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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B WORKING COLLABORATIVELY Project Visibility: Revealing Systems at Work / Institutions and Ideology I wish to begin by acknowledging the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin nations, the traditional owners of the land on which we are gathered today. We pay our respects to the local people for allowing us to have our gathering on their land and to their Elders: past, present and future. Dr Terrie Fraser: Artist, Language and Learning Advisor, Academic and Peer Support, Division of Student Life, Burwood Campus, Deakin University. Ross Coulter: Artist, Lecturer in Art and Performance, Unit Chair ACI202, Lecturer ACI203, School of Communication and Creative Arts, Faculty of Arts and Education.

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

WORKING COLLABORATIVELYProject Visibility: Revealing Systems at Work / Institutions and Ideology

I wish to begin by acknowledging the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin nations, the traditional owners of the land on which we are gathered today. We pay our respects to the local people for allowing us to have our gathering on their land and to their Elders: past, present and future.

Dr Terrie Fraser: Artist, Language and Learning Advisor, Academic and Peer Support, Division of Student Life, Burwood Campus, Deakin University.

Ross Coulter: Artist, Lecturer in Art and Performance, Unit Chair ACI202, Lecturer ACI203, School of Communication and Creative Arts, Faculty of Arts and Education.

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

What do you find difficult to articulate about the work that you do?

Looking for meaning….

Thought experiment for the audience:

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Working Collaboratively

Overview: What’s the story?

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1.Academic, Language

and Learning Adviser (LLA)

and Students

2.Language and

Learning Adviser (LLA),

AcademicandStaff

LLA

LLA

LLA

Academic

ProjectVisibility

Invitation

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Ross Coulter: Image: 10,000 paper planes –aftermath, 2011, type C photograph.

Working Collaboratively in the Units

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Ross: What does this this mean for the Academic?

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Being vulnerable …‘All knowing’…

Trust and respect…

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Terrie: What does this this mean for the LLA?

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• Clear expectations

• Reflexivity

• A sense of FUN

• Respect

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

This successful collaboration raised questions for the LLA that are both personal and professional.

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For years, collegial conversations have interrogated themes of the LLA agency and identity:

As an LLA:

• Where is my voice, identity, power and being under the dominant ideological paradigms?

• Why is this work not considered important by many academics, students, and the university?

• Why is it so difficult to communicate with academics about academic literacy?

• Why do we stay silent, hidden and invisible?

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

• How might it be possible to make visible these ‘forces’ through another means?

• What might critiquing look like through the language of art?

• What ideologies are we working with? What truth claims are we underpinned by?

• How can we make these hidden ideals explicit so that we understand the social, political, epistemological and ethical ideologies we are working with?

These questions raised further ideological ones and led to setting up a staff professional development research project.

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

How the project came about:

Project Visibility / Revealing Systems at Work / Institutions and Ideology

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Thus the seeds of the ‘Project Visibility’ were born….

• Our roles reversed: Ross was invited to collaborate with LLA staff using art as a language to make visible the issues that were arising in the LLA’s workplace:

• Opportunities

• Arts capacity to translate through materiality.

• This project sought to address concerns of visibility:

The problem of being invisible and being able to name why this is so.

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

• The second collaboration developed

• There is reciprocal value

• The collaboration also sets an example

Project Visibility

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

• This art project is not art therapy…

• It is not a place for a winge fest

• It is a space to tease out workplace issues that we share in response to the neoliberal ideology we all work under and to understand what that means for us as advisors - both individually and as a team working with academics, students, pedagogy, and our workplace - the university -operating under a corporate business model.

Project Visibility

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Consider: What is your quandary?

Planning Day: preplanning for staff

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Some emergent themes included:

• Disruption• Working with neoliberal internal structures• TIME constraints • Valuing the work that we do• Managing relationships with stakeholders• Visibility

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Art and the LLA: Project VisibilityPlanning Day June, 2019

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• Art as a form of social realism• Ross’ artist talk• Drawings, collages. Painting on paper scroll• LLA and student mock scenarios: Video /

film

Presentation Day Agenda:

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Early sketches and collage responses

June Planning Day

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

June Planning Day : Early sketches and collage responses

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

June Planning Day : Early sketches and collage responses

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

June Planning Day : Early sketches and collage responses

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Early drawing warm ups led to LLA and Student scenarios: Filming and recording

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LLA and Student VIDEOs:

https://www.coultercoulter.com/lla-deakin-university

2 scenarios – 3.43 mins

Art is always in translation… it is materiality realized ideas ( Macleod and Holdridge, 2006, p.8).

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

• A number of staff are keen to develop and

refine their ideas. This has led to an informal

showing.

• We used the Pods in H Building at Burwood, for

staff to set up and speak about their work.

• You can see the development of ideas

beginning in the following works…

Scoping the project…First critical showing: Burwood Pods Exhibition

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

20Tao Bak, Tent, 2019.

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

21Tao Bak, Tent, 2019.

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

What do you find difficult to articulate about the work that you do?

Rather than providing answers, we have engaged in a collaborative discourse through creative practice to articulate some of the complexities of our work environment.

This is leading to unexpected material outcomes that do not measure up to traditional KPIs. Rather the project offers empowerment by interrogating, grounding and articulating ourselves in the workplace through the complex visualization of ideas.

To conclude our thought experiment…

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

• To develop and refine artwork for exhibitions:

– 2020 Waterfront Gallery– Deakin Downtown to coincide with T and L Conference in 2020.– ;

• Possible group conference papers and journal articles.

Possible outcomes and benefits of collaborating

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Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

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Thankyou

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

Articles:

References

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Websites:Ross Coulter Website: LLA Deakin Project: https://www.coultercoulter.com/lla-deakin-universityTerrie Fraser: Academic and Peer Support Blog: Scaffolding Writing in the Creative Arts: https://blogs.deakin.edu.au/academic-and-peer-support/

Botterall, D. and Manathunga, M. (Eds.) 2019, Resisting neoliberalism in higher education. Volume 1. Seeing through the cracks, Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, Ebook, online Proquest.

Elina Riivari, Virpi Malin, Päivikki Jääskelä & Teija Lukkari (2018) University as a workplace: searching for meaningful work, Teaching in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2018.1563061

Elsden-Clifton, J. (2006). ‘Constructing ‘Thirdspaces’: Migrant students and the visual arts’, Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development, 3(1), 1-11.

Grosz, E 1994, Volatile bodies: Toward a corporeal feminism, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Johanson, K. & Glow, G 2018, ‘Reinstating the artist’s voice: Artists’ perspectives on participatory projects’, Journal of sociology, 1-15.https://electricliterature.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/silenceintoaction.pdf

Lorde, A, The transformation of silence into language and action,’ Accessed October 19, 2019.

Manathunga, M. and Botterall, D. (Eds.) 2019, Resisting neoliberalism in higher education. Volume 2. Prising open the cracks, Cham, Switzerland : Palgrave Macmillan, Ebook, online Proquest.