Must Should Could

This years UCL IOE PGCE exhibition with the Freelands was obviously cancelled and we decided to put it online. Please see Must Should Could the fifth year of collaboration between our student artist teachers and the Freelands Foundation. Must Should Could focuses on instruction. As a form of educational communication, instruction is located at the intersection of command, control and collaboration. Teaching inevitably involves the issuing of instructions, but it is also about following them. The title Must Should Could refers to an often-used technique from the school classroom, which provides a framework in which pupils are instructed to complete an essential task, encouraged to do better or advised to aim to achieve more. ‘Must’ could be perceived as passive aggressive, ‘Should’ might infer a lack of commitment, whereas ‘Could’ relaxes into the gentle possibility of going a step further.

There is also an interesting series of discussions between, myself, Lesley Burgess, Henry Ward and 3 of the students published on The NetGallery site. I discuss the relationship between making and teaching while referring to my own practice.