Issue #3 - Education,
April 2021
Issue #3 of incl. focuses on something that is so integral to all of our individual experiences: education. We all remember our days in school, but how has education changed since? Through highlighting new developments in education, incl. shines a light on alternative education models, assistive tools, equality, diversity, and new ways of engaging children in the classroom and online, ultimately questioning, “how can we empower more inclusive teaching practices for the next generation?"
Articles
Make Your Own Masters
Stacie Woolsey
Founder of Make Your Own Masters, Stacie Woolsey, discusses why she started up the alternative art and design programme; an educational experiment that provides an independent learning system which is managed by the individual learner. Through workshop series, the programme advocates for the individuals to source their own briefs, provides continuous learning throughout the process and concludes in a final show with the participants.
Online Youth Safeguarding
Ellie Proffitt
Ellie Profitt is the Education and Youth Engagement Manager at Childnet, a UK charity with the main goal of making the internet a safe and enjoyable place for young people. Ellie shares her insight into how the last year has increased the need for online safeguarding and educating around the importance of staying safe online, and also highlights the work Childnet do supporting school staff and parents to increase the awareness of digital exploitation, violence and abuse.
Education and Disability
Penny Syfornia Nwogwugwu
Penny Syfornia Nwogwugwu is a UK-based Children's author who is heavily interested in themes of disability in children, evidenced in her book, There's a Wobble in my Head, a true representation and account of the daily experiences of her son who suffers with epilepsy. This beautifully illustrated book tells the story from his perspective and provides the reader with a unique insight into such a severe illness, and aids as a tool to help children understand how it feels to live with a disability.
Department for Inclusive Education
Jack Newbury
Creator and Editor of incl., Jack Newbury, talks openly about his experience of his one and only sex-ed lesson in secondary school and how it empowered him to challenge the pre-existing heteronormative infrastructures already in place in our PSHE education. During his masters at Central Saint Martins, Jack created the Inclusive Sexual Education Kit, the UK's first inclusive sex-ed kit, comprising of literature, videos, games and demonstration models. The kit promotes topics which are often overlooked such as masturbation, pleasure and consent to ensure healthy and lifelong learning for the next generation of students.
Art School, Conviviality and Furniture
Hafeez Dawood
Designer Hafeez Dawood reflects on the condition of British modern art and design education, neoliberal ideologies and the paradigm created from outcome-driven institutions. Drawing from his own experience entering art school, he emphasises the qualitative nature of the arts pedagogy highlighting that good practice of teaching must guide a student not only in the practice of their discipline but must also be cautious of their personal development.
Do you noo noo?
Sophie Whippy
Sophie Whippy recounts her experience of noticing her body in primary school and the awkward memories of learning about the birds and the bees from her teacher, which didn't prepare her for puberty, relationships or sexual encounters. She discusses the provision of sexual education in secondary schools and demystifies the terminology around vulvas, vaginas and uteruses based on her experiences as a birthing doula, to challenge the status quo by talking openly about our anatomy.
Teach for the Change
Meghana Narayan
Meghana Narayan is an educator who stepped away from teaching to devote more time to raising her child and to work on her art and writing. Through her work she shares resources via her blog and social media, Teach for the Change, around the topics of raising racially and socially conscious children, selecting representational literature and the representation of black voices. Meghana shares with us two of her writing pieces which demonstrate the importance that black children matter, and that books are a child's too and adults should choose them carefully.
Learning in Lockdown
Conor McGivern
Conor McGivern shines a light on what it was actually like to transition overnight from being in school every day to working from home providing learning in a lockdown setting. He challenges society's perception of all teachers having an easy life during the pandemic, and puts this learning into perspective showing that all educators have provided innovative and engaging work for students while also arguing that learning in lockdown not only applies to students, but teachers as well.
Confession of a Former Home-Schooler
Maya Jagger
Maya Jagger was home-schooled from a young age and felt like she was an outsider within the system. With all the stigma associated to home-schooling, she reflects on the analogy of what's happened during lockdown. While growing up she rarely came into contact with other home schooled young people and speaks openly about the lack of provision that is designed within mainstream education, highlighting that individual needs are not met and withholding resources can lead to lack of accessibility and development for the child.
My Disabilities do not Define Me
Lucy Rowan
Journalist Lucy Rowan joins us again for Issue #3 where she looks back at her own disabilities and personal experiences in school where she was branded as “naughty.” Now out of education, she hopes that her experience can help discuss how to empower more inclusive teaching practices for the next generation. She openly talks about how her teachers were not equipped with the appropriate knowledge and training to support a young person with learning difficulties but as she got older can now stand up and say, “my disabilities do not define me.”
Interviews
Education and Activism
Christina Paine
Lecturer and activist, Christina Paine, talks about her experience of inequality during her career and why she believes it is important to campaign and raise awareness of minority groups in educational institutions. She is a strong advocate for improving equality in education and speaks about challenging governmental infrastructures and the types of barriers that are faced by BAME groups, women, and people with disabilities in education, and what we can do to address this as a society.
Youth Mentorship and Empowerment
Emilia Gill
Documentary Filmmaker and founder of Creative Collective, Emilia Gill shares with us her background and experience of education and what led her to start up Creative Collective, a mentorship scheme which aims to help young people begin a career in the creative sector. She discusses the problems with conventional learning in creative industries and how there should be alternative options for young people to learn about how to work in these types of areas; through connecting and knowledge sharing to encourage diversity and inclusivity in the process.
Education and Activism
Christina Paine
Curator and PhD candidate at Royal College of Art, Linda Rocco, speaks about her practice which looks at the reasons why artists are excluded in debates concerning the future of our society and civilization, in reference to participation and processes; with access to opportunities in terms of both education and technology, to human centric innovation. She discusses the values that practitioners bring into the larger world, and how to best recognise and promote those values to be implemented, to ultimately affect societal change.
Re(Sound)
Freddy Billowes
Freddy discusses his journey to developing his ongoing research project Re(Sound), the future of hearing aids, reducing the stigma attached to wearing them and the ways to break down societal barriers. Noticing that current devices on the market don’t address speech recognition, he is undergoing a research study in collaboration with Brunel University to create a fully functioning device hidden under the clothes which translates languages into phonetic vibrations for the user.