One afternoon, after having picked my daughter up from school, she turned to me and said, “Are you working, Daddy?” I was wearing my spanking new Sony earphones — earphones that thirty years ago (I’m admittedly showing my age here) would have seen me turning myself half-deaf to A Happy Face, A Thumpin’ Bass, For a Lovin’ Race™ (see. Soul II Soul).
Now, five-year-olds see their parents’ technological appendages not as a sign of leisure, but a sign that Daddy [or Mummy] is in a meeting whilst on the school run. And I am not alone in this regard, as parents I would normally stop to talk to whisper “I’m in a meeting!” too. These moments have given me cause to reflect not only on our continued connectedness to work, but the tools by which we perform those duties and how the structured nature of work has shifted so markedly.
Heather McGowan’s New Reality Paradigm (2018) suggests a world of learning overlapping with leveraging that learning as part of an overlapped cycle. In this new reality, previous ideas of education and the career escalator have been abandoned, becoming what Heather describes as “a web”, where learning happens inside and outside of work. In this brave new world, success measures are defined by learning ability and adaptability and the ability to adapt to various changing circumstances / new jobs, etc.
For those fortunate enough to consider these dynamics, the balance of work is becoming increasingly determined by how we are able to live in proximity to our work. As a creative institution, UAL has been traditionally focused on students’ acquisition of knowledge and/or skills at a granular level. That is to say, a focus on craft rather than wider application. I believe these ideas to be somewhat problematic. As Heather McGowan also implies, this cognitive reductionism of these academic systems are being supplanted for both students and teachers, in perhaps equal measure, the university experience.
Aware of the speed of societal change and expectations, yesterday UAL revealed its new 2022 – 2032 strategy for the institution. The headline being ‘the world needs creativity’ as well as a strive forward to becoming an inclusive place and space, amongst other things.
In the race toward relevance, a key attribute liable to define its success, will be broader notions of ‘creativity’ — teaching creativity as a skill set with inherent transferable application to a wide range of subjects and areas, and beyond the traditional paradigm of ‘creative industries’ and instead, nurturing truly creative mindsets. This will help create and equip resilient learners, for the inevitable changes that technology, social and environmental changes will inevitably bring.
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McGowan, H E. (2018). Future of Work: World Bank Keynote Speech. Available at: