Threading lived experience through fashion and form with Yvette Blundell

Yvette Blundell is a fashion and textiles educator, former textile designer, and curriculum leader on the UAL Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. Drawing on her experiences growing up in rural Somerset, working across the fashion industry, and teaching the next generation of creatives, her work champions playful, experimental and brave approaches to creativity.

From studying fashion textiles at art school to designing for major fashion brands and moving into creative education, in this episode Yvette reflects on the experiences that shaped her career. She also discusses the power of lived experience in creative education, sharing insights into helping students use their this to develop authentic and meaningful creative work.

Instagram: @yvetteblundell1

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Transcript

Matt: Hello, and welcome to the Teach Inspire Create podcast. I'm Matt Mosley, chief Examiner for Art and Design at UAL Awarding Body. In this podcast, I speak to a fascinating range [00:00:15] of people who work all across the creative arts about how they have made their way into their roles, their impactful teaching experiences, and the people and things that inspire them.

Matt: Through these conversations, we hope to show you there are endless ways to [00:00:30] belong in the creative world today. My guest is Yvette Blundell. She's the curriculum leader for fashion and textiles on the UAL Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. She previously worked at Central Saint Martins and Chelsea College [00:00:45] of Art.

Matt: She's also worked across the fashion industry as a textile designer. In this episode, I'm gonna be talking to Yvette about her beginnings in rural Somerset and her journey into a career within the fashion industry as a textile designer. And then we're gonna hear about her [00:01:00] transition into creative education, and in particular, a fantastic project which asks students to use their lived experience as inspiration for their creative work.

Matt: Hello, Yvette.

Yvette: Hi Matt.

Matt: Thank you ever so much for joining us today on the Teach Inspire Create [00:01:15] podcast. I was wondering if. You could take us back to the start of your creative journey and give us a bit of an insight about where you began.

Yvette: So I'm originally from West Somerset, from the very age of X, more so the nearest [00:01:30] city is 70 miles away.

Yvette: It's Bristol, one direction and X to the other. So it wasn't really at the heart of sort of the creative scene when I grew up. I had a grandfather who passed away when I was [00:01:45] quite young, but I do have very early memories of him drawing funny little characters and telling me stories. I was the first in my family to go to university.

Matt: Right, okay.

Yvette: I had a great art teacher [00:02:00] who was from Liverpool, who'd hung out with the Beatles in the sixties, so I really remember him quite well. He was very encouraging. Didn't know that art school really existed.

Matt: Were you quite creative in those early years?

Yvette: Yes. My mother would always [00:02:15] tell me, oh, for cutting up tiny pieces of paper, she would say, she was always hoovering up after me.

Yvette: I remember being at nursery and my memories of nursery is falling headfirst off a slide and also winning an under five. [00:02:30] Painting competition.

Matt: Nice.

Yvette: So that might have said at the back that the early success, uh, might have gone my way. I just enjoyed painting and drawing. Yeah.

Matt: And what do you think, what sort of triggered the thought to make an application to art school?

Yvette: My art teacher, I think it was said [00:02:45] that I might be able to do that. Yeah. And so it just seemed something I'd give a go. Yeah. I didn't really have any thoughts beyond the application.

Matt: You weren't at that point sort of aspiring towards a. Career [00:03:00] creatively or

Yvette: No, because I wasn't really exposed to that.

Yvette: All I knew was I didn't want to work in a bank.

Matt: Okay.

Yvette: It sort of was pretty or

Matt: shock. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, sometimes it's just as helpful to know what you don't wanna do. Yeah. As much as what you do want to do, isn't it? What was the [00:03:15] first day at art school like?

Yvette: We all went into a big room and we sat down and I looked around and I sort of got the feeling that these might be my people.

Yvette: Right, okay. Which was really exciting because, um,

Matt: was that one of the first times that you'd felt that?

Yvette: Oh, [00:03:30] other than being in my art class at school, yes. Mm-hmm. It was a really diverse community because people were geographically from a really. Vast distance coming into school. Similar in the fact that there [00:03:45] was some local factories and there was farming, and that was probably,

Matt: yeah,

Yvette: what people aspired to do and that's their experience.

Matt: And so then. What was the experience of art school like? What did they start to [00:04:00] introduce you to?

Yvette: It was really experimental and fun. We did a typical sort of rotation, so we tried lots of different areas. It was a place called Somerset College of Art and Technology in Taunton, so they [00:04:15] had some degree courses there as well.

Matt: Okay.

Yvette: So they had really good. Resources. I remember printmaking particularly fondly, but we just tried lots of different experimental techniques. One day we had a textile tutor [00:04:30] and we just played with sand most of the day. Yeah. And, and printed using sand and it was just. Like being a toddler again. I just really embraced everything that I could play with.

Yvette: I made lots of mess.

Yeah,

Yvette: some things were mess is good, [00:04:45] successful, some things I enjoyed doing in the moment. Never needed to see them again after that day, but learn from the experience.

Matt: Do you think it was helpful then not having. Preconceptions of kind of what you wanted to get out of art school?[00:05:00]

Matt: Arriving there,

Yvette: I think because I didn't really have a preexisting idea of what was tasteful, what wasn't tasteful, what was acceptable, what was aesthetically pleasing, and I just. Could be really open and free with what I did. Yeah, I think [00:05:15] that was really liberating.

Matt: So you find your own aesthetic?

Yvette: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. And what did that start to look like?

Yvette: I think that I probably was influenced by the time and at that time there was quite a lot of neon, so [00:05:30] I do. Some very early experiences. Yeah, yeah. With neon and Xandex sort of puff printing, which looking back on it was ill advice, but at the time I really enjoyed doing and then very much mark making, drawing [00:05:45] led, experimenting with constructed sort of textiles, bringing in objects that were unexpected and weaving them into services.

Yvette: So it was really [00:06:00] experimental and playful, I guess, and that's what I really enjoyed doing.

Matt: Yeah. Did it start to kind of emerge that textiles was going to be. Your event destination.

Yvette: It became really obvious I think, quite quickly that I had the urge to decorate [00:06:15] sort of surface true, and I also wanted to experiment with shape and silhouette, whether it was on the body, whether it was off the body, and I particularly enjoyed printmaking.

Yvette: I think the opportunity to be able to work both in 2D and 3D [00:06:30] and between the two really led me to think that fashion and textiles was my area.

Matt: Was there a piece of work at this juncture where you sort of felt, again, that sense of success, like you'd hit on something that you wanted to explore [00:06:45] further?

Yvette: Yeah. At the end of my pre-degree course, we had the opportunity to take part in a fashion show, and in that fashion show, I made a pair. It was. Pajamas, I probably the best description of them or [00:07:00] loungewear. And it was quite highly colored, as I've alluded to in the past, that I was experimenting with really bright, bold colors at that time.

Yvette: So I decided to experiment with colorful sort of [00:07:15] prints, and I made them into very loose fitting trousers and a matching top in the same print. And I think that was when I suddenly realized. That I could combine both my love of print and color [00:07:30] and at that point quite traditional sort of silhouette and government.

Matt: Yeah. And so at that, that stage, was your decision made to, to head towards

Yvette: fashion i'd, I'd already fashion. I'd already got my place on degree course,

Matt: yeah. From that sense. And so what, what was your degree?

Yvette: Um, it was fashion [00:07:45] textiles.

Matt: Yeah.

Yvette: It was at UAL when I first arrived there, it was a very small course.

Yvette: I think it was 25 of us.

Matt: Yeah.

Yvette: Cottage and it was Chelsea.

Matt: Chelsea, yeah. So a big change of scenery,

Yvette: really big change of scenery. And [00:08:00] ironically, it was based in shes Bush in the building that I now teach in. Oh,

Matt: okay.

Yvette: Over at

Matt: Lime Grove.

Yvette: Yes. Yeah, west London and Shepherds Bush was a real change of scenery.

Matt: What were your, your compatriots like on the course?

Yvette: The people on the course were [00:08:15] really different from me. I think there might have been one other person who was. The first generation to go to university. People had parents who did similar jobs, whether it was banking or [00:08:30] stockbroking. It was my lived experience, but also my aesthetics were quite different from everyone else.

Yvette: There was quite a lot of pastels and my approach was much more bold and [00:08:45] bright. It was just people that I'd never been. With before, I don't think I particularly found my people on the course. I lived in the halls of residence, so there was lots of other people that I met on other courses.

Matt: Did you feel under pressure [00:09:00] to change your work to kind of fit in or did you, did that make you want to stick to your guns as it were on your,

Yvette: I think it made me want to double down.

Yvette: Yeah. I think the fact that my work was different. Guess it just made me even more [00:09:15] determined to try and find my way. Yeah. Through things. And I guess that I thought that I'd been selected, it was quite highly competitive at the time. 'cause of courses were very small. Yeah. I'd been selected for a reason, so I just thought I'd carry on.

Matt: Yeah.

Yvette: Continuing [00:09:30] to evolve my work in a way that was true to me. Yeah. What I wanted to achieve.

Matt: And so what did that work look like that you were making? I

Yvette: think I was. I'd probably exhausted the [00:09:45] sort of neon and bright sort of color palette that I'd originally started with and started to look more into colors that I'd grown up with into textures that surrounded me growing up.

Yvette: I went [00:10:00] to visit my parents one weekend, took lots of photographs, and I started to bring that more into my own work, and that fell. A little bit truer to me because I think with the bright colors, I think it was a [00:10:15] reflection of the exuberance and excitement that I felt about being at art college. But it was also very much influenced from the outside, from the sort of.

Yvette: Bright neons that were being used in fashion and in interiors at that point. And I think [00:10:30] this enabled me to really look at what had surrounded me all my life and what felt true to me.[00:10:45]

Matt: And so then from university, what was your transition into industry? How did that work?

Yvette: I actually did a work experience in a fashion textile studio, and from there I met a textile [00:11:00] agent who asked to represent me. So when I was in my final year, I did a collection that was taken to New York, so I started to sell some work.

Yvette: Then Wow. Which was great. I also won a [00:11:15] competition for a company called Cults by Ella, and that was a cash price, so that was really useful in funding my final collection. And then at my show, I managed to pick up another agent. And both my agents were [00:11:30] very different. One was much more commercial.

Matt: Yeah.

Yvette: And one was much more experimental.

Yvette: So the agent who I did more experimental, mark, making less commercial work for, sold my work to trend companies. [00:11:45] And to designers who they'd actually use that work as a basis to develop more ideas from. Yeah, and my other agent, it was very much more commercial where I would either do commissions or I [00:12:00] would work for particular sectors of the market.

Yvette: Right. And because it was the mid eighties, it was much easier to get a studio. And I'm one from that generation that was very lucky where London was. Very [00:12:15] much more affordable. Mm-hmm. So I had a studio in Charlotte Road in Hoxton, which at the time was pretty derelict and was empty warehouses. And now obviously is incredibly gentrified.

Yvette: Yeah. Provide and expensive. [00:12:30] So that allowed me to sell work

Matt: in your studio, what would you spend your days making?

Yvette: So it was on paper, it was hand drawn. It could be mark making, it could be [00:12:45] in gre, it could be in watercolor. It could be ink. It could be a variety of techniques. And it wasn't in traditional repeat, so it didn't need to be in mathematical repeat for [00:13:00] fashion textiles, interior textiles always had to be in mathematical repeat.

Yvette: Okay. And they were largest. Gale, but for fashion textiles, it was what's called suggested repeat. So,

Matt: and were you working across both, were you doing

Yvette: it into just purely No, it was, it was always fashion [00:13:15] textiles. Yeah. That was where my interest lay. I wanted to see it on the body. I, I produced fashion in my degree up until then, so I really wanted to continue to be working across fashion.

Yvette: I also [00:13:30] worked with some advertising companies, so I have. And funny memories of going and meeting particular advertising companies where I'd have to sit down and eat. I think one time it was a ice cream ghetto and I had to [00:13:45] make some textures and come up with some key words, and we all had a conversation and I went away and made some textures for some packaging.

Yvette: So there was some,

Matt: it's ghetto inspired textures, right? Yeah.

Yvette: So, so that's

Matt: the kind of work I could get into, I think. Are you able to tell [00:14:00] us some of the brands or the people that you

Yvette: kind of worked with? Um, yeah, so Paul Smith sold quite a lot of designs to Paul Smith, obviously High Street companies like Marks and Spencer's.

Yvette: Yeah. With my other agent, it was lots of Kelvin Klein. There was. People [00:14:15] that we would sell worked to a magazine called Textile View, which was very much a trend. Yeah. Driven Magazine. Yeah. Lots of different high-end designers as well that we would sell starting points that then they develop their collection.

Yvette: I've [00:14:30] seen things.

Matt: What's the sort of process or experience like working with one of those brands?

Yvette: You would just sell them the work and

Matt: so you would have pre sort of designs and they would just buy them?

Yvette: Yes. They, they would just buy them as is and Right. Okay. They could change the colorway, they could do whatever.

Yvette: You were [00:14:45] just literally selling the work as it was, and you would go back to some of the more mid-range brands and they'd excitedly get out some samples and say to you, this is something from last season we brought. And you'd [00:15:00] smile while it was in. A particular colorway or we've been embellished with sequins and

Matt: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. When you were making these designs, do, were you ever making these designs with brands in mind or were you just

Yvette: No, it, it, it

Matt: just make your

Yvette: own it spec speculative. Right. [00:15:15] Okay. So you would have an idea of what the color palette would be for that season, so you would follow trends would work sort of two years ahead.

Yvette: Basically, if it was fashion textiles, you'd be working two years ahead.

Matt: Is there a particular pattern or design that really sticks in the mind [00:15:30] from this era?

Yvette: I remember I did quite a lot of work, which was very much about dye my own paper. So I would make up a wash or range of inks, mix 'em together. I would.

Yvette: Hand eye the [00:15:45] paper with a sponge. Then I would make marks and abstract shape, which then I would cut up and layer, so there would be a particular color ground. And then on top of that, there would be a [00:16:00] variety of colored shapes with different textures within them. It was very much different quality of line, different mark making.

Yvette: So it was. Quite sort of fine art influenced. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Yvette: I tended to [00:16:15] keep away. I wasn't known for my florals particularly.

Matt: Yeah. There were signatures of your,

Yvette: your design. Yeah. We didn't that commercial sphere, people do have something that they enjoy doing and I think like anything in life, if you enjoy doing something, it's [00:16:30] going to be stronger.

Yvette: Yeah. It's repetitious if you are trying to do something. Yeah. That you are really forcing yourself into that sort of style or shape. Interesting.

Matt: And so did you ever see any of your designs in the wild?

Yvette: Yes, lot. Lots of times. And [00:16:45] some, I thought, well, that's great. I wonder, oh, that's one of mine. And other times I was like, wow, what's that?

Yvette: Oh, it's one of mine. It's in a different colorway. Or, or, I didn't think it would be printed like that, or I didn't envision it being on that particular. Fabric in that particular [00:17:00] colorway, so it was good and bad.

Matt: That's interesting, isn't it? That that sort of relinquish of creative control. Yeah. At that stage of transaction, I suppose.

Matt: You don't see it potentially until it's in the real world.

Yvette: Yeah, I, I think it was especially [00:17:15] some of the more. Market sort of firms that I Yeah. Dealt with. I suppose when you are working in a very commercial space, it's probably best not to become overly precious. At be Yeah. Times.[00:17:30]

Matt: And so then. At what stage in your career did your engagement with education start?

Yvette: When I left my degree, I was really keen to work [00:17:45] commercially. That was my dream to make a living because that was really important. Coming from the background that I came from, I just didn't feel that I could. Do this as something that didn't make a reasonable living.

Yvette: Yeah, I wanted to do that. Yeah. And I wanted [00:18:00] to prove that this thing that some of my sort of contemporaries growing up would say would bump into me and saying, well, you still doing that arty farty stuff? And I really wanted to say, yes I am. Yeah. And I, you actually, I'm living a life that I'm [00:18:15] actually enjoying and I'm affording to go on holiday and go places.

Yvette: And this experience has allowed me to. Broaden my horizon. Yeah. So yes, I am. So that was great. But after a while, because the seasons are really [00:18:30] short, it's

Matt: quite transient

Yvette: though. Yeah. Yeah. And it goes really quickly and it's, yeah, year on year. So I thought, well, I've done that. I've really enjoyed it, but not sure it's as satisfying as I want to be doing this for the next 40 years.[00:18:45]

Yvette: Sure. I went to a party and I was speaking to someone and said, oh, you should think about doing some teaching. And I thought, well, no, not really. I don't know anyone. I don't come from a family of lecturers.

Matt: Yeah.

Yvette: And so I wrote a [00:19:00] letter to a couple of colleges. That were Commut commutable from London, and I wrote a letter on a Thursday and on a Friday I got a phone call asking if I could, they were looking for lecturing, could I come in for an [00:19:15] interview, which I did.

Yvette: I got the train and went in in the afternoon, and I started my first lecturing on the Monday morning.

Matt: Yeah, pretty quick turnaround.

Yvette: Yeah.

Matt: Well, obviously they could see what they had in you and what you could offer to the students and they were keen to [00:19:30] get that. And

Yvette: then. I was asked to teach somewhere else and from there and I taught part-time, all different levels.

Yvette: I also started working as a fashion stylist as well. Um, very [00:19:45] much the more commercial side of fashion styling.

Matt: Okay. So having a. Bit of a portfolio career between teaching and staying connected to industry? Well, I mean it's, it's very interesting about how the skills and attributes that you learn in different creative [00:20:00] areas can be so transferable.

Matt: I think people sometimes worry that they get. Stuck into a lane within creativity, but actually it feels like you can jump across

Yvette: to Yeah, I, I think, I think you just grab the opportunities as they come and, yeah. Well, and just being open-minded [00:20:15] and willing to work hard at things. I think that's something that you can be incredibly talented, but if you tend to hold back and not throw yourself into things, yeah, I think you lose opportunity.

Yvette: What's the worst [00:20:30] that can happen? It doesn't work out. And

Matt: yeah,

Yvette: as long as you're not wasting anyone else's time or money, I think you should give most things a go.

Matt: And so how do all these experiences that you've had inform your kind of philosophy of teaching now?

Yvette: I think it's very [00:20:45] much about sort of, can it just give everything a go just to try?

Yvette: Obviously we want our students to think deeply. We want 'em to be reflective, we want them to evaluate. And alongside that, we want them to be really [00:21:00] open and experimental. I know that when people ask me to describe the philosophy and my ethos and my vision for the areas in which I teach, I always say, playful, [00:21:15] experimental, and brave.

Yvette: Yeah. And they're the three words that I, if anyone asked me in my career, what would I say that my teaching has been about? It's about those three words.

Matt: Hmm. And how do you. With your students, challenge them to bring themselves. [00:21:30] Into their work.

Yvette: I really believe in transformative education because if I hadn't have gone to art college and I hadn't had those opportunities, I think my life would've looked very different, and I've got to travel to [00:21:45] some amazing places.

Yvette: I've met amazing people. That's the main thing I want to say to students. There's a particular project that I. Can talk about, but it's about why your tutors may do [00:22:00] this. Mm-hmm. And we are students in a project to talk about their positionality and who they are. And I always say that my positionality is that I probably come from a working class background, however.[00:22:15]

Yvette: My life has been completely transformed by education, and that is why I'm so passionate about teaching.

Matt: Yeah. What would be your definition of positionality?

Yvette: Positionality is very much who you are, your [00:22:30] position in the world, what's important to you. It can about your class, it can be about your heritage, it can be about your things are important to you, if your sexuality is important to you, where you are, what makes you, [00:22:45] you.

Yvette: And also what is it that you want to communicate with other people? What are your values really

Matt: in terms of the kind of projects that you design and devise and set? How do you challenge students to, to do that? What types of [00:23:00] things do they make?

Yvette: So we have a project that I've run in lots of different iterations, and I've run it from all different levels of which I've taught, and it's the iteration that I run it now on [00:23:15] the UAL Foundation at Lyme Grove.

Yvette: Is it's called now, it's called Project U. It's been called different things at different times and it's very much about celebrating students' lived experience and I think that [00:23:30] we as educators really need to think about the fact that students of coming from increasingly diverse backgrounds, for me, I'm very aware that the sort of more I get on.

Yvette: Into my [00:23:45] career that I'm gonna be further away from the age I was, you know, when I was doing that course. There's generations between me and my students now. That wasn't the case when I first started, so I think it's really important that we champion [00:24:00] students, sort of lived experience.

Matt: How important is it, do you think, for students? Or, or people at the beginning of a creative career. [00:24:15] To authentically authentic be themselves and to develop that kind of individualized voice in their work.

Yvette: I think it's really important that we give students the opportunity to challenge their and to look at their own lived experience [00:24:30] at the beginning of their creative.

Yvette: Education because it's much harder to do it as you move on into the commercial design world, especially. I think that that approach is [00:24:45] really powerful because when you start positioning students' identity, heritage, and lived experience in everything you do, I think it really helps foster a studio environment that is inclusive.

Matt: Yeah.

Yvette: So. It [00:25:00] allows you to, so apply your policy, apply the same value to everyone's experience. Yeah, and I think in any cohort of students, whether it's a cohort that I'm teaching at the moment, which are both [00:25:15] international and home, or whether it's a cohort of home students and they come from the same.

Yvette: Geographical area, they are still gonna have very different lived experiences. And I think that giving them the opportunity to be [00:25:30] able to discuss that with each other in the studios and to share that and to build in the opportunity for it to be a safe space for them to be able to share that with each other and also.

Yvette: Ask questions of each other. Yeah. I [00:25:45] think it enables you as a lecturer to really get to know your students quite quickly. I ask, I myself, and I asked my team to stand up and to give a very short sort of sentence or two about their [00:26:00] positionality and lived experience. 'cause I think it's important that we make ourselves.

Yvette: Vulnerable and we're able to do that. Yeah, it'd be an example as well. Yeah. Yeah. And modeling that, and as long as you keep it short and sweet, I think the students will take that on board. The main thing [00:26:15] is that it just gives everyone value. I know that I never thought that my lived experience was important, that it would maybe feed into my own creative development, and I know that when students are working at [00:26:30] GCSE and A level, there's a moment to be able to do that.

Yvette: But I think when we. Have got students on a course, which is very much, we have a little bit more time if you can find the time in your curriculum to do this. I think that the [00:26:45] rewards are wide ranging. You get to know your students well. Your students get to realize that they can mine their own experience and it changes all the time.

Yvette: So they could do look at this year in three [00:27:00] years time and their lived experience will be different. They will have experienced more than have a. Broader, broader reference point to work from as they go through their lives. Yeah. It's always useful to do that

Matt: without sort of breaking confidentiality or whatever.

Matt: Mm-hmm. Are there any students that you could tell us [00:27:15] about where you've seen this work in a particularly powerful way?

Yvette: Yes. I had a student last year who was. First generation Australian and their heritage was Chinese and they [00:27:30] very much mind the lived experience of them feeling other Right. Within that

Matt: context.

Yvette: Yeah. And they wrote a really powerful sort of poem about that. And the [00:27:45] actual project that they produced was very much about names that they'd been called. Right. Which weren't particularly. Quite hurtful at the time as a young child, and they really decided to [00:28:00] own that and to completely change the narrative around that.

Yvette: Yeah. And that's what their work was influenced by, and I think brilliant. That was really important for them, and they were able to talk about that in their. Interview, and I think that's another reason to [00:28:15] explore students' lived identity because it is incredibly authentic. And so when they go to a interview, whether it's for a creative role or whether it's for a degree.

Yvette: Program or for the next course [00:28:30] that they're going on to, they're able to tell the interviewer something about themselves if they choose that project to talk about. Mm. And most of my students, when they go on to degree interviews, will choose the project, which we call Project [00:28:45] U to talk about.

Matt: Yeah. They can make that connection, can't they?

Matt: And they can communicate part of themselves in terms of. A student or a creative or someone who maybe is listening to this and thinking that Project [00:29:00] U and the, these concepts of mining your lived experience sounds great, but not something they've done before. Is there some strategies or some things that they can do to.

Matt: Start on that process.

Yvette: The way that we do it is that we [00:29:15] start by asking students to collect images. So a personal archive. Visual archive, really, right? So we might ask them to collect portraits of themselves or their family, or even their chosen family. [00:29:30] It could be their friends, meaningful places. Their everyday environment.

Yvette: So we ask students, where do you spend the most time? Take a photo of that. It could be favorite places that they like to go. It can be anything. And it can be from where [00:29:45] they're living now, especially for our students or a lot of them living away from home and get their friends and family to send them photographs.

Matt: Okay.

Yvette: And then the other thing that we ask them to do is to ask 10 people in their network. [00:30:00] So describe them in three words. And that is something that's always really powerful. And we say that can be a relative, it can be a peer, it can be a sibling. Yeah. And we say it's really important that you get a [00:30:15] multi-generational sort of perspective on this.

Yvette: And then we get them to compare that, but, and we get them to think that you are different things to different people. To my children, I'm highly embarrassing to my students, maybe less. It's interesting for them to get that [00:30:30] contrast. And we say to them, well, what of those words are contrasting words? What are the similarities?

Yvette: And it's quite interesting that their siblings will often give them words that very contrast, but they give

Matt: them truth the way they, I suppose.

Yvette: Yeah. So [00:30:45] that works really well. And that's a starting point where they're able to, then we offer. Them to respond to those words with, or those collections of words.

Yvette: That could be a collection of words which are very similar or a collection of contrasting words. Mm. [00:31:00] We also asked our students to, if they want to record those responses in their own home language, and we asked them to present that to our other students in their home language, if it's [00:31:15] not English.

Yvette: Because I think that because we have quite a lot of international students, but lots of educators will have students whose home the language they speak at home is different from maybe the language they speak in the studio. And I [00:31:30] think it's important that to understand that some languages there isn't just one word they want, they may want to say a collection of words to explain what that person has said to them.

Matt: Yeah.

Yvette: So they say. In their home language, and then [00:31:45] they translate it for the other students. And I think that gives a sort of opportunity for people to hear the diversity of language and dialect that

Matt: people, well, they're really easy and accessible strategies that people can employ just to kind of. [00:32:00] Start on this.

Matt: Is it introspective, retrospective process of

Yvette: that works really well. Yeah. And it, and there's a lot of laughter. It does create a quite safe environment. Yeah. Yeah. And people can identify, because most people's siblings will say something annoying is [00:32:15] something that comes out quite strongly in that when people, siblings, uh, ask and just having the.

Yvette: Cross generational sort of approach as well is quite interesting. Yeah. Because grandparents might use a particular terminology and then [00:32:30] contemporaries will use different terminology. So I think that's really interesting just to see how language evolves as well, even in the same language.

Matt: And so thinking about something that people listening could get going with.

Matt: Straight away. Mm-hmm. In terms [00:32:45] of an activity or response or an idea, maybe linked to the three words thing, did you have anything in mind that you could challenge people to get going with?

Yvette: Yeah, I mean, I, I think that the three word exercise is great for anyone to do. I think [00:33:00] that if you ask people that know you in different sort.

Yvette: Areas of your life. It's interesting. And if you do it every two or three years, you might find that it changes. And then I think you could ask yourself, do those [00:33:15] words reflect on how you see yourself? Are you learning new perspectives from that? Are you surprised by any of those things that people have said to you?

Yvette: And also what words are. Contradicting each other. And is there particular groups of [00:33:30] people that are saying words that are contradictory? Mm. And also, if you're a student, how could you transfer those words into visual responses? Could you think of those words as a color? Could you think of [00:33:45] as a texture?

Yvette: Could you think of them where you're responding with Mark making? Is there an image that you want to either, an image that you take or an image that you find on your camera? Camera role that actually sum up that particular word or [00:34:00] group of words. And also, I think it's really important to ask yourself regularly, whether it's in your teaching, whether it's in your, if you're a student, your own work, what parts of your identity are visible in your own creative work, [00:34:15] and what parts of your identity are maybe still waiting to be discovered or explored.

Matt: Amazing. Thank you, Yvette. I mean, it was such a interesting journey. It just seems to have formed this wonderful thread that [00:34:30] ties all of these experiences together, so thank you ever so much for sharing that. It's been great to talk to you. Thanks again to Yvette for joining us today. If you want to know more about Yvette's work, we will include links to her [00:34:45] Instagram and other useful resources in the podcast episode description.

Matt: Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks ever so much for listening. Until next time, take care. [00:35:00] Bye-bye.