Summary
"A Being Objective" (aka "A Bee in Objective") Project, is a slightly bonkers idea for an animationfilm, which aims to extend, enrich and challenge the learning experience, both creatively and analytically. It centres around the word "objective" diving into a giant high-rise chemical flask and changing into the word subjective, whilst being observed by a crowd - as a means of exploring the tricky relationship between objectivity and subjectivity as ways of seeing and knowing the world. A cluster of individual bees open the scene, with their sting a threat to being objective and the final scene has worms arising from stings to the scalp-apple that txt each other trying to figure out what's going on. Its purpose is to playfully provoke thinking about the quest for knowledge and the role and status of subjectivity in the research process - and to bring creative drawing and thinking into the student experience. We envisage the project in two phases. The first a pilot and review of the project and the second phase, which is not costed for in this bid, being development and dissemination. The first phase comprises four parts:
- The making of the film-animation (approx.3-4 mins duration not including credits and with 3 scenes) involving students and a professional film-maker-animator and poet-artist at each stage. This means students can try out something new (creative drawing, envisaging themselves as a unique type of never imagined before bee - "Building a bee" / "A bee myself' - that can be part of the animation) and can question the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity in research through the process itself.
- The viewing of the finished animation and post-screening discussion. Debate will question the tricky relationship between objectivity and subjectivity in the quest for knowledge, and what "A being objective" might be. It can probe the ways in which subjectivity infiltrates research and whether we ever give this any thought. It could question the death and production of knowledge. It might range into the slithery opportunities/problems with language and symbolism (e.g. of the chemical flask and the bee, the apple and the worm). It might range to mindfulness.
- Making links with different university departments to see if they would be interested in this animation and/ the idea of animation as teaching/learning tool. A tool that questions the quest for knowledge in a way that could enliven what can be a dull and sometimes superficial foray into terms such as "reliability", "validity", "bias" and "sample selection" in research methodology modules and thinking.
- Collection of information on reflection, documentation, reporting and ideas for development