U5: First thoughts on Body of Chronicles

An overview of the brief

For the first part of unit 5, we’ll be consolidating our experience of MAIP year 1 through a ‘Body of Chronicles’. It will consider

• Our own learning – insights and knowledge gained, how our intercultural competencies are developing and expanding.
• The influence on/of our peers.
• The relevance of the course to communities beyond MAIP – how our real-world learning is being applied and is cross-pollinating beyond MAIP.

The chronicles should tell the story of the cohort’s becoming as it unfolded through time, from our perspective and taking into account our positionality. The telling should be useful for others – captivating, not confusing – and directed particularly at other members of the cohort and our future selves. It should capture the highs and lows and have a beginning, middle and end. 

The learning outcomes we will be assessed on are:

• Awareness of how engagement can be designed to form temporary communities and initiate meaningful dialogue and creativity (assessment criteria: process and collaboration competencies).
• Producing rich media formats capable of transferring complex communications that convey experience (assessment criteria: realisation and problem solving)

We can pick any format to work in – but as always, the submission will have to be digital (if video <30 mins). 

Some questions I may want to further reflect on: 

1. What will be most useful to my future self?
2. What are the key memories and learning from MAIP Y1? How have these been shaped by my classmates? How have I influenced them? 
3. How has my practice evolved over the past year? 
4. What values do I want to embed? What elements of my practice do I want to push forward with this project? What will be the throughline with previous/future work? 

First thoughts

What I’ll be documenting, essentially, is change – moments of transformation and gradual shifts over time in… 

• thoughts
• values
• feelings
• connections
• interests
• knowledge
• skills and competencies.

What my chronicles should include:

• Documentation of significant moments/memories/utterances
• A story of the whole
• An intro to the characters/community
• In-depth reflections and insights
• Demonstration of the shifts that have occurred over time
• Demonstration of the interconnectedness of these changes amongst the cohort
• Context and how it influenced our year
• Criticality – critiquing the approach of chronicling 

Resources I can draw on:

• My notes – physical and digital
• My blog and in particular, my ‘What remains?’ end-of-unit reflections
• Recordings and transcripts of our meetings
• Padlet and each of our submissions
• Our group chat and private messages
• Reading lists and official course documents, including Moodle and Miro

It makes me think about how the impacts this course has had on me are tied up with its impacts on other people – experiencing something with or alongside others compounds and complicates its effects. The impact on you affects the impact on others, and the impact on others changes the impact on you. Could I create a diagram of this? And to follow this through: this process of chronicling will change the impact on me and others. I could reflect on this as part of a critique of my approach of chronicling. 

References/inspiration

• My work in documentation and evaluation (Quarantine Sampler; funder reports).
• The Beauty Project: the way it communicates complexity and finds ways to look at a subject from different angles and different individual perspectives.
• Show & Tell: A chronicle of group material – and the book.
• I maybe need more! 

Initial ideas on form

• I would like to use this unit to push forward my graphic design practice. To produce something graphically interesting and clear, which explores ways of categorising, annotating, and referencing. 
• I like the idea of producing something printable – a book of sorts.
• I wonder about the form of a ‘workbook’ – like the Beauty Project lab book – a frame within which I can record my experience, which others could also use if they so wished. 
• I’m interested in carrying through some stylistic elements from previous units. I wonder about creating a printed book and then filming myself completing elements of it – combining print and handwriting, drawing, perhaps even collage, with a voiceover.

Initial ideas of concepts/questions

• One central question: What remains? Moments that stuck. What has changed? What happened?
• Could be 3 sections with 3 questions (beginning, middle, end): What happened? What changed? What remains?
• Or arranged through time and units: Autumn/Winter; Winter/Spring; Spring/Summer.