Research Question:
How can collective manifesto making support students to reflect on their positionality and develop more ethical, caring approaches to collaborative filmmaking?
Rationale:
This research question emerged out of the IP unit, where I designed a manifesto workshop as an intervention to foster inclusive, anti-racist, and ethically engaged filmmaking practices among first year students on MA Performance: Screen at Central Saint Martins. Here is a link to the original intervention: https://chuckbluelowrypgcert.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2025/06/26/intervention-plan/
In conversation with Gabi Tropia, the Course Leader of MA Performance: Screen, I decided that pursuing this intervention idea as a starting point for my Action Research project was not just a useful continuation of my learning for the PGCert, but also acted as an urgent response to an incident that occurred in 2024 on the MA Performance: Screen Course.
Gabi told me that during a collaborative film project with students from London Contemporary Dance School in 2024, a former MA Performance: Screen student made a discriminatory comment regarding a dancer’s hair while discussing makeup and costume. This incident highlighted an urgent need to challenge implicit biases, disrupt hegemonic aesthetics in screen-based work, and embed inclusive values into the students learning and creative practices.
Throughout the IP unit and over the between terms, I had been thinking a lot about care and repair within my own practice as a filmmaker working in social practice. My thinking was particularly informed by Pablo Helguera and Sara Ahmed’s writing on the need for a more embedded culture of care and accountability, particularly within higher education. As Helguera writes:
SEA (Socially Engaged art) depends on actual – not imagined or hypothetical – social action
– Pablo Helguera (2011)
My initial concern with the intervention I had designed was that it was perhaps too hypothetical – that it would only feel like a scratching of the surface on profound questions of inclusion, social justice and ethical practice. I thought that by implementing it with a direct link to an upcoming project with Stage 1 Students, I could measure it’s impact beyond initial semantics and test it’s efficacy in an ‘actual’ collaborative project. As the project was short (only 3 weeks) I would have an opportunity to meet students again at the end of the project, to measure whether the workshop and manifesto itself had any meaningful impact on their process. This would allow for an iterative research cycle, where I could use these learnings to revisit the intervention and redesign/reimagine it in dialogue with student feedback.
I was inspired by Ahmed’s writing on inclusion (2012), where she describes how institutional spaces are built for certain bodies to move comfortably, while others are forced to navigate around “brick walls.” Within my own practice I am inspired by the notion that:
All flourishing is mutual
– Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013)
I wanted to explore how to make a workshop that felt equitable, inclusive and ‘brave’ (Arao, B., & Clemens, K. 2013). I feel strongly that students in the cohort should have opportunities to have open and constructive conversations about power, privilege and resistance to exclusion, as a way for us to support one another in flourishing. I therefore also wanted to measure if sessions dedicated to this work make a genuine shift in student’s experiences and relationships to themselves and one another when collaborating.
Summary
The aim of the research is to develop a more inclusive filmmaking culture on the MA Performance: Screen course, where critical reflection and ethical practices are integrated into the creative process. This project aligns with broader institutional goals of anti-racism and ethical collaboration, and it offers a replicable model for inclusion in creative education. It responds directly to the specifics of the course that I teach on, aiming to provide support not just in external collaborations but also internal ones between a diverse student cohort. The intervention involves testing a creative manifesto workshop that encourages students to reflect on their positionality, values, and collective responsibilities in screen-based performance work. The impact of this intervention will be measured directly after the manifesto workshop, and then again at the end of a 3 week collaborative project, to begin an iterative research cycle grounded in dialogue and responsiveness to qualitative and quantitative data collected from the participants.
Positionality Statement:
I am an artist, filmmaker and lecturer in MA Performance: Screen at Central Saint Martins. I specialise in participatory and social practice and explore social, political, and environmental issues, through the lens of everyday stories and experiences. I have been a lecturer at CSM for 5 years. I have known the current 1st year MA students for 3 months.
Elements of my identity which directly impact this research:
- my artistic practice
- my position within the university
- being a white cis-gendered woman
- being dual heritage
- living with a chronic health condition
The way that these aspects of my identity may impact the work include how I hold and manage the space, how I am perceived, how my own identity intersects with the students perspectives and experiences, and how my existing relationship and position of relative power within the institution might create bias within the students responses to research questions.
One of my colleagues on the PGCert helpfully suggested that I explore the ‘participant effect’ and ‘investigator effect’ in research studies. Having awareness of how my own position within the institution, and my existing relationships to the students (particularly being one of their assessors for some of their Units) helped me when designing the research, in the hope that I might be able to minimise opportunities for this to skew the responses, but also to bear it in mind when analysing the findings.
Bibliography
Ahmed, S. (2012) On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Arao, B. and Clemens, K. (2013) ‘From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice’, in The Art of Effective Facilitation. 1st edn. New York: Routledge.
Helguera, P. (2011) Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook. New York: Jorge Pinto Books.
Kimmerer, R.W. (2013) Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions.
Stelson, E.A., Bolenbaugh, M., Woods-Jaeger, B., Branch, C. and Ramirez, M. (2021) ‘Identifying research participation effects through qualitative methods: Feedback from Research Engagement Consultants involved in a pediatric mental health comparative effectiveness trial’, SSM – Qualitative Research in Health.
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