Making time to play
The case for joining a subject association.
A subject association you’ve probably not heard of is hosting a conference you’ve never been to, in a city you do not need to visit, on dates that will collide with end-of-year reports and the last gasp of the summer term. The easier choice is to stay home.
So why bother?
There are two questions here. Why join a subject association at all? And why come to this particular conference?
On the first. Photography teachers in schools are pretty isolated. Most secondary departments have one specialist. Many have none, with photography carried by a head of art alongside everything else. CPD that addresses photography as a discipline rather than as a unit within art and design is rare. Colleagues often contact us to ask for the date of the next PhotoPedagogy workshop. Read on for the answer. The TeachMeet sessions run by The Photographers’ Gallery are fantastic but networks often form by chance and stay thin. An ex-colleague, a friend of a friend. Maybe a Substack you stumbled across.
A subject association is one way of addressing this. Comparable bodies exist for history, geography and art and design. You may already be a member of NSEAD. Their existence means a discipline has somewhere to gather, where new teachers can find old ones and where research and classroom practice can meet without one swallowing the other. Photography in the UK has not, until recently, had that for the whole sector. APHE has just changed its name and remit to try to be it.1 Whether it becomes that depends almost entirely on who shows up.
On the second. The Birmingham conference, 8 to 10 July at BCU, is the first major test of the broadened remit. The programme is honest about where APHE currently sits. It tilts towards higher education, with a Tech Talk from the CHEAD technical alliance, an industry panel and a keynote from Nicola Shipley of GRAIN. The Pathways into Photography panel is the session most directly addressing the cross-sector conversation the rebrand exists for. The APHIEs, a set of pecha-kucha presentations from members on their teaching practice, are the format most accessible to a secondary teacher and a way to bring classroom practice into conversation with HE colleagues.
The discipline gains a voice when its teachers show up. The next conference will be shaped by who attended this one.
APHE is a UK-wide not-for-profit organisation established in 1964 and run by its members. We bring together photography educators, researchers, technicians and practitioners from secondary, further and higher education, creating opportunities to connect, exchange ideas and support one another’s work. Each year we organise a conference where members come together to share research, discuss current challenges and explore new approaches to photography education. This year’s conference is hosted by Birmingham City University, and is centred on the theme:
A Critical Toolkit: Strategies for Pedagogy and Practice.
The conference explores how practical problem-solving can sit alongside critical enquiry, offering participants ideas, resources and conversations that can be taken directly into their teaching, research and professional practice. Whether you are an established educator, technician or post-graduate researcher, APHE offers a welcoming network of colleagues who are committed to advancing photography education.
PhotoPedagogy will be at the conference on 9 July with PhotoPlay, a new project I have been making with the photographer Alejandra Carles-Tolra. It takes its inspiration from her latest publication, The Bears, about a womxn’s rugby team in the States. I’ve worked with Alejandra before, creating a resource for the PhotoPedagogy website. She takes play seriously and is fascinated by community, identity and belonging. I can’t think of a more suitable collaborator for the APHE conference. It's been a while since I did any CPD so it’s good to have an excuse to see colleagues I have not seen in years and to meet others I have only known remotely.
PhotoPlay takes the form of an app and a printed zine, with a workshop we will run live in Birmingham. It is built around a set of playful prompts for use in the classroom, aimed primarily at secondary colleagues, and the conference is its first public outing. Come and find us. We will have copies of the zine, the app to show you, and time to talk. I may also have copies of my new book available, if I can get it to the printers in time.
Volunteer-run subject associations need members in order to exist and thrive. You can wait to see whether APHE becomes useful to you before joining.
Or, you can join and help with the rebuild.
The summer conference, A Critical Toolkit, takes place at Birmingham City University on 8, 9 and 10 July. The intention is to make attendance affordable and a small number of needs-based travel bursaries will be available. There will also be streaming access to some of the sessions.
Hope to see you there.
These posts will always be free but, if you enjoy reading them, you can support my analogue photography habit, and that of my students, by contributing to the film fund. Thanks to those of you who have already done so. All donations of whatever size are very gratefully received.
From the Association for Photography in Higher Education to the Association for PHotography in Education. See what they did there?
Looking forward to this and have just submitted a paper abstract for presenting. Hope to catch you there Jon