At Friday’s Values and Ethics in Teaching seminar, we discussed Professional Frameworks, affiliated actors and stakeholders and attempted to define associated key terms (policy, framework, strategy, code, principle, guide). Writing concise definitions is never easy and even if we managed to find UAL examples for all of them, the list remained, to a degree, impenetrable. Clearly, these terms overlap, cross-pollinate, occasionally double up, interrelate. The number of separate documents they encompass is so overwhelming that the whole topic seemed to evoke quite a bit of reluctance.

I was inspired by Lindsey’s use of a photo of a timber frame building to visualise the term framework as well as my groupmate Simon’s attempt to visualise his understanding of how the rest of the norms would fit into this metaphor (“So which of these norms would be a door?”). Based on a quick sketch I did in the class, I went home and developed my own visual version of the norms. I went full into my architect-mode, imagined a construction site and drew up the understanding I developed on the role of all the different types of norms after our group discussions in the seminar. Drawing it, I also relied on the Padlet that one of the groups set up, which worked well to spell out a definition for each norm.

I liked to imagine how all the norms feed into each other with policy enabling everything to happen. The framework is firmly rooted within it – its exact location, foundation, maximum size are all defined by policy. Most action and most creativity, however, is happening around the two and is feeding into them. The relationship is always reciprocal. The actors might even forget that they are in fact constructing something within policy (which is more like an abstract rather than a real physical boundary). The framework is a shared goal but it is also something that has been designed and can only stand up following the shared principles and ideas of everyone involved.

References:

UAL PgCert Values and Ethics in Teaching Seminar Padlet [2023]. Available from: https://artslondon.padlet.org/sleontovitsch/remake-of-define-terms-for-class-dw1w70vjsteg68xy [Accessed 20 March 2023].