Spaces and Stories: presentation in progress for HES Sheffield
INTRO SLIDE 1
Laura M:
Welcome: I am going to begin by introducing everybody:
Hannah Lever is a 3rd year UG student in Sociology
Danny Wilding is currently undertaking an MA in Social Research and
Danny is also Student Engagement Officer for the Reinvention Centre
Laura Evans unfortunately can’t be with us due to illness, but Laura is
a 2nd year Sociology undergraduate student,
Cath Lambert is a Lecturer in Sociology and Academic Coordinator
for the Reinvention Centre
I am Laura Moorhouse, 2nd year UG student in History and Sociology.
We are all based at the University of Warwick.
REINVENTION SLIDE 2
Cath
Before we talk abut the project in detail we want to introduce the
Reinvention Centre for Undergraduate Research. The Reinvention
Centre is a collaborative Centre for Excellence in Teaching and
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Learning (CETL) based at the Universities of Warwick and Oxford
Brookes. The Reinvention Centre works, in multiple ways, to enable
undergraduate students to undertake research and become
integrated into the research cultures of their disciplines, departments
and universities. Integral to the Centre’s work is a critical interrogation
and reinvention of what university is, what it’s for, and the roles and
relationships of those who work and study in HE. We also aim to
reinvent the spaces of the university via the design and development
of new and re-newed teaching, learning and research spaces, the redesign of curricula, and research into the significance of spatiality.
Danny and I, together with our colleague Elisabeth Simbuerger,
undertook a project called Reinventing Spaces last year which
investigated the relationships between pedagogy, curricula and space
via ethnographic research. During this project we became aware of
the value of incorporating a historical perspective. We approached
the Higher Education Academy’s History Subject Centre about joint
funding a collaborative research project involving undergraduate
researchers along these lines:
SPACES and STORIES SLIDE 4
Hannah
Spaces and Stories, with one year’s funding, began in April 2008.
Three undergraduate researchers – myself, Laura Moorhouse and
Laura Evans, were recruited from the History and Sociology
Departments, to work with the existing Reinventing Spaces team. To
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date, our research has incorporated (SLIDE 5 Methods) archival
work in the University of Warwick’s Modern Record Centre,
interviews, a visit to an exhibition at RIBA - the Royal Institute of
British Architecture’s, and background reading of policy and
theoretical literature in relation to the design and building of schools
and universities from a sociological perspective. For the purposes of
this presentation, we focus on one aspect of the research, namely the
development of our own University These are our questions –
SLIDE 6
We look back to the university’s beginnings in the 1960s and follow
some of the themes from this time through to the present day. We are
particularly interested in what the planning, construction and
occupation of the university tells us about how ideas and ideals about
students and teachers, pedagogy and knowledge, are materialised in
architectural forms. In turn, how are these ideas and ideals
embodied, occupied and in some cases contested?
Our overall methodology is attentive to the value of understanding
space through stories. This is because although we can learn a great
deal about the original intentions of the planners and architects of
educational spaces from visual and textual designs and descriptions,
students, teachers and other users have their actions, relations and
emotions shaped by the spaces but also appropriate space for their
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own requirements, shaping the learning landscape through collective
memories and stories which the formal representations in the
archives do not always tell.
Some of the photographs we found in the archives have been used in
photo-elicitation interviews with members of the university, who, in
different ways, could offer the long view back to the university’s
formative years. The data we draw on here comes from three
interviews, one with Hugh Garston-Hall, a now retired Emeritus
Reader of French who was one of the first academic staff at the
university. This interview was carried out by myself and Laura
Moorhouse. Laura also interviewed Ken Flint, a current member of
academic staff in Biology who joined the university in 1976, and
Laura Evans interviewed Sarah Shalgosky, curator of Warwick’s Art
Gallery – the Mead – and as Sarah refers to herself ‘Curator of The
University’. All interviews involved moving in and around the
university buildings. For Hugh’s interview we walked around a
number of new teaching and learning spaces as he told us the plans
and hopes for the original buildings. For Ken’s interview we visited
some of the science classrooms and common spaces we had
identified from photographs in the archives, and Laura’s interview
with Sarah began with a tour of the current exhibition at the Mead
gallery. The mobile and interactive nature of these interviews
necessarily shaped the stories the interviewees told.
The University of Warwick: ideas and ideals SLIDE 7
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Danny
The University of Warwick was approved by Government in 1961 and
building began in 1964 with the first cohort of students joining the
university in 1966. The 1960s were of course a great decade for
development and expansion of British universities. The number of
universities increased during this decade from 20 to 43, and Warwick
was one of 7 so-called ‘plateglass universities’ built from scratch.
These institutions were noted as much for their modernist
architectures as for the educational vision they signified.
This was the University of Warwick in 1964, showing the main library,
the first building to be completed. The top floors of the library were
used for Arts staff and teaching rooms. In the first prospectus, the
university was described as follows:
SLIDE 8
The University is located on the southern outskirts of Coventry, some
2 ½ miles from the centre of the city, astride the CoventryWarwickshire boundary. The magnificent site of over 400 acres … is
set in a landscape in which the typical Warwickshire field and
hedgerow pattern is intermingled with woodland planting. The site is
the largest in Britain designated entirely for university development.
We get an immediate sense of the rural setting, the location in
relation to the local city and community, and the scale and ambition of
the university. In fact the anticipated physical expansion of the
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university seems always to have been (and remains) central to the
University’s identity and educational ideals. As we learn from many of
the early photos and documents, the first buildings were situated and
spaced out to allow maximum growth, and their architectural design
drew on all that was new and forward thinking in the 1960s. In 2009,
building work carries on apace, with more expansion planned, and
the most recent architecture and materials likewise reflects
contemporary and ‘futuristic’ trends in design and planning. As one
of our interviewees, Ken, noted, Warwick has prided itself on ‘being at
the forefront of everything’.
Laura M
We learnt a lot about the ambitions and ideals of the fledgling
university from our interview with Hugh Garston-Hall. Hugh himself
has had personal experience of being a student at Oxford and of
teaching at Berkley in California, both experiences which Warwick’s
first Vice Chancellor, Jack Butterworth, wanted the university to
benefit from.
Hugh also talked about the social and architectural impulses which
shaped the design and construction of the university. By not acquiring
pre-existing buildings, Warwick had the opportunity to make a social
statement via its choice of architecture. Hugh’s discussion suggested
a deliberate commitment to low-key, low-cost modernist materials
with no big facades or ornaments. However for Hugh, no doubt
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influenced by his background at Oxford and Berkeley, the University
of Warwick lacked an iconic ‘architectural centre’: he told us
SLIDE 9
[There’s] something about having an architectural centre whose utility
really is to uplift your spirits and to give you a focus and to be an
emblem of your identity, and I have always thought that Warwick
could do with a bit more of that […] [it] makes people walk with more
of a swagger […]
In this quote Hugh points to a fascinating link between individual and
collective identity, and the architecture: his words suggest the
emotional effects of the material structure – ‘uplifting spirits’ and the
implication of pride evoked by architecture which ‘makes you walk
with more of a swagger’. This quote has led to some interesting
conversations about the differential emotional and intellectual impact
which traditional and modern architectures and art forms might have
on different people.
We got something of an alternative perspective from the interview
with curator Sarah Shalgosky. Sarah noted the change from the
university’s early modernist art which featured the work of young
British artists with new ideas about how art should be presented and
should reflect its location. The architect Eugene Rosenberg
integrated conceptual art into his architectural designs: such as this
sculpture by William Pye (whose artwork you can also see at
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Rosenberg’s other buildings such as Gatwick airport). Rather than
‘lacking’ impact or the potential to cause a ‘swagger’ in the
university’s occupants, Sarah talked about the university’s aim of
‘Buying intellectual art for an intellectual place’. The trajectory of
curation complemented architectural decisions: the art selected was
modern, abstract, challenging, low-cost and privileging up- andcoming British artists. Cyril Barrett from the Philosophy Department
wrote that, the art ‘perplexed the residents … and gave food for
thought’. The art was seen as mirroring some of the anxieties and
tensions of the new universities of the 1960s with their widening
access policies and practices and their modern ideas.
Cath
One of the most interesting things for us to emerge both from the
archives and from the interviews, were the strong opinions and
interventions of students in relation to the built environment . We can
place the early Warwick students' contestation of the spatial
construction and organisation of their emerging university in the
context of 1968 and students’ involvement in protests in Paris and
elsewhere. Trevor Fisk, President of the National Union of Students
(NUS) in 1969, suggests that the physical environment was one
stimulus for students to revolt.
In the UK, there had been opposition from the NUS to the creation of
new universities from scratch. In part this was because these would
'be sited in rural, or outer-urban, settings, deliberately at variance with
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the city-centre university pattern which had prevailed for the past
century with the Redbricks' (Fisk, 1970: 293). As we have seen, this
was certainly true for Warwick, and raised critical questions about the
university’s relationship with the local community. The NUS at the
time supported comprehensive universities via integration with Local
Education Authority colleges rather than new independent structures.
For new universities such as Warwick, the NUS was concerned at the
lack of a local student population to contest and contribute to the
design and construction of new-builds (as of course the students had
not yet been recruited).
Although Paris of May ’68 was not enacted by Warwick students in
the streets of Coventry or Leamington Spa, the physical environment
and the kinds of power relations and hierarchies it supported, were
central to students' experience of university and their subsequent
dissatisfaction with some aspect of it. In particular, there was concern
about the divisions between students and teachers which were
fundamental to the design and building of the campus. Hugh’s
interview refers to the university’s initial desire to model Warwick on
the college system of Oxford or Cambridge. Although his personal
feelings were that this would have been positive for developing a
feeling of community and belonging, Warwick’s students themselves
vetoed this idea in 1968. According to Hugh, the students thought
that having colleges was the university’s way of trying to ‘divide and
rule’ – separating out the students into colleges so that they wouldn’t
have a strong student voice. Of course, this student intervention has
had a significant impact on the subsequent design of the campus and
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also the cultural and intellectual development of the university.
Arguably, the development of the university, its accessibility and
sense of community has been more egalitarian as a result of these
early students’ interventions.
There is evidence that students were troubled by the idea of
‘divisions’ between staff and students and between the different
functions of the university. There was opposition to what was seen as
the manufacturing of these divisions through the architectural forms
of the university. One specific protest related to the ‘zones of campus’
which segregated staff and students by dividing the university up into
separate administration, social and teaching spaces. The sprawling
buildings, built with the intention of growth in years to come, created
spatial divisions which mapped onto existing hierarchies and
inequalities. Hugh notes that,
SLIDE 11
Circa 1965-66, all the university was on the other site and then once
some departments had moved , staff still went back to the other site
for lunch. There was a lunch hour. All staff and students ate in their
own groups separately.
This chimes with what Fisk (1970) identified amongst the general
student population:
SLIDE 12
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Students are uneasy about the notion of educational community and
about the place of the teacher. They are uncertain about the isolation
and academic single mindedness of their universities. They feel the
citing and design of their campuses often aim at reinforcing this
sense of separation and undivided purpose ... they feel anxiety when
confronted by designs which reinforce the comparative status of
teacher and taught. (Fisk, 1970: 294).
And he comments on Warwick in particular:
SLIDE 13
One new university, Warwick, has been designed with all the
students' facilities on one side of the campus, all the teaching and
administrative areas on the other. In between there are several
hundred yards of 'no man's land'. The whole arrangement seems to
have been laid out to facilitate trench warfare between staff and
students; the scheme might have been expected to re-inforce feelings
of 'them' and 'us'
(Fisk, 1970: 294).
There is also reference to Warwick students’ unhappiness with their
campus design in written accounts from the university’s architects –
Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall (or YRM). They notes that
‘… the students included the architecture in the objects of their
protests and sought to be consulted about the design, something
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inconceivable to Rosenberg’s authoritarian outlook (Alan Powers,
1992: 56)
Laura M
SLIDE 14
One material focus of students’ protests became the infamous white
tiles, associated with YRM’s style of modernist architecture. Due to
some design fault, these kept falling off causing damage and injury.
Significantly for us, the tiles seem to serve another important function
– as a trigger for memories. Both Hugh and Ken talked about them in
their interviews, Hugh recalled the falling tiles of the 1960s , the
complaints and the subsequent replacements; and Ken was able to
date a picture with missing tiles in relation to his arrival at the
university in 1976.
Looking at ‘old’ Warwick from the perspective of Warwick in 2009, it is
possible to see how many of the ideas and ideals about what kind of
a university it should be, what kinds of students, pedagogies,
relationships and knowleges it should enable, have persisted over
time, whilst others have been challenged and changed.
SLIDE 15
Many of the pictures of classrooms and common room spaces from
the 1960s and 1970s look the same, apart from the hairstyles and the
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fact that in some cases the view from the window now has other
buildings rather than hay bales and fields. The ‘traditional
classrooms’, where teachers stand at the front and deliver to rows of
students, still dominate, although, as Ken notes, the technologies of
teaching have changed even if the room layouts remain the same –
gone (in most cases) are the chalk boards to be replaced with white
boards, smart boards, power point .
SLIDE 16
Although in the 1960s there was no talk of ‘social learning spaces’ or
‘innovative teaching spaces’ for ‘open space learning’ - all concepts
now addressed at Warwick through the development of new
classroom and learning facilities – the demand for these kinds of
pedagogic activities and relations was in evidence. The pictures show
students occupying more informal spaces for what now might be
termed social learning
SLIDE 17
Danny
Many of the issues established by the location and design of the
university impact on the kind of institution it is today. In Ken’s
interview, as if echoing the concern of students in the 1960s, he
talked about a ‘big split’ between the university and the local towns.
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The university could still, he believes, do ‘a hell of a lot more’ to forge
good links with the community.
There are many new building and new artworks. For the Curator,
Sarah, the most recent artworks reflect contemporary ideals of the
university and of the modern student as a ‘constant researcher’. For
Sarah, the art has always had a key role in idea and knowledge
generation and the art is intended to be key to the university’s
functions of teaching, learning and research as well as its ideals of
innovation and risk-taking.
Looking back at the student contestations of the built environment
perhaps enables us to look at what we have now in a different light.
Trevor Fisk, writing in 1970 of the many students due to enter HE in
following decade, warns:
SLIDE18
'If they enter colleges the design of which is totally inadequate to their
needs and out of keeping with their aspirations, the blame will rest as
much on today's students for their silence, as on the college planners
for interpreting that silence as consent' (Fisk, 1970: 294).
The last few years has seen an increasing concern with the notion of
student engagement throughout the Higher education sector. There
have been various discussions and initiatives centred around
increasing student ownership of their higher education experience,
whether that be through the shaping of module learning outcomes,
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increased involvement in the research cultures of their
departments/universities or the inclusion of students onto QAA audit
teams. We suggest that equally important to these other initiatives
surrounding student engagement is the importance of working
collaboratively with students in the shaping of their physical
environment, from teaching and learning spaces to social areas. That
way, we can hope that tomorrow’s students and staff won’t blame us
for our silence.
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