Jonathan Beecroft

Inspiring, supportive and progressive 

The course created an authentic participatory and collaborative learning experience, celebrating while also interrogating the critical valency of art and learning for educational contexts today. This was empowering. Beyond mere lecturing, there was an ethos of engaging the diversity of student experiences and backgrounds in collaboration with experts leading courses. This constituted for me a community of practice that was inspiring, supportive and progressive, and in which I felt valued and pedagogically engaged, philosophically and creatively. 

A community of engaged practitioners

The Educational Studies Department presented to me a community of engaged practitioners working together with students to critically question, reflect on and change education systems where they present injustices at systematic, structural and institutional levels. 

Creative exchanges

I completed research for a Goldsmiths assessment at the school where I worked as classroom support staff. Collaborating with a group of neurodiverse children, we made artwork together. This formed the basis for creating artworks for exhibition that embodied this work of facilitation and teaching – a process of creative exchange or material dialogue that questions art's relegation in school curricula, while interrogating traditional understandings of artistic skill and expression. I felt I was able to demonstrate or practise philosophical ideas and concepts pertinent to a critical pedagogical art and education practice. 

An artistic and cultural hub

The area around Goldsmiths presents an emblematic milieu of London life and culture, easily linking to other South London artistic and cultural hubs.