There was lots to think about and learn in this great interview with another course leader (whose course is a very similar size and has a similar amount of studio space to ours). My reason for interviewing this course leader is their long track record of fostering a flourishing studio space. What’s their secret?
One key theme we explored was the balance of trust and oversight in studio spaces.
I think ownership is a thing that we work on very early, sort of telling them, okay, this happens. This happens. You’ve got this in here, this in here, this in here. If you lose it, you’re not getting it back, right. I’m not here the whole time. So you need a policing process.
Ownership of the studio space also means that students feel safe, comfortable and confident in the studio.
One of the things I always say to people when they’re applicants — It’s the place students are happy to leave their bags when they go to lunch. They’re like, Okay, I don’t care. For my first year to third year. I’ll just leave my bags out. It’s a small enough course, so if somebody else, not in the course comes in. People are like, what you doing? Who are you?
Comfort isn’t just like how you’re sitting, right? It’s the comfort of feeling comfortable and that connects with feelings of safety, safety, and I’m not going to say privacy, but lack of oversight, or the right balance [between oversight/support and privacy]
We talked about how to give students that sense of ownership. It seems like there’s a balance between having clearly established conventions (so that students know what to expect of spaces), but also allowing students to be flexible and shape the spaces themselves…
I think we’ve got a system — a fluid space and a less fluid space, in the sense that we’ve gone for, this is the clean studio, the mothership [office], and that’s the dirty studio, yeah? And that’s the way you know what you’re doing in there. But then there is crossover. And you don’t go to somebody doing something that should be done in the other studio, unless you’re like, ‘Okay, can you put down your blow torch? Where did you get that from?’ But you then sort of say, okay, it’s kind of like a Venn diagram in a sense. These are the general areas, but these are the bits where they cross over
It’s worth noting that students don’t always appreciate how much they can do with spaces themselves (something my first interviewee also noted). I really liked the way this interviewee describes how he introduces students to the space on their first day:
With our first year, the very first lesson we did this year, I’m like, come in. All right, everybody, sit down. Then I’m like, Why are you sitting where you’re sitting? Because the tables were like this. I’m like, Is that how you’re going to live the rest of your life? Right? You’re going to come in and be dictated to by furniture. Are you happy there? Can you see where I am? What’s the dynamic to the room? What’s the hierarchy? Straight away, I’m standing up here looking down at you. You’re already like five year olds. That’s how you’ve been getting your education since you were five, and you’re now all 20, right. First thing was, okay, rearrange your furniture the way you’re happy with it. I’m going out to get a coffee. Put the tables the way you want it
Prior to the interview we’d also been having a chat about the idea of ‘desire lines’ (the theme of a current student project) which emerged again when talking about how studios could ideally get shaped by their occupants.
…desire lines is a really good example looking at it in a sense, because, you know, are you going to build paths that go from this block to that block and they’re going to walk across here, and you keep telling them not to walk across there, yeah? Or do you wait to see where they walk across it and then build the path?
And as they said later, encouraging students to use their own creativity to solve problems they find with the studios is hugely valuable:
I remember a couple of years ago having [unclear] trouble [with the studio space], and some people sort of say to me, well, actually, what do you normally do when you have a problem? It’s like we always say to students, okay, here’s a brief such and such. What do you do? And it’s like, okay, your creativity is your way out of this problem. And it’s almost like there’s a mindset in college that that only happens with briefs, actually, no, your creativity is your solution or your way out, your tool bag for everything.
We also reflected more on that earlier idea of ‘comfort’ — we’d already discussed the fact that comfort means more than just physical comfort, but one thing which I think is notable about the studio space for this course is that there’s a variety of different types of seating (sofas, office chairs and standard student chairs). I asked a bit more about this…
If you get couches and sofas? Where do you put them in a room? And everybody has a tendency to put them at the back. And I’m like, see how many students fall asleep when they come in. [If you put them at the front of the room] it also says, okay, the people that come on the couch, aren’t the ones that fall asleep, because they only ones that sit at the front, and then the people that sit the back are then in chairs, and they don’t fall asleep because, you know, there’s a dynamic of comfort — you’ve got a couch, and then people come in late, and if the people at the back are the ones on the couch, they’ll sleep
One thing which is very notable about this course’s studios is their atmosphere of organised chaos. (Lots of very clearly labelled drawers and cupboards, clear storage places for everything, but also always lots of half-completed projects, experiments and other detritus all over the place). By contrast, our course’s studio is, on the whole, kept very tidy. So is this (part of) the secret to their success?
I was about to say, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not a tidy freak […] for ages, we were the only place with computers in or any technical equipment that you could eat. I’m always like, Well, yeah, you can come in here and just tidy the shit up at home like you do at home. People eat at home in front of their computers and stuff. They manage not to kill themselves there.
And I think there’s a balance between, okay, the the tyranny of tidiness as well — it then makes difference in terms of what type of equipment you have. You know, there’s power tools and things like that — you do have to be careful. But they’re slightly less sensitive in terms of, okay, if you spilled something on a set square, yeah, it doesn’t blow up. A laser cutter on the other hand… You know, we had a laser cutter and we gave it to 3d. It was one of those things, okay, at what point do you start making it a workshop, or a lab?
…there are people here kept going, ‘oh yeah, that’s going to be great. You got all this equipment, you know, we can keep it surgically clean’. And we’re like, no, I don’t really think we are. You know, you’ve got to have these things, and it’s got to be spotless. I’m like, what part of workshop and spotless goes together
The trouble is, part of the reason this course manage to run their space in the ways they do is because they are very well established…
You know, once that snowball starts rolling, it’s harder for them to stop. They’re like, we shouldn’t do such and such and such and such is wrong. And I’m like, have you seen our NSS [extraordinarily good scores across the board], well, that’s [in part down to] the room, right? And nobody sort of says, Oh, this is a great NSS, how do we roll this out? They’re like, Oh, how do you bring everybody down to the same level? As opposed to, how do you try and get everybody up to the same level?
I particularly enjoyed hearing their thoughts on the notion of modularity (which many spaces in the college have adopted), as I’ve discussed it to a greater or lesser extent in most of my research activities so far.
Okay, you can see where, sort of, like the design block is, those big studios, these long rooms with dividers in Yes, everybody’s like, Oh, yeah, we won’t have a big room that we can have dividers, and then we can make it as such and such, and then we will to be a such and such. So they had this idea of these white cubes will be, could be anything at any point. And the reality is they ended up being nothing, in a sense
This idea that modular spaces can be anything but end up being nothing is very resonant. I’m intrigued by the idea of modularity, but it really does seem like students a) need to understand what is possible within a space, and b) feel empowered to change it, otherwise as described, spaces end up being ‘nothing’, and no one feels that vital sense of ownership.
Finally, students shaping spaces is all well and good, but how do you get them to be present in the first place to do that work? When it comes to building community, this interviewee very much believed in the power of mixing year groups…
The other thing is introducing the first year to the second and third year as soon as possible. It is kind of like a non formal mentoring system
[Gesturing at the students working in the studios as our interview takes place] Some of them are third year, some of them are second year. And there’s a couple of first year ones around so they’ve actually today, we’ve actually got all three years in and there is actually only one second year class being taught.
However, at the end of the interview I couldn’t escape the feeling that one key factor in the success of this course’s studio culture (which my interviewee would of course never have mentioned) is their own charisma as a course leader, and (as noted by my first interviewee and other anecdotal conversations) their near-constant presence in the space as a reliable support. Offering just the right amount (not too little, not too much) of oversight, support, and gentle humour from a consistent academic and/or technical staff member is also an ideal standard.
Insight statements from this interview
When students feel ownership of a space they are more likely to use it
Comfort means more than just physical comfort, it also encompasses safety, security, support and confidence
Shaping a space around students ‘desire lines’ can make for more successful, functional and well used studios
Key ‘How might we’s’ based on this interview alone
How might we foster a sense of ownership of our space in our students
How might we explore all different dimensions of comfort within our studio space
How might we understand students ‘desire lines’ and use them to shape our space