Author: Smriti Mehra

The Context of my Teaching Practice and my Positionality in Relation to my Practice

My practice as an artist has developed from a very strong influence of my education in Communication Design which encompassed the study of Graphic Design, a year-long lab called Communication for Social Change and Digital Video Production all of which contributed to my art practice which employs ethnographic research methods that I have picked up through this education. As a storyteller I have been concerned with the crafting of my stories – the narrative structures, the pace and more importantly the fundamental need to tell these stories – to communicate a point of view that is rarely considered. It is this curiosity of daily life, it’s cultural significance and value that I try to get my students to consider and explore.

As an educator my art practice and pedagogic practice are intrinsically linked. I often bring my own research interests into the classroom. I teach across the disciplines of art and design focusing on public space, community engagement, critical thinking and collaborative practice.

Having spent most of my life in Bangalore, I had the privilege of pursuing an MFA in Fine and Media Arts at NSCAD University in Canada, supported by an American Association of University Women scholarship. It was only upon moving to the UK with my British spouse that I recognized the privileges I had previously taken for granted. Arriving with no established contacts through education, family, or work, I had to build my connections from scratch. This experience heightened my awareness of my identity as a ‘brown’ woman. In Bangalore, the color of my skin was a privilege, especially given my southern Indian upbringing and northern roots. Privilege is often invisible to those who possess it. As Crenshaw (1990) discusses in her work on intersectionality, the overlapping and intersecting social identities can lead to unique modes of discrimination and privilege. While I became very aware of my lack of privilege in London, it was only a matter of time before I realised that I did, in fact, have more agency than I imagined to access professional networks – I just had to come up with a new strategy for it and do the work that I had previously not had to do because of my privileges in Bangalore. My experience of being new to this country has given me a deep understanding of the challenges outsiders face when assimilating into a new culture.

I have been working on building a series of Positionality workshops across years on the BA Photography program.

In photography, the examination of the self/other is a key concern of the medium. How do you look at yourself and how do you look at another? The lens mediates these two positions. We also probe the power dynamics between these positions (Tien 2018). This research project on positionality therefore speaks to the fundamental concern of our practice: how we look at what we see, in a nuanced, considered and compassionate way. While examining the self/other, we must preface that we embody both. We are other to another.

These workshops also allow students to get to know each other and to foster a sense of belonging. Also importantly, for me to get to know them as a year leader. My approach to facilitating these workshops is to share my positionality with the students and not be afraid of making myself vulnerable with them. (hooks, 1994)

*Appendix to the positionality workshop series

While the year 1 workshops have been refined over two years when I was year 1 leader, the year 2 workshops will be refined further as I take on the role of year 2 leader next year and it is in this context that the following intervention has been developed. Objects from the Horniman Museum collection around tea have been used in conjunction with English idioms that reference tea. There is another idea to develop a workshop where students could bring in idioms/sayings in other languages that reference tea to open up a different dialogue on the cultural references associated with tea.    

Spill The Tea – a positionality workshop by Smriti Mehra and Claire Undy

This positionality workshop has been developed to further the dialogue that was started by Maia Conran, an Arts Fellow at the Horniman Museum, in response to the 茶, चाय, Tea (Chá, Chai, Tea) exhibition at the Horniman Museum. Through practices of sharing and hospitality, this project proposes not ‘the story’ but ‘stories’ of tea as a social and collaborative process.

Idioms are a quintessential part of the English language, and one of the hardest elements for a student of the language to comprehend. For the English, expressions like ‘tea and sympathy’ or ‘just my cup of tea’ might feel cosy, informal and familiar. For the non-English speaker, these phrases can be confusing, ostracising- a secret code that cannot be directly translated but must be learned. Cockney rhyming slang becomes even more cryptic: a reference within a reference, only understandable to those in the know. ‘Tea’ becomes ‘Rosy Lee’, shortened simply to ‘a cup of Rosy’.

Tea is one of the most common subjects for idioms in English culture due to its omnipresence in the lives of people of every class, from a ‘builder’s brew’ to ‘tea with the Queen’, drunk with a raised little finger. Tea has been folded into an impression of Englishness within popular culture, however the dialogues within the 茶, चाय, Tea (Chá, Chai, Tea) exhibition at the Horniman Museum demonstrate to us that tea is anything but English. 

While we may be increasingly familiar with the human cost of the English tea industry, how we address this colonial legacy in the present becomes an uncomfortable question with no singular answer. Traditionally, postcards are a souvenir of lived experience, capturing something of the ‘foreign’ to share with those back home. These Spill the Tea postcards (named after another idiom, encouraging people to talk openly) offer a tool with which to initiate dialogue, unpacking the appropriation of tea into a popular notion of English culture, and allowing disparate viewpoints and perspectives to co-exist. 

*Appendix to the ‘Spill The Tea’ postcards

Aims of the Workshop

• To use tea, a commodity widely embraced across the globe, as a foundation for unpacking cultural practices surrounding it.
• To use (tea) objects from the Horniman Museum collection as prompts for dialogue and research.
• To examine the histories of tea and its colonial legacies.
• To introduce students to a research methodology by exploring a commodity, its associated histories, the objects it encompasses, and the practice of everyday life, investigating materials and thereby connecting the personal with the political.
• To encourage students to reflect on their own positionality in relation to tea.
• To create a space for students to share their cultural practices and value their knowledge from lived experience.
• To foster a sense of belonging within the cohort as students learn more about each other.

*Postscript – Claire and I have worked on developing this workshop collaboratively and we have had a sustained dialogue with Maia’s approach, methodology and engagement with the project. While this is an outcome of the research project that has sought to involve students and staff, this method may be replicated by using different materials/commodities to follow a similar interrogation. In my own practice, previously I have worked with flowers, meat and water.

It is very important that staff running the workshop are comfortable with the context and have articulated their own positionality in relation to it. Listening and being responsive are key skills to facilitate the discussions that will emerge.

How the intervention speaks to inclusivity

This workshop is designed with inclusivity at its core. It employs critical pedagogy to engage with power and inequality, empowerment and agency, dialogical teaching where knowledge is co-constructed, reflective practice (Freire, 1970) and privileging personal cultural practices and lived experience (Ladson-Billings, 1995) for the purpose of transformative education.

Feedback so Far

We have tested this workshop with the participants of the ‘Tea’s Times Conference’ held on March 14 and 15, 2024, at Camberwell College of Arts. An older white male academic remarked that the postcards appeared to have been designed by a white person. Initially, Claire and I felt somewhat offended by this remark. However, upon further reflection, I realized there might be some truth to his inference.

Although I was born and raised in India, I received a convent education, and my post-school education has largely adhered to and prioritized colonial knowledge. My early education may be so deeply entrenched and internalized that I missed recognizing it for what it is.

The aim of this exercise is to unpack and reveal different cultural knowings, practices, histories, stories, and rituals of tea in various contexts that students inhabit. It is also important to consider how local our positions actually are in relation to language, ritual, histories, and practices.

At the conference, students engaged with the postcards more than the presenters and were largely complimentary about the conversations they had in their groups. A few students felt that more time was needed to explore the conversations further.

The postcards were exhibited as part of the exhibition at the Horniman Museum from 13th June – 7th July, 2024. The postcards were taken away by the public visiting the show and no responses were left behind. This is a workshop that needs facilitation.

– photos of postcards exhibited at the 茶, चाय, Tea exhibition at the Horniman Museum.

Peers from the Inclusive Practices unit of the PGCert have appreciated the activity and have encouraged me to unpack key themes from this exercise. This has been very helpful and I am considering PART TWO of this workshop for students to discuss these themes in small groups to then share their research.

Students break up into group to research and discuss the following:

• The etymology of the word ‘tea’.
• Gender and Tea – what are the power dynamics?
• Social Class and Tea
• Environmental aspects of Tea – polystyrene cups
• Material and Tea – specifically what do we consider tea?
• Objects and Tea – ceramics for instance
• Language and Tea – idioms in other languages – what are the cultural references of these idioms? what can we glean from them?
• Wellbeing and Tea

All groups share their research and key points of discussion.

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Bibliography

Boal, A., 1979. Theatre of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press.

Cariola, L. and Lai, T., 2022. Where are you from? Raising awareness of Third Culture Students in Higher Education. Teaching Matters. Available at: https://www.teaching-matters-blog.ed.ac.uk/where-are-you-from-raising-awareness-of-third-culture-students-in-higher-education/ [Accessed 19 June 2024].

Crenshaw, K., 1989. Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1(8).

de Certeau, M., 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Fletcher, K. (2010) ‘Being inside and outside the field”: An exploration of identity, positionality and reflexivity in inter-racial research Leisure Identities and Authenticity. LSA Publication, academia.edu

Freire, P., 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Hofstadter, D.R., 2007. I Am a Strange Loop. New York: Basic Books.

hooks, b., 1994, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practices of Freedom. Routledge: New York.

Ladson-Billings, G., 1995. Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, Vol 32 (3), pp.465-491.

MacGregor, N., 2010. A History of the World in 100 Objects. London: Allen Lane.

Mani, L., 2009. Sacred Secular. New York: Routledge.

Mani, L., 2022. Myriad Intimacies. Duke University Press.

Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R., 2003. Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practicing within the disciplines. In Improving Student Learning – Ten Years On, pp. 412-424. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development.

Teach Inspire Create, 2022. The importance of cultural diversity in the arts, with Karina H Maynard. Teach Inspire Create Podcast. Available at: https://teachinspirecreatepodcast.buzzsprout.com/1897805/9955300-the-importance-of-cultural-diversity-in-the-arts-with-karina-h-maynard [Accessed 24 June 2024].

Tien, J. (2019) Teaching identity vs. positionality: Dilemmas in social justice education, Curriculum Inquiry, 49:5, 526-550

UAL, 2024. The Social Model of Disability at UAL. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/students/student-services/disability-and-dyslexia [Accessed 7 July 2024].

Positionality Program for BA Fine Art Photography 2022-23

Maia Conran, Smriti Mehra, Olga Saavedra

In photography, the examination of the self/other is a key concern of the medium. How do you look at yourself and how do you look at an ‘other’? The lens mediates these two positions. This research project on positionality therefore speaks to the fundamental concern of our practice: how we look at what we see, in a nuanced, considered and compassionate way.

Students understanding of positionality enables them to situate themselves and others with empathy and nuance and therefore increases the agility with which they approach challenges in social and professional situations. It increases confidence, proactivity and resilience individually and collectively. By sharing their narratives they are able to better connect to the narratives of others, this in turn increases connectivity in the course overall.

Our Questions

How can positionality frame contextualization, interpersonal interaction, academic thinking, and articulation of practice?

How can prompts to thinking about positionality be woven into the course at every level, adapting to student development?

How does this understanding transcend lens based practice? How can the impact of our interventions be measured?

Year 1 Workshops – Smriti Mehra

• Positionality Wheels – defining identities in relation to self and environment.
• Columbian Hypnosis Workshop (Theater of the Oppressed) – The self and its relationship to power.
• Rank Awareness (process work) – Interpretation of status through planning a group dinner.
• Point of View exercise – exploring the perspectives of others through point of view.

These workshops are first facilitated with academic and technical staff on the program during our Staff Development day in September before the students come in.

Colombian Hypnosis workshop, Staff Development Day, September 2022

Colombian Hypnosis workshop, Positionality Series with year 2, October 2022

Colombian Hypnosis workshop, Positionality Series with year 2, October 2022

Year 2 workshops – Olga Saavedra

• Social identity and Context

A reflexive exercise to help identify individual positionality and serve as a starting point for reflection on how that affects your creative practice. Exploring from personal experience how social identities such as: race, class, gender, and disability, intersect with our ways of seeing and producing art. Using ‘Social Identity Map’: A Reflexivity Tool for Practicing Explicit Positionality designed by Danielle Jacobson and Nida Mustafa (2019).

• My Own Multiple Identities, Power and Visual Representation

Applying the Social Identity map exercise by focusing on the intersection between positionality, and power dynamics in order to analyse how it influences the ways we think about photography. Reflecting on ‘multiple and intersecting social identities and social locations (including privilege or oppression) and how it affects how we see and understand images (Collins & Arthur, 2010).

• Positionality and Contextualising Your Practice

Reflecting on the influence of positionality in practice. Students are encouraged to think about how their background affects their research topics. Identifying which aspects of social identity have the most influence on their art and considering the changing nature of positionality within different stages of work.

Year Meeting Interventions – Smriti Mehra

• Year 2 Site and Contextualization

reading artworks in the context of the Bargehouse Gallery space.

• Year 3 Positionality

 moving from student to professional.

• Across Years: Studio Intervention – Carnival in Rio

negotiating and achieving collective resonance.

Positionality Seminar Series

• Belonging – Reflecting on the role of personal objects to evoke memories, stories, and reflections of the self.

• Owning Positionality – Exploring Trinh T. Minh-Ha’s insights about speaking nearby and in relation to the work of Candice Breitz artwork: Love Story 2016, a seven-channel video installation.

• Discussion of an Unknown Object – Discussion on unknown objects – How we interact with and understand them.

• The Object Lesson – Based on a discussion of the Object Lesson a picture book by Edward Gorey, to explore how the self-is being negotiated when creating collaboratively.

Quotes from the Year 1 USS

• I really like how open and accepting everyone is including students and staff. I feel very safe at college. I also like that I can be vulnerable around everyone during sessions and express myself the way I am.
• I liked the community aspect at the start in the studios doing workshops together.

Observations on the Second Year

• There was a notable change in the second year’s approach to situating their practice. Greater confidence around their individual positionality and how it is a part of their practice.
• Several second year students specifically asked for more positionality seminars.
• The External Examiner commented on the broadening of contextualization within the course across years two and three.

Further considerations

• There is a challenge in setting the level of the workshops and seminars to be appropriately intellectually challenging.
• Where best to situate interventions in terms of the student timetable.
• How to embed the learning within units and move away from the sessions being considered additional.
• That this is additional for staff to deliver which presents a challenge for workloads and budgets.