The International Craft Studio

The Teaching Craft Studio is a new initiative where we explore how we can bring craft in the classroom. We share experiences, perspectives, struggles and, most importantly, inspiration that help us bring what we write and read about craft to life in our teaching.

A pedagogy of risk: craft, creativity and the management classroom

Anna will share her experiences of the design and delivery of the Creativity in Context Enterprise Project, a final year undergraduate module at the University of St Andrews Business School. Anna will reflect on how her background as a potter and art school training shapes her pedagogy and has inspired her to explore arts-based methods in the management classroom. In the spirit of the creativity module, we will engage in practical activity to explore the various ways in which craft's central process of making can facilitate reflection on societal challenges and responsible management more broadly.

About the module

In a departure from conventional creativity-related modules, Creativity in Context untethers from themes of entrepreneurialism, innovation and value creation in pursuit of deeper embodied understandings around creative being and knowing. With small and mini 'c' creativity at its heart, the module explores creativity at the level of the everyday, locating creative endeavour in processes of collaborative and purposeful activity. During classes students identify and elaborate problems important to them and use creative methods including poetry, dance, printmaking, and stitching to respond to those problems in ways that could contribute to the achievement of societal goals. Learning from failure, collaborative problem solving, and lively critically reflexive dialogue are the key pedagogic themes that run throughout.

About Anna

Anna Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Management at the University of St Andrews Business School. Anna's research coalesces around themes of skill, identity and belonging. Her doctoral research followed her journey to becoming a skilled potter as part of the Scottish craft industry. She is currently researching the heritage craft of kilt making and has been learning to make the traditional handstitched kilt. Anna's empirical research is almost always participative or autoethnographic and she has an interest in creative methods both in research and teaching.