[ISEA98] Paper: Roz Hall – Evaluating Young People’s Creative Uses of Digital Technology: Whose Benchmarks and Why?

Abstract

This paper has been initiated and informed through information gathered during a project at a pupil referral unit on the theme of “community safety”. The project explored the potential of digital technology within a non mainstream educational context and involved the use of Polaroid photography, studio photography and digital photography. The practical outcomes of the project included the exhibition of the boys’ work on the series of double decker buses in the West Midlands of England.
The presentation of work made during the project will illustrate some of the many arising issues. This presentation will explore the problems, which can be seen to exist due to the lack of existing benchmarks, inherent in evaluating work made using digital technology. The way in which evaluating outcomes of community project work as artefacts is also problematic will be considered. These issues point to the need to address the status given to the creative      applications of digital technology within formal education. Arguments which identify creative applications of digital technology as “High Status Incentives” and / or as a means of learning keyboard skills can be seen to undermine the potential for developing innovative work using digital technology. It could be suggested that what needs to be revisited is the status of popular culture within formal education. The parameters for using digital technology creatively (both within and outside formal education) are not yet defined, in terms of genres, and it is crucial to maintain this fluidity of the /medium until its potential is fully explored.

  • Roz Hall, UK, is a Research Fellow at the University of Central England in Birmingham as part of an Arts Council funded teacher development post. The post is a collaboration between UCE and Jubilee Arts in Sandwell where the action research, into young peoples creative uses of digital technology outside of formal education, is initiated and supported. Prior to taking up this post, in January 1997, Roz Hall worked at Watershed Media Centre in Bristol for four years developing and initiating community based project work and short courses using chemical and digital photography.