Our opening session of the year featured a wall-mounted post-it note timeline of UK Higher Education. The Coldstream Reports that reformed art and design education were the least familiar to me of all the legislation referenced there yet seemingly the most profoundly impactful on teaching and assessment practice in art subjects. On reading Julia Lockheart’s re-examination of the 1960 and 1970 reports (Lockheart, 2018) I was struck by her revelation of the original dress of the report from under the overlaid cloaks of its interpreters. The reports brought about the transition of craft-based training in art into the university sector, thereafter academic thesis writing was introduced as a feature of such study but Lockheart argues, convincingly, that this was never the intention of the reports. The imposition of this humanities culture on art practice persisted as it proved useful in maintaining parity of assessment standards. This unsympathetic, standardising approach came at the cost of “a diversity of pedagogical approaches, including writing practices, that are complementary to and inform the purposes of creative practice” (Lockheart, p. 151).
Some years ago when taking HPL work at Wimbledon, the theatre programme started to offer wider modes of assessment to students. These proved popular and video and oral presentations increased year on year. Over the last two years the LCC Photography programme has diversified its allowable submission formats and now video essays are the preferred submission mode for c.50% of some cohorts. It seems we are moving back to accepting that writing practices should not be a prescribed as an “examinable measure rather than as a tool for learning” (Lockheart, p. 152). As Lockheart notes, and scores of consultations with my students attest, this misreading has come at a considerable cost to visual-spatial thinkers and dyslexics.
Reference List:
Lockheart, J. (2018) ‘The importance of writing as a material practice for art and design students: A contemporary rereading of the Coldstream Reports’, Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 17(2), pp. 151–175. doi:10.1386/adch.17.2.151_1.[Accessed 10 March 2026].