Spaces to Breathe: Creating a Community of Practice
Overview
For three decades, Dr Tracy Part has worked in a variety of educator roles and understands that is her ability to grow ‘social glue’ and facilitate EDI agents of change that has been the key ingredient behind the success of her grassroots project ‘Spaces to Beathe’. Tracy, with colleagues in TaLIC, have formed a Community of Practice that acts as a clear pathway that empowers professional and academic staff to facilitate institutional change. By networking, sharing practice and leading professional development projects, colleagues navigate institutional and personal entanglements to embed values of inclusivity, antiracism and decolonisation within their, and colleagues, professional practices.
‘Spaces to Breathe’ is a concept. The formation changes with the educational philosophy of the leader of the project, but the fundamental principles remain. ‘Spaces to Breathe’ projects seek to foster practice that is grounded in sharing values with special attention paid to respectful and active listening that seeks out diversity in opinion.
The ‘Spaces to Breathe’ projects act as a clear pathway for colleagues to come to the centre of the community, take part in decisions, add artefacts, share practice, find new networks and then provide a clear retreat to the periphery, or another aspect of the Spaces to Breathe Community of Practice (CoP).
Building expertise in Evaluation, EDI practices, critical pedagogies, change management and active listening are key metrics for evaluating the success of each project. We use the TASOs template to explain the change management process and guide evaluation of each of the project and each leader of a ‘Spaces to Breathe’ project is asked to complete the evaluation toolkit.
The active projects have a channel in Teams, with active members only having access to discussions. The format of the projects can change but tend to follow the pattern of six live sessions with each member making an artefact, with a reflective commentary of the experience. The project leader then archives the channel and decides whether the contents should be made accessible to the whole community. ‘Spaces to Breathe’ projects are currently housed within the Fellowship scheme at Goldsmiths.
Contributor
Dr Tracy Part (she/her), Goldsmiths, University of London
Teaching and learning Innovation Centre (2024)
Lesson plan
- Identify your own 'why' for creating a Community of Practice, check the energy pulse for your idea and then reflect on how you can make sure the 'why' is inclusive and captures a diversity of opinions.
- From the beginning think about your evaluation. You can use the AdvanceHE Link opens in a new windowevaluation tool kitLink opens in a new window. This will help you to articulate
what it is you are trying to achieve and why. - Check again. The why should be protean and enable values to grow or shrink with the community. You might want to include an EDI impact assessment. This will mean that if you find that there are no questions about the communal ‘why’ you can investigate. Have you come to a consensus? Or do you suspect that there might be voices which, through no fault of you own, simply have not been heard or voiced? If you have already completed an EDI impact assessment, you will have a semi-structured way to think about the barriers to engagement, and understand who has or has not been involved, and why.
- Be very clear about the communication pathway. Have you asked opinions from all levels of the University? Think about the different modes of communication open to you. Teams, email, VLEs, internal web pages, departmental team meetings can all be considered.
- Once you have the 'why', the aims, and you know the unique message that you want to offer, decide on how you will host your CoP. This includes physical spaces (online, in person, hybrid, off campus, etc.), the principles of these space(s) (safe, brave, principled, accountable, etc.), and how you will provide information to all the colleagues you want to attract. You will probably want to capture these as ground rules.
- Now it is time to be specific about how you will host your CoP: in person (where), virtual, hybrid, asynchronous and/or live? This will facilitate networking beyond the life span of the project. You may want to include one-off speakers and/or events to keep interest in the CoP.
- Sign up to EdD CoP JISC mailing listLink opens in a new window to join colleagues who are establishing Communities of Practice within their own institution.
- Make sure you evaluate the impact of your CoP and if you use TASOs template you can probably contribute to your institutional claim for APP, REC and or TEF.
- Have Fun! Make connections.
- Where appropriate delegate each project to a leader who wants to take the idea forward. Facilitate in the success, ensure that there is an evaluation but ensure that the project is the vision of the project lead.
Tutor's observations
Goldsmiths is currently in turmoil with poor moral staff and high degree of job uncertainty. The main goal of the first space to breathe project has been to offer a safe place for colleagues to devise a plan for podcasting and to be able to use there experimentation and innovation as a pedagogy based conversation starter. The leader of the project has excelled with the space and wishes to take it forward in the new academic year, as a practical workshop on becoming a podcaster. The second Space to Breathe project is a collaborative project between Imperial College London and Goldsmiths College, University of London as is a critical pedagogies reflective course with two units; critical white studies and decolonising the curriculum. The project leads have decided that the space to breathe will start in January 2025 with warm up activities organised by Tracy to build awareness and interest in the CoP.
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Departments: Goldsmiths, University of London