Terry Finnigan

Head of Student Attainment, LCF

Keynote

Linking to the overall theme of the conference around reimagining creative spaces within teaching and learning, Terry will consider the creative spaces that are present within the courses and to what extent they reflect the diverse needs of the students. She will discuss the importance of working within the physical, blended and virtual space to explore different pedagogic practices reflecting on some of the key developments she has been involved in at the university over the past five years. She will consider the Visual Directions website, the Tell Us About It archive and the blogging tasks within the Inclusive Learning Unit for staff and how they have impacted on student and staff learning. Working with difference within different spaces provides new and refreshing ways to approach creativity and critique the existing frameworks to move to new and unknown future spaces.

About Terry Finnigan

Recently appointed as Head of Attainment at LCF, Terry has always had the student experience at the forefront of all her work. She has been motivated by her sense of social justice and entitlement for students from diverse backgrounds, at different stages of their educational journey, to achieve at the highest level She has worked within the areas of study support, learning and teaching and widening participation. She has championed student voices, and ensured that they are heard and inform UAL's work with the student voice project ‘Tell Us About It’ and created an innovative art and design website ‘Visual Directions’ which makes the two key creative practices of sketchbooks and reflective writing explicit. She became a National Teaching Fellow in 2011 and is the lead tutor of the Inclusive Learning and Teaching in HE unit at the Learning and Teaching Exchange. She has also recently jointly authored a HEA Scotland publication entitled Embedding Equality and Diversity in the Curriculum: an Art & design Practitioners Guide. (2015). She regards herself as an agent of change and is always keen to encourage staff and students to find spaces to change pedagogy within their own practice.