Teaching the Teacher.

 

My biblionautic chums and friends.

This week finds Studio 5 a hive of activity. Thanks to Designer Bookbinders and the Printing Charity I have the pleasure of working with Daniel Rapley, head of the Foundation Course at Lincoln College (Arts) - my first art college!. Just before covid I did a few days tuition to introduce the foundation students to the world of book arts. They made some cracking work. I am pleased to say that book arts is now on the Foundation Curriculum. The feed back form the Higher Education (BA etc) interviews has been fantastic with the students book arts included in their portfolios.

I consider the point of introducing book arts at foundation level to be so important, to enable the students to engage with the making of books during their first steps in the world of the arts and crafts sowing the seeds for future exploration and development.

The head of the Foundation Course, Daniel Rapley was so taken with the outcome that he pushed for the 'CODEX' module to be part of the curriculum and he deserves much praise.

However, this sort of highlighted an itch of mine that I have had for some time, years actually. It is all well and good to pop in, as it were, to do a few days teaching then breeze out, dropping mic... my work here is done sort of thing ... But to what end?. It is good for the students, of course, but where is the continuity?. As the students move on so does the knowledge. So, after conversation with Daniel I decided to forward the idea of a week long intensive course that basically teaches the teacher. The idea being that the knowledge stays with the college. This knowledge can be built upon and passed on to multiple students from mutiple courses.

As we all know, the arts are being squeezed of funds in education in the UK because those who know such things know that the arts are not important (the short sighted fools that they are) To this end, the foundation course is slowly gathering equipment, a press here, type from here and there etc. So it is important that Daniel has exposure and experience of as much of the tools and equipment that are used in bookbinding, printing etc etc. So that when the foundation course either begs, borrows or steals equipment he will be familiar with it.

So far this week we have done simple text bock making, cutting board with a board chopper and knife, different types of covering materials - their properties and uses. Free hand foil work and stencil foil work with the tooling iron. The type holder and blocking machine.

This afternoon we will be exploring typeset and the Adana 8x5.

Busy busy busy.

Please note.... there are other studios doing stuff, spelling and grammar. Please further note, the opinion of the author may change at any moment. This is due to having an open mind of sorts.