The imaginative spaces of social policy

The imaginative spaces of social policy (a work in progress) Ian Robson

The following sketches were produced in 2017 whilst teaching a course on social policy. In addition to traditional teaching methods, I wanted to help students think about issues such as education, welfare, childcare, family life as

imaginative spaces In these imaginative spaces, we explored how we could approach topics differently, change perspectives, find lines of enquiry and disturb our usual ways of looking.

What if there was a machine that made social policy?

You could ask all sorts of things, such as: • Who made it?

• What would it do?

• How would you know it was working?

• Making links and connections in images helped us ask “why”?

• We injected personality and purpose through characterisation.

• We discovered the power of the unopened box!

We imagined who might live in the house, what they did, why might others be concerned and many other things.

In the imaginative space provided, we imagined “family intervention birds�.

What were they concerned with?

What skills did they have? When would they leave?

In an space concerned with schooling, we imagined sights, sounds and movements.

What was happening to children and why?

Creating visual imaginative spaces is an ongoing part of my teaching and research practice. I am looking to push into new forms of enquiry and dialogue, and give people new ways of asking, imagining, changing perspective and disrupting habitual thinking. @ianrobsons https://about.me/ianrobsons