08/01/2025
Ahead of our first TPP session on January 6th, 2025, I read the essay How do art and design technicians conceive of their role in higher education? (Sams, 2016). Written by Claire Sams, an artist and former Technician at Central St Martins, it offers an insightful and coherent overview of what art and design technicians do and how they feel about their role within Higher Education (HE).
The article starts by emphasising the “lack of contemporary literature on the HE technicians’ role in art and design” (Blythman et al, 2008 cited in Sams, 2016, p. 62). To combat this, over 30 technicians were surveyed. They were asked to describe their role, and common responses include helping and supporting staff and students, health and safety, specialist technical expertise and offering bespoke individual teaching experiences to students. In the current HE climate the latter feels increasingly unique to the role of technician, and I would like to explore this further.
Hunt and Melrose define the technician as a “master craftsperson” (2005, p.70 cited in Sams, 2016, p. 65) and Sams agrees, observing that “this master of craft is confidently able to work through the creative process with students, combining traditional techniques, historical understanding and contemporary approaches to create diverse student outcomes” (Sams, 2016, p. 65). This view is confirmed by Technician A and Technician B, two of those surveyed by Sams. Technician B says “all student work is a one-off creation . . . The role demands a complexity of thinking and facilitating a huge range of students’ enquiries” ([Technician B], Sams, 2016, p. 65). Technician A feels that the face-to-face interaction technicians provide is of “significant value to students” ([Technician A], Sams, 2016, p. 64).
During the TPP workshop, a group of us discussed the article in relation to ‘risk taking’ (a focus of the session). Several peers, who are also academic staff, shared that rising student numbers and declining time resource, makes offering individual support increasingly challenging. This coupled with the diverse social and educational contexts of our students, and the fact that less are doing a Foundation course, means many of us find students are less confident taking risks. Reflecting on this, I feel that technicians are ideally placed to facilitate risk taking in students; they do more responsive teaching and are less constrained by academic requirements. Additionally, it can be argued that technicians are well suited for supporting neurodivergent students, as they can tailor their teaching to match student needs and offer sustained one-to-one support.
Moving forwards, I intend to work more closely and intentionally with technicians. Greater osmosis between academic and technical staff has the potential to create richer and more supportive learning experiences for students; helping to meet diverse student needs and encourage risk taking.
Update added on 16/03/2025: an example of how I am liaising more closely with technical staff is captured in my Case study 2, which you can find here.
References:
Sams, C. (2016), ‘How do art and design technicians conceive of their role in higher education?’ in Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, Vol 1 / Issue 2 (2016), pp. 62-69