ARLIS/UK & Ireland Research Award Report 2023-4: A knowledge exchange material literacy research project, University of the Arts London (UAL) x UWE Bristol (UWE)

Materials surround us in our everyday lives, and yet “while they do so much for us, we rarely pause to marvel at them …it’s so easy to forget just how foundational a role they play in our experience of the world” (Corbin, 2018, p.6). One way this can be addressed is through the introduction of physical materials within a teaching and learning context. Numerous arts institutions around the world have collections of materials samples, which are used as sources to inform or inspire their students. Educators (including, but not limited to, academics, librarians and technical staff) use materials and objects to develop students’ knowledge of material properties and processes and empower them to apply a critical approach to their materials selection.

This project has been inspired and informed by various literature, covering topics such as materials libraries and collections, material culture and research, makerspaces in libraries, fabrication and hands-on learning, meta-literacies, object-based learning and pedagogy. Please see our recommended reading list to explore these texts. We identified an opportunity to research and link teaching and making literacy provided by technicians, with librarian-facilitated object-based learning frameworks. There was also a need to address sustainability considerations and be mindful of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, demonstrated in a Students Organising for Sustainability longitudinal study capturing students’ attitudes towards learning for sustainable development, which shows that “approximately 80 per cent of students want their institution to be doing more on sustainable development [and] around 60 per cent of students want to learn more about sustainability” (United Nations, 2014).

This project has identified that there is a growing interest in the UK in creating and utilising materials libraries within higher education, and in particular by library staff for use within their information and academic literacy teaching. Therefore, there is an opportunity for library and technical staff to co-develop materials collections and jointly deliver workshops and resources to support and develop students’ materials literacy. Inspired by CILIP’s definition of information literacy (2018), we have applied this concept to articulate materials literacy as: the ability to think critically and make informed and balanced judgements about the materials we encounter, source and select. It empowers us as citizens to contribute to a more sustainable society by developing our understanding of material origins, properties and environmental impact.

Another project gaining momentum at UWE which has informed this particular collaboration is the Bristol Materials Network which aims to build connections and share knowledge and resources around materials and sustainability, enabling the development of materials literacy for UWE students, staff and the wider community in Bristol. Originally, the network came from a project with the intention to create a materials library at UWE. However, limitations of space, budget and resourcing made this difficult to achieve. Instead, small, portable collections of materials and objects are used to facilitate learning within workshop settings. This approach works well to develop students’ materials literacy and has been key to the knowledge exchange between the two institutions.