As the current Sabbatical Officer the team, we understand and support the continued importance of interrogating the universities current thoughts and practices around critiques, with the goal of creating safe spaces for all students. Crits are seen as an integral part of the art school experience and have the potential to facilitate great discussions, learning and growth for students. For this reason, it is vital that we are committed to ensuring these spaces, that we’ve seen can be potentially harmful, are regulated and evolve for the better.
As a team, we wanted to thank students for participating, and invaluably informing the research and subsequent paper the SU's Policy Team has produced.
The paper considers some of the existing academic and practitioner-led literature around crits, articulating some of the problems with crits. It also shares the testimonies of students at UAL that Arts SU have collected, to illustrate the lived experiences of marginalised students who have encountered crits.
We are now in the process of presenting the research and our recommendations in university committees and working with the Teaching and Learning Exchange to review how crits are conducted at UAL.
Rachel Williams - Arts SU Education Officer
Read the full report here - Crits and Inclusive Learning at UAL Report
In 2024, following this report, a guidance document for staff at UAL was created.
Arts SU, in collaboration with the University, have created the first guidance document around safe and inclusive 'crits' or critiques. This guidance was produced in response to a research report on the student experience of crits, which was produced by Calum Sherwood (Research and Policy Officer at Arts SU).
Following this research, Arts SU collaborated with the teaching and learning team at UAL and received feedback from staff across the teaching and student support departments as well as countless students, to create a guidance for staff on what crits at UAL should look like. While created for the benefit of teaching staff, this guidance can be used by students as well.
This guidance was co-authored by Calum Sherwood (Research and Policy Officer at Arts SU), Minna Ellis (Central Saint Martins Sabbatical Officer 2022-2024) and Danielle Tran (UAL Director of Education).
Read the guidance here:
Supporting inclusive and developmental crits: a guidance for staff at UAL
UAL is committed to Critique as a valuable and established process for learning within creative subjects. ‘The Crit is a key site for the creation of value’ [Orr and Shreeve, 2017, 40]. Crits, or Critiques, are opportunities for discussion and peer feedback on a student’s work. They take place in different ways, varying in size and mode. Crits provide space to develop critical thinking, presentation, and feedback skills. The nature of a critique is analytical focus on creative outputs by others, and the wellbeing of those sharing work needs to be taken into account to ensure a proactive and inclusive learning environment. Critique is described as “one of the most valuable components of a formal art and design education. It is also one of the most difficult […] Critique is a collaborative activity that takes quite a bit of time to learn — both in terms of how to give feedback, and how to accept feedback” [how to crit]. This staff guidance aims to support consistency in the delivery of inclusive and developmental crits.
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A
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Agree ground rules: for respectful and constructive questioning and feedback. Collectively developing and agreeing ground rules can help foster a compassionate learning space where students feel safe to share and discuss. Establish an understanding of what a UAL crit looks like, which may look different for students with previous educational experience. [Ground rules can include seeking consent before touching work of others]. Ensure that regular breaks are offered to support student concentration.
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Ask the individual: Personalising discussions by asking what an individual would find most helpful in terms of feedback helps ensure focused and constructive comments. This also recognises their agency in the space and help flatten the hierarchy.
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B
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Balance feedback: Commenting on strengths alongside areas for development ensures individuals receiving feedback will have rounded comments to work with. Feedback may also come in the form of questions, to be framed respectfully.
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Bring in all voices: Facilitators to ensure all voices are heard, ensuring time for all participants to engage. Recognising lived experience of students is also important.
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Build up: It can take students time to build confidence in and understanding of the crit process. Provide scaffolding for students, in terms of how to present and give feedback, and support them to build up skills incrementally over time.
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Be open to learning: Crits are a learning opportunity for students and facilitators. While students will likely expect tutors to provide feedback regardless of expertise level, tutors expressing a willingness to learn alongside students flattens hierarchy and opens dialogue.
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C
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Critical thinking: Deconstruct and reflect on existing knowledge, show respect and encouragement for the expression of self through work shown. Championing multiple ways of knowing. Connecting discussions to Learning Outcomes and assessment criteria can help focus Crits so they are productive and positive experiences. [Although crits are formative in nature, they are unlikely to be a format for a final assessment].
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Choice: Equality Act 2010 requires us to make anticipatory adjustments. Proactively offer students a choice of ways to participate in crits. This might include the choice of presenting in groups, online or via video recording, or providing a text summary over verbal description. When feeding back, this might include allowing students to feedback in post-its, in pairs, or online.
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Concept and cost: Acknowledging the impact of cost of living on students helps focus discussion on concept rather than material choice/production quality.
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Capture feedback: Explore different ways feedback can be captured for students receiving comments on their work [e.g. written summary, audio recording] subject to consent of all involved. This relates to the earlier point of agreement of ground rules.
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Celebrate: despite the name, Crits offer a rare opportunity to collectively appreciate student work and student voice. Spend time acknowledging strengths of the work, its articulation and/or the debate.
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Acknowledgement:
This guidance document has been brought together by UAL and Arts Students’ Union and has been co-authored by Minna Ellis (Arts SU CSM Sabbatical Officer 2022-2024), Calum Sherwood (Arts SU Policy and Research Officer) and Danielle Tran (UAL Director of Education). We would also like to thank the Arts programme and Sabbatical Officers at Arts SU and colleagues at UAL who have fed into this resource. Finally we would like to thank the many students who bravely shared their experienced of critiques as students at UAL, without this insight, this work would not have been possible.
Resources:
- Compassionate feedback: Ideas for prompting reflection on compassionate approaches to feedback, Academic Enhancement team
- Disabled Students’ Commission (2020) Three months to make a difference: key areas of challenge for disabled students requiring urgent action from institutions and policy makers in HE.
- legislation.gov.uk, Equality Act 2010
- Goldstein, Mitch, how to crit, (2023).
- Orr, Susan, & Shreeve, Alison (2017), Art and design pedagogy in higher education: Knowledge, values and ambiguity in the creative curriculum (London: Taylor and Francis).
- Q-ART CRITS (2008-2019).
- Sherwood, Calum, Crits and Inclusive Learning at UAL: An Arts SU discussion paper.
- Yilmaz, O. & Gelmez, K. (2023), ‘How can I say this politely?’: Remodelling peer critiquing in design education and revealing compassionate critiques, Journal of Art, Design & Communcation in Higher Education, 22(2), pp. 277-296.
- Quick guides on managing conflict on the Student Services web pages, accessible by staff