Abstract

This workshop proposes the three-part method (site, scale, and tools) as a pedagogical and methodological framework for rethinking illustration as a critical, transdisciplinary practice. Moving beyond illustration as style, the method positions practice as a parasitic and mycelial mode of inquiry that inhabits and reconfigures existing systems, infrastructures, and narratives. Through oscillation between grounding and disorientation, the method enables practitioners to engage complex socio-political conditions without resolving them into singular outputs. Drawing on practice-led research into the Birmingham Central Library and its digital afterlives, the workshop argues that illustration operates as a relational process of assembling, translating, and holding meaning across material and immaterial domains.

Session and activities

This session takes the form of a hybrid lecture-performance and participatory workshop that introduces the three-part method as a strategy for critical illustration practice. Developed within art and design pedagogy, the method operates through the dynamic relation between a site of enquiry, a scale of investigation, and a set of tools or techniques, enabling practitioners to move beyond disciplinary boundaries and engage illustration as a form of world-questioning rather than image production.

The session begins with a performative visual essay that draws on practice-led research into the demolition and digital reconstruction of the Birmingham Central Library. Through projected image sequences, live narration, and the manipulation of physical and digital artefacts, the audience will encounter how fragments (archival, and computational) can be assembled into speculative narratives. This staged demonstration foregrounds illustration as an expanded, essayistic practice operating across physical and virtual environments.

Following this, participants will be introduced to the three-part method through a guided exercise. Working in small groups, they will identify:

• a site (institution, archive, platform, or infrastructure),
• a scale (temporal, spatial, ecological, or political lens),
• and a set of tools (material, digital, performative, or discursive).

Participants will then map relationships between these elements, producing a rapid “proto–visual essay” using fragments of text, image, and diagram. The emphasis is not on resolution but on generating tensions, contradictions, and new forms of legibility.

The session concludes with a collective reflection, situating the method within broader discussions around critical pedagogy, AI, and the future of creative practice. By foregrounding illustration as a transdisciplinary and relational mode of inquiry – capable of operating parasitically within existing systems while fostering mycelial networks of knowledge – the session offers a practical and conceptual framework for educators and practitioners seeking to rethink creative education in a time of technological and institutional transformation.