COFA

Mentoring Creative Minds

by Andy Polaine on July 4, 2010

in General

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The current issue of COFA’s Incubate magazine has a piece by me in it called Mentoring Creative Minds, which is a reflection on 15 years of teaching (that I have been teaching that long came as a bit of a shock). They also used a scarily large version of my head logo (I can see some bezier points that need work there).

You can download a PDF copy of the magazine here (14.4 MB) to read the whole thing (my piece is on page 33), but here is an excerpt I wanted to share:

Unfortunately, the Vice-Chancellor does not whisper the secret to success in your ear while handing over your testamur. Fortunately, I can deliver it to you here: there is no secret.

Getting students to trust in this, and the knowledge that some projects succeed, others fail and that there is always another one around the corner, is really what teaching is all about. I’m sure there are academics who thrive on being the source of brilliant knowledge. For me, nothing beats the moment when the smart, creative student sitting opposite me realises their own brilliance and doesn’t need me anymore.

I’m sure my current students will be only too willing to remind me of this, but it’s true.

Tagged as: COFA, teaching, Writing

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Interviews with Brendan Dawes and Simon Waterfall

by Andy Polaine on November 11, 2009

in General

A few months ago I trekked around London with my filmaker and editor friend Rachel to shoot a whole load of interviews with designers and artists for COFAOnline. I still teach online for the College of Fine Arts at UNSW in Australia and these interviews will form an independent site as an ongoing resource as well as teaching material for the Masters of Cross-Disciplinary Art & Design. They are also being put up on YouTube and here are the first ones with Brendan Dawes and Simon Waterfall:

Tagged as: brendandawes, COFA, interview, simonwaterfall

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Collabor8 – Creative Waves 2008

April 23, 2008

The Omnium Project will be running another global online creative collaboration project under the Creative Waves banner from 28th April – 20 June, this time convened by Ian McArthur and Rick Bennett. This time the project, called Collabor8, will see design students and lecturers from Australia and China join forces for eight weeks, with project [...]

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Re-imagining Higher Education

July 26, 2006

Recently I have been giving much thought to the structure and issues that most of us in Higher Education have been struggling with for several years. There are three areas of thought that come together when re-imagining education, particularly within Art and Design education. The theory of the Long Tail, the Play Ethic and Cradle to Cradle sustainability. Each of these requires a radical turn-around in current ways of thinking. Tweaking the edges won’t do. What if we thought about education the same way we thought about our other precious resources or the same way that we think about the changing face of the media? The full post is quite a long essay, but it covers a lot of ground…

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COFA Annual (2004)

November 7, 2004

Interaction Direction and Producer for the Annual CD-ROM of over 320 collected student works for the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. This interface worked on set-theory, allowing you to select subject areas and see the appropriate thumbnails. We wanted to show the range of work in one glance, hence the giant array of thumbnails. It [...]

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