BRIEF: To deliver a 20 minutes Microteaching Session / the audience could be staff, students or unspecified.
In my practice as a brand designer I work with purpose-driven brands which aim to bring back traditional methods of production. In my teaching practice I am passionate about creating a learning environment which enables students to approach design by ‘thinking-through-making’ (D. A. Schön, 1992). The two objectives when choosing my object and planning the microteaching session in general have been A) that I would like to incorporate traditional craft which enables to a deeper understanding of its medium and production mechanisms and B) that the object allows a meditative and reflective act of making while having a clear outcome in mind to ultimately gain some ‘insider knowledge’ about the object. ‘We do not obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because ‘we’ are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming.’ (Ingold, 2013). After dwelling in different ideas which ranged from darning to vegetable dying, my full-circle reflection took me to block printing which combines my own subject area and passion: printing and graphic design. Block printing is the process of printing patterns mostly using hand-carved wooden blocks. It is a slow way of printing, but it is capable of yielding highly artistic results, some of which are unobtainable by any other printing method.
In order to condense the labourious block printing process into a 20-minute microteaching session with limited resources I created a simplified version of the traditional methods by using hand-produced rubber stamps containing very simple geometric shapes (instead of wood carved blocks) and ink pads (instead of traditional inking tray, a roller and and wet ink).
I drafted a detailed session which started off with a brief two minute lecture outlining the history of the printing method and showing some examples of patterns for inspiration. I then randomly allocated 2-3 rubber stamps to each peer and handed out simple white A4 sheets of paper asking my fellow colleagues to experiment with their shapes creating a set of draft patterns, encouraging them to not overthink the task and rather work ‘quick and dirty’ for three minutes. After the warm-up task I asked all participants to choose one of their trial patterns to block print a pattern on to a piece of plain unbleached calico fabric. I allocated 15 minutes to this task asking them to reflect on their thoughts and feelings while executing a monotonous task.
I appreciated the feedback overall as positive – we talked about embodied knowledge, craft, insider-knowledge, getting into a meditative mindset, being inspired to doing printing more at home. My peers expressed that liked that it was one singular task allowing them to fully immerse themself in the singluar task.The initial draft printing on paper seem to have been helpful, some wished to have used it differently. Eva expressed that she felt her print result has been in-line with her expectation as she likes to work fast and messy. Katriona on the other hand appreciated the visual expression of her print out of character as she was surprised that felt the unknown urge to work slowly and with caution.
I had the impression that the briefing and instructions of the task had been clear and didn’t cause any confusion. In hintsight I wonder if I could have stressed more that the testing of alternative patterns on the paper is for the purpose of setting their master design. In future I would like to give clearer instruction of how to print (i.e. appling the pattern very carefully aiming for a precise outcome) to deepened the learning instead of letting each participant figure out things themselves.
Schön, D.A. (1992) The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. London: Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2013) Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge
