Your Formative Feedback
Overall comments
Hello Alexander,
Thank you for submitting your second Assignment for 2.1. You have engaged with the principle
themes of this project well, producing a wide range of content that explores the context of
various sites in your environment. Your Learning log is well organised and documents your
progress through each exercise and your Padlet, Case study: Loughborough and William Cotton,
is engaging and constructive. You have shown good observational awareness during each task
and produced a variety of photographs and ideas to build upon in the forthcoming projects.
However, I couldn’t locate your work on the course forum, which is a requirement outlined in
Assignment 2. This assignment is about sharing your work via the course forum and gleaning
feedback from your peers. Please add a link to your Padlet case study to share with the student
community, and review and comment on the work of other students, reflecting on and
summarising any feedback you receive or give within your learning log.
Your work for Exercise 4: Drift effectively combines primary and secondary research and a range
of photographic outcomes, showing the beginnings of what could develop into more substantial
projects. Your photographs show good visual awareness by depicting a number of features of
the environment. How can you develop the creative potential with the material you have
gathered? Can you apply some post-production effects to manipulate or expand on the ideas
shown? Can you create a slide show of the images to form a narrative of your journey and play
with the juxtaposition of the various elements? You have collated some interesting content
during this project and I recommend you consider how you can expand on this with more
creative interpretations.
Your work documenting Lincoln waterways, during Exercise 8: Recording Environments is great,
again lots of potential work and ideas to develop further. Reflect more on the images you take
and compare and contrast the outcomes to outline what you notice in more detail. For example,
you briefly reflect on the symbolic value of bridges, making an insightful comment on how they
can ‘unite and connect’. I recommend you expand on this and work on elaborating on your ideas
with more details and examples to expand the context you are exploiting. Can you think of other
types of architecture or aspects of your environment that have similar symbolic qualities? It is
still early in the unit so plenty of time to return to these ideas in future projects.
Action points
● You have made good use of research materials, photography and maps to visually engage
with the ideas explored during this part. Reflect more on how you can develop this work,
perhaps zooming in on specific areas, working on maps from different time periods, and
applying different techniques and materials to expand your visual language creatively.
● Use each assignment point to make reference to the course learning outcomes, so it is
clear how what you are doing meets these requirements. You are attaining these
outcomes within your work but try to be explicit in your self-reflection on how you are
achieving them. The learning outcomes for 2.1 Creative Arts Relations are:
- Analyse different methodologies and their interconnections with the wider world
Open College of the Arts (OCA) Formative Feedback 2 - Investigate a theme in the wider world and connect it to your creative work
- Create an emerging interdisciplinary language from your selected disciplines
- Present your personal research, creative work and knowledge of interdisciplinary
methods relevant to you
● I suggest you continue to develop your photographic skills and begin to expand your
visual language by using video, enabling more creative possibilities in thinking about
sound, editing multiple clips, transition effects, alternative viewpoints etc. There are a
number of free applications to use for basic processes. Try some of these Vimeo exercises
to expand your skills and ideas https://vimeo.com/blog/post/easy-vimeo-projects/
● Be inventive and self-directed in how you approach and experiment with the exercises
and the content you generate, use the course materials as a guide and follow your own
creative interpretations. Continue to expand your understanding of contemporary
practices, specifically in relation to the disciplines you are most interested in.
● You have copied and pasted some large Wikipedia paragraphs which are unnecessary and
blurs the boundary between your own reflection and the words of others. it is imperative
you start to reference your research resources correctly so as not to be picked up by
plagiarism checks. Please adhere to the Harvard referencing system when including any
quotation, image, youtube video etc, outlined in more detail here:
https://mylibrary.uca.ac.uk/c.php?g=673515&p=4791945
● Thank you for updating your project schedule via email, the dates you have stated are
fine but keep in mind some projects may take longer and others can be completed
relatively quickly, so keep track of your progress and update your schedule as you
progress.
● I suggest we arrange a video call at your next feedback point, so we can discuss your work
in more detail. After you submit your work from Project 3 I will email you some suggested
tutorial times.
● Reflect on this feedback in your learning log with a summary of the key points and let me
know if you have any questions.
Well done, I look forward to viewing your next assignment.
Alexander's blog 