I was assigned the chapter ‘Using Things’ by Ahmed (2019) this week. It made for an interesting read, but I struggled to connect it to teaching practices. I wondered that if I continued reading the book (which I may do at some point as I found the writing poetic in spots), it would make questioning the different facets of ‘use’ more clearly applicable to my teaching practice.
Although I have completed a PhD and am proud of my research skills and output, I still feel like an imposter at times with academics who use ‘academic speak’. I found this chapter to fall within that realm, and for a moment I hesitated whether I should be frank with my workshop group about my probably missing the point of the reading. I have appreciated others’ honesty in the group in asking questions or speaking up when they don’t understand something, which has been encouraging. So, I summarised the reading for my workshop group – in how Ahmed examines ‘use’, ‘in use’, ‘out of use’, and ‘unused’, among other aspects of ‘use’ – and clarified that I didn’t know how to apply it to our teaching practice. Of course, all I needed was a little prompt – a push, another perspective – and everything fell into place. A workshop peer mentioned how they inferred this reading with regards to the ‘usefulness’ of arts degrees – a never-ending debate. This prompted the rest of us to share our experiences of pursuing arts degrees, the kinds of reactions we received from our families and communities, whether we work in the same field as our degrees or how we are applying our degrees to our current careers, and of course the Tory government’s ‘Reskill’ ads (Bakare 2020).
It was interesting to learn from others’ experiences, since we had a mixed group comprising a library staff member, technicians, and lecturers. One of them works on the sculpture degrees, and is thus fine-arts focused. For herself and her students, it would be a much larger fight to ‘justify’ the usefulness of their degrees and careers. This is especially frustrating since it seemed that during the COVID-19 pandemic, people began to truly appreciate the need for the arts, as Bradbury et al’s (2021) research shows. In my case, I teach on a vocational degree, with many units across both the BA and MA programmes focused on employability. Our students join the course with the expectation of graduating with skills and knowledge that would secure them a job in the media industry.
These discussions of ‘use’ reaffirm the unfortunate dangers that arts education is still in. This discussion helped me better appreciate the design of the degrees I teach on, and I have since been more active to share employability sessions happening at LCC with my students. While I agree with the significance of this more ‘practical’ knowledge, my teaching aim is to balance it with the philosophical, ethical and critical discussions that one can usually only engage in academic contexts. Our students should have the chance to expand themselves in different directions, and our role is to provide them with those tools.
References
Ahmed, S (2019) ‘Using Things’, What’s the Use?: On the Uses of Use. Duke University Press, pp 21-67. Available at: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=5969504 (Accessed 11 February 2025).
Bakare, L (2020) ‘Government scraps ballet dancer reskilling ad criticised as “crass”‘, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/12/ballet-dancer-could-reskill-with-job-in-cyber-security-suggests-uk-government-ad (Accessed 11 March 2025).
Bradbury et al (2021) ‘The Role of the Arts during the COVID-19 Pandemic’. Available at: https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/download-file/UCL_Role_of_the_Arts_during_COVID_13012022_0.pdf (Accessed 11 March 2025).