Reflective Practice: Home

A more structured journal could contain all of the above, but also more specifically this list below. This is not fixed. However, it could include -

• Any annotated research material
• Personal responses to your own work
• Notes from tutorials
• Selected extracts from lecture notes
• Notes from gallery visits
• Extracts from relevant critical texts
• Annotated photocopies and downloads
• Your own thoughts
• Photographs/video
• A daily entry of tasks
• CV development
• Work placement report
• Video/photographic/digital record
• Blog

Something less structured could also contain mind mapping, notes on collaboration, conversations, crits and tutorials, and be any of the following;

• A sketchbook. You may be asked to produce annotations through your sketchbooks. Reflective writing is a really good way to show progression of ideas.
• Narrative writing. As well as your visual work, you could document your processes through a narrative writing processes that are connected to your practice. For example, you could write about a work placement experience and to support these reflections write a letter from your past self to your present or future self, highlighting your work, an exhibition, a comparison of brands or artists work, for example. Embarking on writing in this way can broaden your experiences of different styles of writing, further expanding on knowledge of some of the variety of ways you may be required to write as an industry professional.
• A dialogue. Look at examples of artists' journals e.g.: The diary of Frida Kahlo (book available in UCA library), or Pat Francis’ example of the dialogic journal created by John Berger and John Christie: 'I send you this Cadmium red’ in which two practitioners exchange ideas through a series of letters to one another (Francis, P. 2009:43).

All of these more creative processes are there as a way into reflective practice, rather than a check list of answering a bank of the same questions.

When writing, you do not have to write formally you could -

• use notes
• use slang
• write in the 1st person
• use mind maps or spider diagrams
• write poetry
• lists
• questions
• annotate images
• Methodology
• Leave blank pages or spaces so that you can go back to reflect review and revise; this enables you to track your progress.

Use your reflective writing to identify anything you could incorporate into your own work (techniques, materials, approaches, theory etc) and contextualise the work of others and your own work.

Get into the habit of regularly documenting -

• your evaluation of the previous project
• your initial ideas in response to the brief
• your thoughts and feelings about your studio practice
• feedback from crits and tutors
• creative links

You might choose to -

• Make an entry every day or once a week
• Record and evaluate every piece of research you do.
• Record the progress of an experiment in the studio.
• Jot down ideas that you cannot pursue immediately for future reference
• Record the responses you make to any research material you use
• Stepping Back
• Be objective and try to form judgements about your responses.

Consider feedback from previous assessments:

• What have you learnt?
• How can you apply this?
• Are there other ways you could have responded to the project?
• Are there other ways you could have made use of your research?
• Are you receptive to change?
• Are you making assumptions?
• Analyse your approach to your project
• Revisit previous entries e.g. read the previous few pages
• Ask questions e.g. "How does this new idea/approach relate to what I already know?"
• Identify gaps in your knowledge (hints and clues from your previous research will help you with this)
• Extend your horizons

Through reflective journals, you will often be asked to map your learning over a period of time. This, for example, can be a different approach to an essay brief. It is important to note that a reflective journal is not a diary. For example, in a diary you might just describe events, feelings and thoughts etc. In a reflective journal you should be more critical. You can do this by addressing some of the points previously explained such as asking yourself relevant questions about a piece of work or working process that you want to reflect on..

Through a journal, you can also include reflections on advice from tutors and peers.

• Generate initial ideas
• Track your thinking
• Identify where your inspiration comes from
• Show how you are going to make use of the information
• Develop your concepts
• Explore potential outcomes
• Evaluate how successful they are
• Indicate what you could take forward to inform your future practice
• The purpose of a reflective journal is to log your processes, developing analytical skills which show how you have developed your practice, through learning from old experiences, developing new connections.

Your research journal will help you to -

• Learn from your experiences
• Improve your thinking skills
• Develop problem solving skills
• Apply theory to practice
• Generate ideas/enhance creativity
• Develop your own 'voice'
• Improve communication skills
• Explore and experiment with ideas
• Move your project on
• Make creative links to develop your own line of reasoning
• Support your response to the brief
• Make your processes visible and track your thinking through each unit
• Talk about your work
• You might return to it and make use of it in later projects