Innovative Practice in Higher Education

Thinking Through Making: exploring global challenges through creative practice introducing curiosity, play and imagination

Bridgette Ashton — 2025-07-24

Abstract

This case study of teaching practice seeks to harness the potential of curiosity, play and imagination as a means to approach and conceptualise global challenges. The UN Sustainable Development Goals are used as a framework to inspire fantastical scenarios for workshops where participants from illustration and design undergraduate courses at Arts University Plymouth are encouraged to generate unconventional and seemingly infeasible solutions. These workshops spark creativity and invite reflection beyond the immediate activities, freeing participants to think optimistically about addressing complex and serious global challenges through the lens of play and imagination. Through workshops focused on tactile exploration, students are encouraged to step away from digital tools to embrace processes of making and imagining. This approach offers insights into how creative problem-solving can open up avenues for innovative thinking where the action of making and experience of imagining are as important as output and outcome.

Embody your Intention: Using Somatic Practices to Enhance Student and Teachers’ Creativity and Engagement

Roberta Allesandrini — 2025-07-24

In contemporary higher education, there is a critical need to reimagine pedagogical practices through holistic mind-body approaches. The author explores the transformative potential of integrating mindfulness, yogic principles, and somatic practices into academic teaching methodologies. By focusing on lecturers' intentional reconnection with both their pedagogical purpose and their own personal intention, this work examines how targeted physiological interventions—including vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) stimulation, proprioceptive exercises, and coherent breathing techniques—can serve as powerful intro to a vast array of creative classes.

Somatic practices, such as visual detoxification and mindful breathing, and embodied learning strategies can be proposed in the classroom through a series of practical exercises and act as a resource to help improving educators' cognitive presence and students' engagement. The author proposes a comprehensive approach to turning traditional lecture formats into meaningful, transformative learning experiences, promoting a paradigm shift in curriculum design that prioritizes holistic well-being and intentional teaching.

Embodiment in Design Education: expanding pedagogy to meet contemporary challenges

Emma Hogan — 2025-07-24

This paper examines two embodiment workshops in design higher education (HE). The workshops form part of a larger research project exploring the use of somatic practices to address dominant challenges impacting design education. Facilitated by a design educator and a choreographer, the workshops guide undergraduate students through four stages: Arrive, Move, Create, and Gather, using movement and creative exercises to bypass cognition and amplify embodied knowing. The study highlights the relevance of embodied practices to contemporary societal and environmental challenges, including student well-being, emotional regulation, and the development of ethical and sustainable design practices. Data collection includes body maps, questionnaires, group discussions, and observational notes. Despite a small data set, findings reveal participants’ receptiveness to embodied practices, emphasising their capacity to deepen self-awareness, regulate emotions, and access creative insights. The study demonstrates the potential of embodied practices to expand design pedagogy and foster critical, responsive approaches to contemporary challenges.

Teaching Illustration in the Age of Generative AI

Nicholas Lewis — 2025-07-24

According to Klaus Schwab, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterised in part by AI and machine learning (Schwab, 2017). Importantly, he proposes ‘4IR’ as distinct from previous industrial revolutions due to its “velocity”. This paper chronicles the introduction of AI into teaching and learning on an illustration degree programme from 2020 to 2024. During this time, AI developed rapidly and some students who were unaware of its potential in 2020 now express concerns about its impact. Some used AI in their projects, while others regard it with scepticism. This paper explains the selection process used to evaluate the AI tools and recounts how students responded to its inclusion in teaching and learning. Based on experience gained from the study, it proposes an AI monitoring and implementation process that can be used by other courses, and outlines the challenges and opportunities faced by higher education at a time of rapid change.

How is AI Transforming Game Art Higher Education? Innovation, Ethics, and Future Directions

Martial Bugliolo — 2025-07-24

This study examines the transformative role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in game art higher education, with a focus on its impact on creativity, pedagogy, and ethical considerations. The research is centred on Generation Z students enrolled in the BA (Hons) Animation and Games programme at Arts University Plymouth, a cohort inherently familiar with digital and AI technologies. Utilising a mixed-methods approach, including case studies, surveys, and interviews, the study investigates AI’s potential to enhance artistic workflows, streamline iteration, and support creative ideation while maintaining human agency. The findings reveal that AI functions as a valuable augmentation tool rather than a replacement for human creativity, offering efficiency gains and expanding artistic possibilities. However, concerns regarding originality, authorship, and ethical use persist, necessitating structured integration within educational frameworks. The study advocates for a balanced adoption of AI in creative education, ensuring both innovation and critical engagement with its broader implications.

Collective Manifestation: Co-creating a Studio Manifesto

Cróna Connolly — 2025-07-24

Studio-based learning has long been a mainstay of arts higher education, but is now at risk in many countries, due to instability caused by the current university funding crisis and ensuing budget cuts. This paper considers the emerging literature on studio pedagogy as a response to broader sector moves away from continued investment in space-hungry studios. The researchers collaborated to design a primary research exercise that sought to explore what arts educators see as the affordances, values, environment and practices of studio education. A participatory workshop was held at the 2024 GLAD conference at Ulster University, Belfast to collectively develop a manifesto for pedagogic studios in the art school*. The resultant co-authored manifesto is presented as a proposition for consideration, alongside analysis. Suggestions for how the manifesto might be activated by other educators are included.

*By art school we refer to creative disciplines' education.

See saws and sandboxes: enabling meaningful reflective practice in art and design teaching

Annamarie McKee — 2025-07-24

This paper tackles the ‘wicked problem’ of reflective teaching in the creative arts. Rittel and Webber (1973) characterise ‘wicked problems’ as problems that include a large number of complex variables, all of which are dynamic, contextually bound, and interdependent. Whilst ‘reflection, the arts and education go hand in hand’ (Burnard and Hennessey, 2006: ix) with students routinely expected to critically reflect, art and design lecturers may not practise meaningful reflection in their own teaching. This phenomenon is further complicated by differences in disciplinary contexts and generic institution-wide intervention. Academic development literature on this topic may be viewed as unconvincing and irrelevant, introducing models of reflection which lecturers may perceive as a ‘right way to reflect’ (James, 2007). Exposing this disconnect between reflective academic development theory and creative arts practice, the paper draws on the insights from a small scale EdD research exploration of how creative arts lecturers talk about reflecting on their teaching (McKie, 2022). The findings offer some new methodologies for stimulating reflection, particularly amongst dual professionals in art and design, which acknowledge the importance of understanding disciplinary social and cultural contexts influencing the take up of reflective pedagogy.

The Bodice Block Buster: A Playful Revolution in Pattern Cutting

Jane Wales — 2025-07-24

The Bodice Block Buster: A Playful Revolution in Pattern Cutting

Jane Wayles, Manchester Metropolitan University, jane.wayles@gmail.com

Autonomous Syllabus: An open access curriculum for eco-social design practice

Anna Schlimm — 2025-07-24

Autonomous Syllabus: An open access curriculum for eco-social design practice

Anna Schlimm (Anna a.schlimm@lcc.arts.ac.uk), London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Ella Britton (e.britton@lcc.arts.ac.uk), London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

New Wave: Driving equity in professional practice learning

Lucy Cox — 2025-07-24

New Wave: Driving equity in professional practice learning

Lucy Cox, Bristol School of Art, UWE Bristol, lucy2.cox@uwe.ac.uk

Anneliese Paul, Bristol School of Arts, UWE Bristol, Anneliese.paul@uwe.ac.uk

Frequencies: Sound together in the live learning experience

Roshni Bhagotra — 2025-07-24

Frequencies: Sound together in the live learning experience

Roshni Bhagotra, University of the Arts London, r.bhagotra@arts.ac.uk

Rebranding Learning & Teaching at the University of Salford: Building a creative community to support academic practice.

Jess Power — 2025-07-24

Rebranding Learning & Teaching at the University of Salford: Building a creative community to support academic practice.

Prof Jess Power, Learning & Teaching Enhancement Centre,
University of Salford, e.j.power@salford.ac.uk

Dr Calum Thomson, Learning & Teaching Enhancement Centre,
University of Salford, C.J.M.Thomson@salford.ac.uk

Davina Whitnall, Learning & Teaching Enhancement Centre,
University of Salford, D.C.Whitnall@salford.ac.uk

Contact: ltec@salford.ac.uk

Collaborative Classrooms: Enhancing Resilience and Adaptability in PGCE Art and Design Educators

Franz Hoeritzauer — 2025-07-24

Collaborative Classrooms: Enhancing Resilience and Adaptability in PGCE Art and Design Educators.

Franz Hoeritzauer, Ulster University, f.hoeritzauer@ulster.ac.uk

Ecologies of Care: The art of belonging in a studio classroom

Victoria MacLynn — 2025-07-24

Ecologies of Care: The art of belonging in a studio classroom

Victoria MacLynn, MSc Art Psychotherapy, Graduate in Residence, Belfast School of Art, Ulster University, victoriamaclynn@gmail.com

Pamela Whitaker, Lecturer Art Psychotherapy, Belfast School of Art, Ulster University, p.whitaker@ulster.ac.uk

Data Collection for Educational Game Jams

Joe MacLeod-Iredale — 2025-07-24

Data Collection for Educational Game Jams

Joe MacLeod-Iredale, Manchester Metropolitan University, Joe.macleod-Iredale@stu.mmu.ac.uk

Teaching the creative arts online: Using pedagogic motivation as a bridge between residential and online pedagogies

Rob Clarke — 2025-07-24

Teaching the creative arts online: Using pedagogic motivation as a bridge between residential and online pedagogies

Rob Clarke, University of the Arts London, rob.clarke@arts.ac.uk

Georgia Steele, University of the Arts London, g.steele@csm.arts.ac.uk

Editorial: GLAD-HE 2024 Post-Conference Publication

Jess Power — 2025-07-24

GLAD-HE 2024 Post-Conference Publication

“Gathering Pace”

Editorial

Jess Power, Louise O’Boyle and Davina Whitnall

“To gather means to come together, assemble or accumulate (often from scattered sources), to collect, to harvest, to increase in force or to summon up.”

Group for Learning in Art and Design (GLAD HE)

Corresponding editor: e.j.power@salford.ac.uk