The Creative Education Conference

Alexander Bell & Nick Canty
Alex Bell is Liaison Librarian at University for the Creative Arts.

Nick Canty is Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing at the University for the Creative Arts. His PhD is in social media use in the publishing industry.

Creative Workshop title: ‘From page to pedagogy: zine-making for engaging learning’
Join Alex Bell and Nick Canty in this hands-on workshop exploring how zine collections and zine-making can inspire student creativity, ideation, and reflective practice. Zine-making offers a fun and engaging approach to formative assessment, fostering collaboration and encouraging critical and reflective thinking. This session will provide pedagogical insights on integrating zines into your teaching, sparking fresh approaches to student learning and engagement.

Annie Ras
Annie Ras is a Lecturer in Photography at the University for the Creative Arts. She focuses on supporting students’ transition into Higher Education, fostering autonomy, and developing inclusive, student-centred teaching practices to help learners succeed in creative arts education.

Presentation title: Scaffolding Student Learning Through Experiential Practice in the Arts
This presentation highlights Photo Portrait Now, a collaboration between UCA and the National Portrait Gallery, as a model of student-centred, practice-based learning in the arts. Through real-world engagement with curators, photographers, and archives, second-year photography students create and exhibit new work, gaining professional insight and confidence. The session explores how experiential learning fosters creative development, supports independent study, and prepares students for life beyond graduation. 

Roundtable Discussion title: Supporting the transition from FE to HE in creative education through visible learning
This roundtable explores how John Hattie’s Visible Learning principles can support students transitioning from structured, teacher-led Further Education into the more independent, risk-taking environment of undergraduate creative disciplines. Drawing on Hattie’s framework—emphasising clarity, feedback, and scaffolding—the session invites educators and researchers to share strategies for explicitly teaching students how to become autonomous, self-directed learners in Higher Education.

Charley Vines, Marie-Louise Raue, Marina Pu, Qifei Huan
Charley Vines is an Artist & Associate Lecturer in Fine Art at UCA. Marie-Louise Raue is an Architect & Lecturer at the Architectural Association and the Arts University Bournemouth. Marina Pu is a Lecturer and filmmaker in Film Production and Screen Studies of UCA. Qifei Huan is a Lecturer in Behavioural Economics at UCA. 

Roundtable Discussion title: Can gamified assessment methods support innovative approaches to rethinking the crit?
This roundtable discussion examines the use of gamification within formative assessment structures such as crits, presentations and reviews as an innovative method of increasing student engagement and motivation whilst promoting compassionate feedback. The group will share insights from their research interventions explored with Fine Art, Architecture and Film students currently studying their degrees, and discuss how their findings could be implemented in future practice.

Chris Mitchell
Chris is Deputy Director of Academic Development at the RCA, and Programme Lead for the RCA MEd in Creative Education. His research focuses on pedagogies of making and education that brings people together to identify and respond to wicked problems.

Presentation title: The Abyss Gazes Back: supporting students to navigate uncertainty in the creative arts
This paper reflects on the experience of engaging creative arts students in wicked problems. It discusses the challenge of helping students to intellectually and emotionally navigate the uncertainty involved in developing creative responses to complex issues that defy easy solutions. It provides participants with a set of guiding principles for designing and delivering education that addresses shared concerns, as well as more specific curriculum design recommendations. In doing so, it helps educators and students to ‘stay with the trouble’ without the trouble staying with them.

Derek Yates
Derek Yates, Associate Professor & Head of Creative Lab is an educator, writer, and designer. He is currently Head of the Creative Lab at Ravensbourne University, London, a unique agency that sits alongside academic delivery, creating a space where education and industry can discovery and learn together.

Presentation title: Uncommon Lessons in Learning 
For four weeks in April 2025, creative students from Ravensbourne University took over the first floor of the multi-award-winning global creative studio, Uncommon. Derek Yates, Head of the Creative Lab, will examine what this experience revealed about the power of collaborative creation and how the formation of a genuine community of practice enabled this diverse group of young people to push beyond what they ever imagined possible. The session will be delivered through the presentation of a series of outcomes, interviews, and films, which will serve as provocations to challenge the received wisdom of academic learning.

Emily Patterson
Emily Tannert Patterson is a Senior Learning Designer with Cambridge Online Education (COE), part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Emily works with University of Cambridge academics to design engaging, interactive online courses for the Cambridge Advance Online (CAO) platform. 

Presentation title: ‘Can creativity be taught online? Experiences with a Metacognitive Approach’ 
As learning professionals we can attest to the challenge of changing how students think. This is hard enough in a face-to-face environment – so how could we possibly accomplish this in an online environment?
This presentation will explore our experiences doing just that in the course Creativity, Problem Solving and Design Thinking from Cambridge Advance Online, which was developed in response to the growing recognition that creativity is an essential skill across all sectors and levels. Attendees will have the chance to try exercises from the course while learning about the four-step process used to successfully teach metacognition online.

Erica Weide
Erica Weide is a Lecturer in Fashion Textiles and Pastoral Tutor at London College of Fashion, UAL. She is also pursuing an MA in Academic Practice, focusing her research on enhancing student belonging and communication through creative making practices. 

Roundtable Discussion title: Crafted Kinship: Facilitating Space to Foster Belonging
Erica Weide will be sharing her ongoing research as part of her Major Project on the MA Academic Practice course. With a focus on building student belonging, communication, and friendships, Erica organised a series of workshops titled Crafted Kinship during the spring of 2025 for students to connect, unwind, and create. The participants made cyanotype prints, which are now featured in a quilt, incorporating foliage, hand stitching, moments of joy, and objects that tell their stories. This session will explore the importance of informal spaces for students to interact, creating pathways for meaningful connections.

Gen Edelmann
Gen Edelmann is a creative educator exploring happiness and playful pedagogy in design education. Her teaching embraces curiosity, learner autonomy and imperfection by using hand-on playful approaches to challenge perfectionism and reframe failure as a critical tool in design education.

Presentation title: Perfect Failure: Embracing Imperfection through Playful Pedagogy 
How might we reframe failure as a powerful pedagogical tool rather than a mistake? This session challenges perfectionism in creative education by embracing risk, play, and vulnerability. By examining how failure can be reimagined as a vital part of creative education, it also invites a rethinking of curriculum design itself—where failure is not a by-product of creative risk, but a deliberate and valuable part of the learning experience. Rooted in playful pedagogy ‘Perfect Failure’ reimagines the studio as a collaborative space for experimentation, where vulnerability, play, and imperfection become central to critical and creative development.

Katarina Sengstaken & Mike Rymer
Katarina Sengstaken, Senior Lecturer at UCA, specializes in documentary and live TV production. Her immersive storytelling, including global full dome projections, informs her current research into sustainable industry practices.

Mike Rymer, former assistant director to Peter Greenaway, leads BA (Hons) Television Production at UCA. An award-winning director of the short film ‘SICK’ with broad Industry experience, he supports emerging filmmakers.

Presentation title: Embedding Sustainability into TV Production Education, Encouraging Sustainable Storytellers
This presentation showcases an industry-integrated approach to television production education, embedding sustainability principles into the curriculum. The UCA TV Production developed this project, in collaboration with Maidstone Studios, to immerse students in an industry-led sustainable production, “Comedy Relics”. Addressing the growing need for environmentally responsible practices, equipping graduates with climate science knowledge, and practical experience using the BAFTA albert carbon calculator. By embedding sustainability, UCA fosters graduates who are not only skilled in television production but leaders in sustainable practices.

Kathleen Hinwood
Kathleen has had an extensive career in Marketing and Advertising, working across the breadth of the industry. For the last six years, she has brought this experience into the role of both Senior Lecturer in Branding and Communications and PhD candidate at UCA.

Presentation title: Integrating storytelling into business education
The fostering of creative knowledge in a changing capitalist culture provides the backdrop for this research which focuses on the implementation of storytelling into the business educational framework. It explores storytelling in all its guises and considers how reframing the curricula will help develop integration, creative thinking, and cohesion amongst interdisciplinary cohorts. Storytelling is a practice that engenders lifelong learning that can influence institutional, and potentially organisational change providing an opportunity to address this current gap in business pedagogy.

Kimberly Hall & Tom Spooner
Kim is an international illustrator and artist whose teaching practice is rooted in liberatory education. The intersection of participatory action research and material exploration forms the groundwork of her approach to projects of all kinds. Find her work at kimberlyellenhall.com

Tom is an artist and educator teaching on the BA Illustration course at the University of Gloucestershire. Central to his teaching practice is an interest in the authorial nature of the discipline and its ability to produce meaningful real-world research.

Presentation title: ‘Cooking Up Assignments Together: Illustrators Approach Decolonising the Studio-Classroom’
Students & teachers unite! This session will explore how decolonising the curriculum can be approached hand-n hand with students. Beginning with the idea that decolonising the curriculum is about more than wider participation and inclusion, we will discuss ways in which students can develop the confidence to deal with complex and sensitive real-world issues. A novel call and response format will investigate how self-reflective, action-based activities can be used to deconstruct, and subvert, traditional top-down pedagogic hierarchies, and evolve into meaningful and rigorous outward-facing academic research and artistic practice for students.

Rob Roach
Rob Roach draws on research from their Master’s studies, creating visual representations of dyslexia for non-dyslexics. Their work explores how accessible formatting can reduce stress and barriers in arts education by centring the perspective of dyslexic learners.

Presentation title: Taking the viewpoint of a Dyslexic student 
Imagine navigating a world where words dance and twist, creating barriers instead of bridges. I was diagnosed with dyslexia at a young age and have gone through the journey as a student and into becoming an educator. This presentation aims to put you in the mindset of a dyslexic student, feeling the stress of trying to achieve tasks and seeing the barriers to learning that this can bring.  

Join me in this presentation as we explore the unique perspectives, challenges, and barriers that come with Dyslexia, underpinned by primary research gathered whilst studying for my master's, which partially focused on creating ‘A Visual Representation of Dyslexia for Non-Dyslexics’. To focus on how formatting and delivery can change these barriers to learning into bridges.  

Together, let’s foster understanding and celebrate the diverse ways we all learn! 

Rose Gridneff & Darryl Clifton
Rose Gridneff is a writer and designer, and currently Programme Development Director across the Design School at Camberwell and Chelsea Colleges of Art. Darryl Clifton is an educator, researcher, illustrator and Programme Director for Illustration at Camberwell College of Art.

Creative Workshop title: Site, Illumination and Joy
The pandemic reframed our relationship with the physical environments that we learn and teach within. This practical workshop encourages a radical reimagining of the spaces within art and design schools. Participants will be invited to respond to a series of prompts that encourage critical reflection in relation to their own lived experiences and the ecosystems they teach within – with a focus on sharing practice, challenges and initiatives. We will use speculative design methods to think through collective making, working collaboratively to build the art school of the future.

Roxane Butterworth
Lecturer and pathway lead on the Integrated Foundation in Business and Management for the Creative Industries course at UCA. PgCert in Creative Education, FHEA, BSc (Hons). PRME Working Group on Sustainability Mindset. Industry experience as a textile designer, product and brand development. Interested in continuing research to support ESD.

Presentation title: Exploring the value of arts-based pedagogies to support education for sustainability’
“What ESD requires is a shift from teaching to learning… for an action-oriented, transformative pedagogy, which supports self-directed learning, participation and collaboration, problem-orientation, inter- and transdisciplinarity “(UNESCO, 2017:7).
I believe that one of these transformative pedagogies is art-based pedagogy. I will share examples and methods I have explored to embed ESD into the Creative Business foundation course that I teach at UCA. The opportunities and benefits that art-based pedagogy offers to support education for sustainability.

Ruth Torr
Ruth has worked at UCA for ten years as a Programme Director, Interim Head of School and Learning and Teaching Lead. Her PhD research is in playful pedagogy and its potential to improve the undergraduate experience.  

Roundtable Discussion title: Co-creation in Higher Education: Potential and Pitfalls
This session starts with a presentation on a co-created assessment Action Research project conducted in 2024 which will offer some insights on co-creation and its "potential and pitfalls". The following panel discussion is with colleagues who employ co-creation techniques and students who will share their views of their experiences. One topic for the discussion will be whether neurodiverse students find this approach helpful. The session may inspire you to consider co-creation to perhaps motivate students and/or improve assessment literacy and explore other potential gains.

Tim Savage
Dr Tim Savage PFHEA is a higher education leader and researcher. His work advances technician pedagogies, technical learning environments, and workforce development. His research and publications have influenced national policy and inform his forthcoming book on technician-led teaching in practical disciplines.

Presentation title: Innovative Practices in Creative Education: Lessons from a U.S. Knowledge Exchange
This presentation shares insights from a knowledge exchange at MIT and RISD, funded by the Institute for Technical Skills and Strategy. It explores how US creative arts technicians teach and support learning, comparing UK practices and doctoral research on technical pedagogies. Through photographs and case studies, the session highlights collaborative relationships between faculty and support staff. Drawing on global insights, attendees will be encouraged to reflect on UK and US strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, gaining insights to enhance teaching, progress commercialisation agendas, and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration. 

Tickets are now available to purchase via this link. 

The conference will be held on the Epsom Campus at the Business School for Creative Industries. 

The address is: 21 Ashley Rd, Epsom KT18 5BE

Please note that there is no parking on Epsom campus, apart from disabled parking. Travelling to campus by car? Learn more about parking at UCA Epsom

By train: The UCA campus is a five-minute walk from Epsom train station. You can get there from London Waterloo or London Victoria. Visit the National Rail website for times and prices.

If travelling from Eurostar and arriving at London St. Pancras International, then take the southbound Victoria Line tube to London Victoria, or change at Oxford Circus (Bakerloo line, southbound) to London Waterloo.

By car: You’ll find our main campus on the outskirts of the town centre, close to the Ashley Centre shopping mall. Please note that there is no parking at the Epsom campus apart from disabled parking. Travelling to campus by car? Learn more about parking at UCA Epsom

The nearest car park to the campus is the Ashley Centre (postcode KT18 5AL), which is about a five-minute walk away. For details of public car parks nearby please visit the Epsom and Ewell Borough Council website.

By foot: Epsom campus is a short 10-minute walk from the town centre and the train station. Please put use the postcode to plan your route: KT18 5BE

There are a number of hotels in Epsom which are within walking distance of the campus. 

Travelodge Epsom Central - (10 minute walk)

Premier Inn Epsom Town Centre (13 minute walk)