Preparation for Progress Review Panel session

50 people in a schoolroom, on a boiling hot day, did not make the ideal conditions for this event.  But I picked up some useful information.

Purpose of PRP - to prove the stage you are at.

MRes -v- Phd - not much difference

The system for PRP changes next year, and we can opt to change to new system.  Tutor advised to do so - easier, and more streamlined.

PRP panel are an assessment panel for an individual candidate, and will have been tailored to meet your needs and subject.  They confirm your marks and determine your progression (either progress, fail  or minor issues for you to address before progression).  Progression means you have passed your modules and are making suitable progress.

Check your curriculum framework.  This will explain a lot. (I should have read this before the workshop!)

PRP members are:

Your Director of Studies
Independent subject expert
Independent chair.

Role of Director of Studies 
- Mainly advisory
- Make recommendations.
- Can't ask questions
- May be asked questions by panel.

Good idea for each student to book a feedback session with their DoS after the PRP.

Independent Subject Expert
- Reads deliverables (assume this means artwork as well as literature)
- Hears presentations
- Asks academic questions - these will be stretching - think of these as a practice for Viva
- Asks DoS questions
- Involved in final decision
- Role as academic
Independent expert cannot be internal examiner.

Independent Chair
- Chairs panel
- Checks procedure
- Reads documents (assume artwork as well as documents)
- Asks student questions
- Involved in final decision.
- Role - academic, pastoral, regulatory.

Student preparation for PRP
- Be aware where you are in phase of study.
- Seek assistance from DoS.

- Complete the checklists
- Marked and moderated written outputs
- Submitted to Research Student Lifecycle Team
- Credits will be added after PRP.

PRP must be held before the anniversary of your enrolment date.


Arranging a PRP.  

DoS identifies suitable panel members
Books date and room.

PRP Documents Required

PRP documentation submission form
Appropriate checklists
Written deliverables (marked and moderated) (plus in my case, stitch works and sketchbooks)
Presentation/verbal report
Log book
Others as appropriate eg ethics forms, calendar and notes of meetings with your supervisors

Hand these in 10 days before PRP so the assessors can review it all.
(If you are late - you will fail your PRP and have to repeat it).

What happens at your PRP.

1. Introduction by chair.
2. Student presentation (possibly powerpoint) 10-15 mins.  Do not overshoot 15 minutes!
3. Academic questions, comments, feedback.  Must appear willing to talk (is this cultural, as oriental candidates may not wish to appear more knowledgeable than the panel?). You are the subject expert in your subject.  You may wish to take notes of their comments and feedback, so take pen and notebook.  Or ask Jill to take notes.
4. Admin issues (going through requirements)
5. DoS leaves room
6. Student will be asked about supervision, support etc.
7. Student leaves room and remains outside with DoS.
8. Chair and independent expert make decision.
9. DoS returns to complete recommendations, and provide further commentary on progress.
10. Student returns to room and is told decision and recommendations.

PRP formal decisions

Progress
Progress to Write Up
Minor Issues (Referred) minor issues to be resolved by a given date.
Repeat eg missing modules
Transfer eg MRes up to PhD
Fail (and withdraw)
Defer: fixed period for serious personal or medical problems.

PRP Issues

Insufficient logbook or supervision
- so provide calendar and notes of all supervisory meetings.
No detail of future plans
- so provide Gantt chart for upcoming year
No ethics forms
- so provide ethics forms
Checklists not signed off
- so get sign-off on checklists as you progress throughout year.

Personal & Research Development

Skills Audit
PGR research development activity log.

Draft Project Plan

Gantt chart for each phase and target dates of submission.

General points:

Make sure you know your phase of study and curriculum framework requirements
Be on time submitting stuff
Plan for your PRP.
Use the PRP documents submission list.

Talk Content

Who is your audience?  Chair and Subject Expert.

Chair is interested in process.
Subject Expert is interested in your grasp of the subject matter.  They have already read your written output/artwork.

Consider including
1. Your Question and the background to it.
2. Process.  Gantt chart for last year and upcoming year.   Show the evolution of your year.  Your ideas should have changed, so explain what/why.
Show where your credits come from.  Quick run through researcher development credits - conferences and other interesting stuff.

Very relieved to get out of a humid, sweaty room.

One Borough Festival at Parsloes Park

On a boiling hot day, I worked the East End Women's Museum stand at the festival.  Great day out.

Our stand had posters, videos and voiceover about East End Women's heritage.  And my oral history recording provided some quotes for the posters, and my voice was on the audio track!!!  I was talking about the Ford Machinists strike, and my description of the strike's cause and purpose was what they liked!

Whole poster

Photograph of Ford Machinist strikers

Part of my oral history recording

One of my quotes

So I spent a lot of the day talking to visitors to the stand, including one of the female councillors.  She told me that Darren, Chairman of the Council would be present.  This female councillor said that he would have the contacts to get in touch with the Ford Machinists.  So I had a chat with Darren, who, having done his bit promoting the event, and was rushing off with his wife to a family wedding.  He said Ford Machinists had received a lot of publicity recently, and some would not want to be bothered.   I said I was well aware of this, and absolutely supported this point of view, but if there were any who were interested in my project I'd like to make contact.  He gave me his email address, and I will be writing to him.  I need to get my pitch right before getting stuck in.  Thought required.

This meant it was a day well spent.

Great day in last class of term at The Granary

Today was art class at the Granary.  Vanda had told us to bring brushes or tools that we had made ourselves from things pertinent to our subject matter.  Karin brought her shoes, as she walks in the landscape; Seonaid brought in leaves from her landscape; Lori created papers from rubbings from the farmyard then drew through the rat hole in the Granary door to create a hole in her paper.  I had been thinking about what my cleaners have to clean up, and brought my toilet brush, but also brought tampons and pads as tools.

I started by mark making using tampons.  Actually when used with printing ink, tampons give very delicate texture, when rolled along paper.  The applicators gave circular marks, end on, and interesting stripes when rolled.   I also printed some Carefree pads.  I spent most of the morning playing with printing ink, but by the end of the morning, just did not feel quite right about it.

Tampax wrapper

Rolled applicator

Rolled applicator, tampon and top of applictor

Over lunch, I had a think about why this seemed not quite on track.  I concluded that it had all become quite Essentialist - which is a form of feminist art that does not really do it for me.  Yes, I'd used tampons and pads, and there was some interesting texture .... but so what?    Vanda prompted me with the question 'Why are you using them?'.  Because the cleaners have to clean up all sorts of mess.  And women leave different mess to men.  Men might expose themselves to the cleaners, and leave urine mess, but women leave mess with blood.  I had restrained myself from using red ink (too essentialist!) but my work was still about bodily functions, rather than cleaning!  So Vanda suggested I clean the marks I had made!  (Me? .... Do cleaning?!).  What a gem!

I cut out some of my marks, shot down the stairs, and flushed some of them down the toilet.  This felt fantastic!  The printing ink ran, smudged and diluted.  Quite astonishing!  It made the detail of the print unintelligible, but left a dirty mark.  Just what I was after!  Some I flushed several times.  Then I went back upstairs, and tried printing, using tampons in Quink ink. I tried bleaching and soaping some of these marks.  Bleaching was ok, but soaping was a bit naff.  However,  I'll try this a bit more at home, maybe scrubbing marks with bleach on a nailbrush.

Amazing texture, but quite revolting!

Rolled applicator

Amazing detail but quite horrible

Ink circles from end of tampon applicator - bleached

Tampon applicator tube print - flushed

Ink tampon print - flushed

I found this to be a very hard day's work and was exhausted by the end of it.  It was a very profitable day for the amount of thinking I did, and how the activity reinforced my dislike of feminist artwork that is essentialist, rather than commenting on the social influences on women.

A further thought that occurred to me while driving home, was that I REALLY dislike abject art, and what I had been working on - was abject!   Which fits exactly with why I felt uncomfortable with it.  I spent too much time with abject stuff when my Dad had Alzheimers/mental illness, and loathe art made from the abject.  I have spent FAR TOO much time dealing with bodily detritus!  But, given this is the substance of a toilet cleaner's job, working with the theme reinforces my respect for their work, as they clean up the mess from a 'supposedly civilised' society.  YAY - LIGHTBULB MOMENT!

Great day.  Thanks Vanda.  See you next term.

Seminar - Helene Cixous - The Laugh of the Medusa

What a great seminar.  I got so much more out of the essay because I had other peoples' views.

I read it, and found it confusing, with too much reference to penis/vagina.  However, Imogen started by explaining that in the UK, we write essays in the Germanic tradition - making various points, that lead to a conclusion.  However the French tradition, is to wander with flowery language, sometimes contradicting oneself, to get a thorough exploration of the subject.  This was a lightbulb moment in my comprehension of this piece.  Imogen also said the writing was of its time - mid 1970s.

Jen said she found it rather essentialist.  Another lightbulb moment.  I'd read the essay, and thought, 'Oh gosh, not again!  More stuff about penis/vagina.  What a yawn!' Whereas once Jen attributed the correct label to it, it all made sense - it was written in a time when women were trying to understand the differences between men's and women's work and in trying to gain the 'essence' of being woman/ female/ femininity, there was a somewhat one-dimensional focus on anatomy.  Mercifully we've moved beyond this - essentialism is one way among many that can be used to understand womanhood.

Jen also said Cixous contradicted herself.  Which she does.  Which I had struggled with and then skimmed over bits that did not appeal to me.  My training in reading academic articles, has been to only read deeply when the time will be well rewarded, and not to struggle with obscure stuff unnecessarily.  But again, Jen had analysed what was going on, and drawn a conclusion.  Whereas I'd just thought 'don't get that ... move on'.

Darren had read the article 5 times, and colour coded 5 different issues that he tracked through the writing.  I'd not thought of doing this.

We had a debate about what Cixous meant by women's writing. I'd taken it literally and assumed she meant script by women.  I thought she was saying women should validate their experience by writing, thereby using a male media, rather than working in the oral tradition.  Writing to me is male and westernised.  Whereas others in class felt writing meant any means of expression, oral/written/art/sculpture/performance.  Another lightbulb moment, that completely changed the interpretation of the piece.   I'd thought Cixous was advocating women to validate themselves by using script writing (in my opinion, a male media) to the detriment of other media, but the group conclusion appeared to be that she was saying 'express your self and your experience'.

I really gained insight from this seminar.

Another tutorial - peace of mind about the Ethics policy

NOTES OF TUTORIAL - IMOGEN RACZ/CATHY MACTAGGART

Wednesday 11 July 2018 

I saw Imogen on Wednesday 11 July 2018. 

We clarified what I’d got confused about the Ethics form from last tute.  I thought Imogen had said it needed to be reworked because of the change in law about data protection.  Actually she had said it needed to be checked for validity, and changed – if necessary. We looked up my previous ethics form, and fortunately it covers what I was doing at the time, but also now, so it is still valid.  The only advice Imogen gave, was that if I had to interview in someone’s home (eg my cousin), it would be good practice to leave my location and contact details with a responsible adult (my husband, Jim or Eastside Community Heritage) and ring them when I finished the interview to confirm all ok and on way home.

I explained I’d been to see Eastside Community Heritage, and in the interim, when I was confused about Ethics validity, I’d suspended my interviewing, but spent my time transcribing others’ interviews.  This was skill development, in using other computer packages for voice recording. Also ECH informed me that, not only were they using 2 of my quotes about my Aunt Daisy, Ford Machinist, on their trailer for the Dagenham community festivals, but they so liked my description of what the strike was about (unskilled -v- semi-skilled grading) that they have used my voice recording for their voiceover. I think it is because I have the right accent for the area, and describe legal definitions in simple language.  How good is that!  

I’m looking forward to going to the ECH community events in Barking & Dagenham.  I’m hoping to meet some of the actual Ford machinists, and I’d like to make contacts that I can follow up.  I’d very much like my 5^thsampler to be about the/a machinist(s).

I showed Imogen photos of my various sketchbooks.  I’ve created a new, handmade concertina (11” x 23”) about cleaners tools, drawn in red and black, using an identity card.  There is some serendipity in how some images have been cropped.  One has a bit of a phallic image on it – actually the end of a nozzle – but I’ve kept it in, because Sarpong had recently had a man expose himself to her, and she was upset about it. I want to convey some of what they encounter.

We had a discussion about what to include in my PRP.  I will bring most of my artwork, sketchbooks, stitch, folders with research. 

Actions:

CMT to look up Mierle Laderman Ukeles – sanitation artwork; manifesto for maintenance art.

Sketchbook and sampler progress

I've not had much to say for the last week or so, but I've been making fantastic progress on my sampler and sketchbooks.

Warning triangle, right hand side completed,
left hand side has only one layer of stitch

Warning triangle, now has complete layer of stitch on left hand side,
voiding the handles of toilet brushes

I've decided to put Asanti good luck symbols in the border.  Just need to talk to Gifti, Mavis and Sarpong to identify which ones to use.  When I stitch large area like the warning triangle, I've learned to put all the base stitches in, using one solid colour, then create visual movement by using different colours, or variegated threads on the second layer.  I've probably done about 10 days work for 3 hours a day.

I've done a couple of classes with Vanda at the Granary.  It's been going well.  I've been drawing my cleaning bottles again, this time using an identity card.  I selected red and black from the Ghanaian flag, so this nicely restricted my colour range.   Then I selected quite a few images from previous classes (Simplify and Intensify) and decided to create a large, concertina sketchbook.  Vanda was unconvinced by this, but I like what I have created.  It took a couple of days working at home.

I managed to do some artwork today at home!  I find this difficult, but one technique I can do, is linoprints.  This time I worked with black and red ink (thinking about blood which cleaners have to deal with when people fail to flush!) on various papers, but especially Izal toilet paper.

I decided I was fed up of single images in my 10" square sketchbook.  I use linoprints to collage together, a lot.  This makes them bigger than 10" square.  I also print on toilet paper, so it's too long.  I love concertinas, so decided to make a handmade one.  11" wide by 23" long.  Lots of objects related to toilets - cleaning bottles, toilet brushes, all different scales.  I cut some of my A1 images into sections and mixed up large scale and small scale work.  I'm pleased with it.

I saved 4 particular images of overlaid cleaning bottles, to be displayed as works on paper.