continuously document and reflect over the process, in words as well as drawings.'

Rachel Emily Taylor presented her resources, opening with a short reading from Michael Taussig’s I Swear I Saw This, a book about drawings in anthropological fieldwork notebooks. In the section that Rachel read aloud, Taussig remembers a couple in a freeway tunnel, doubting his observation, and drawing it afterwards:

'What is the difference between seeing and believing? I can write I Swear I Saw This as many times as I like, in red, green, yellow, and blue, but it won’t be enough. The drawing is more than a result of seeing. It is a seeing that doubts itself, and, beyond that, doubt the world of man. (…) This must be where witnessing separates itself from seeing, where witnessing becomes holy writ: mysterious, complicated, powerful. And necessary.’ (Taussig, 2001, p. 1-2). 

This discussion also led to a short reading from Tim Ingold’s Materials Against Materiality, where there is an activity in drawing a ‘wet stone’ (p. 32). In both extracts from anthropological texts, the themes touched on were related to observation, drawing, and time.

The presentations were followed by a lively conversation and a flood of resources was shared by the attendees.

You had to be there for context, but even without the discussion there is a lot to gather from this list of resources and concepts.

Joseph Dumit: Writing the Implosion: Teaching the World One Thing at a Time link

Georges Perec: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces link

Neil Cohn: Who Understands Comics? Questioning the Universality of Visual Language Comprehension link

W.J.T. Mitchell: Picture Theory, Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation link

Phil Carter (Carter Wong): 1057 (Howies, 2011) link
Aphantasia link

Michael Taussig: I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own (The University of Chicago Press, 2011) link

Tim Ingold: Materials Against Materiality (Cambridge University Press, 2007) 

Website that translates and dubs your lectures into other languages link

Hans Ulrich Obrist: Ways of Curating (Penguin Books, 2015) link

Jonathan R Kasstan, Geoff Pearson and Victoria Brooks: Rethinking Research Ethics in the Humanities: Principles and Recommendations (University of Westminster, 2023) link

Rachel Gannon, Mireille Fauchon: Illustration Research Methods (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021) link

Exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London: The Cult of Beauty 26 October 2023 –28 April 2024 link

Ester McManus: Elsewhere (self-published, 2017?) link 

Stéphanie Solinas: Dominique Lambert (Édition RVB Books, 2016) link

Members who attended event and contributing to this list of resources

Reading Group: Friday 16th February 2024

We are pleased to announce our events schedule for 2024. All members are welcome to attend. Links access online events will be sent out to members the week before the event. 

Discussion Event: Friday 19th January 2024, 12.00 GMT

Reading Group: Friday 16th February 2024, 12.00 GMT

Reading Group: Friday 17th May 2024, 12.00 GMT

Talk Event: Friday 14th June 2024, 12.00 GMT

Annual General Meeting: September 2024 (TBC)

Gathering: (London Venue TBC - this event will be unperson and online) Thursday 21st November 2024, 10.00 - 17.00 GMT 