VIRTUAL EVENT: Teaching and learning art in pandemic times: reflections on student digital diaries

COVID-19 has rapidly transformed the ways we experience the world and how we communicate with each other. This has significantly impacted on the way we teach and learn in educational settings. It has required a complete redesign as part of the new turn to online and interactive art lessons.

In this webinar, Dr Markidou discusses how a group of postgraduate art students negotiated their identity as artists and educators through the creation of digital reflective journals. The analysis of the students’ work has attended to how they responded to the new realities and how they have rethought the social functions of art as a school subject taught remotely.

The move to online art training involves distancing from the multimodal experiences students are required to have in cultural spaces, entailing physical interaction cultural artefacts and art resources in art galleries and museums. The new reality necessitates the use of screen-based, digitalised resources and engaging with digital visual material in self-isolation. 

The session will also explore how the trainee teachers reconceptualised their role as art teachers and learners and explored the potential of using art to respond to critical social issues.

How has the online learning environment, provided them with a framework and a new set of skills to reflect upon the transformation of their own identity, as artists and teachers? How has experiencing art away from cultural spaces affected the way we understand the making and teaching of art? 

Links

• Centre for Multimodal Research
• Department of Culture, Communication and Media

Image: Artwork by George Vasiliou