SHIFT: Joanna Fursman

Fursman discusses her interest in visual representations of education, and how these speak to the complex negotiations that mark the experience of being educated. 

Featuring footage and photographs made with students, the film details Fursman's specific interest in the spaces that traditionally characterise sites of education and introduces the notion of 'third space pedagogy' as a means to disrupt them.

Constituting educational spaces that exist between the home and the institution, third space pedagogy asks how learners’ and educators’ experiences might be different if they take up space differently.

Detailing her project “Looking for a New School Portrait”, Fursman follows this line of enquiry, using creative methodologies to examine the experience of educational spaces from the perspective of students, and thus modelling third space pedagogy through experiences in which education becomes marginal and ill-defined. 

Joanna Fursman is an artist educator and researcher who lives and works in the West Midlands. She makes work exploring the interactions between materials, objects and bodies, using photography and film to explore how these interactions emerge in education spaces.

This film is part of SHIFT, Freelands Foundation’s quarterly series of short films spotlighting varied practices, approaches and philosophies within art education. 

Captions and editing: Sixbetween.

All audiovisual material and research is courtesy of the artist.