Today has been an interesting day so far. Dan and I have been discussing and researching for our conference, which is part of this bid.  Our conference objective is to explore how other universities use Radical Collections. Through this, we will use the conference to inform the creation of a Best Practice Guide.  We have been researching suitable keynote speakers, and have come up with several across academic and work-related fields. We are considering two speakers, one from academia for the morning sessions, and one more practice based for the afternoon. In this way, we get the best of both worlds, so to speak. We have several excellent people to now contact.

Dan has also been working on the evaluation forms for the project. The evaluation forms serve two purposes. Firstly, we want to utilise them with existing student cohorts to find out their opinions using radical collections. This research is moving us on from our previous research held at Park campus. This research is also specifically targeting radical collections, and by gaining data, we wish to draw deeper conclusions from this. I have been researching radical archives, radical pedagogies across several themes, in order to provide a sound academic basis for our research.  So far, there is quite a lot of information found using radical teaching practices, so this work is ongoing.

Later in the week, I will also be chasing up last week’s emails to the faculties to see who engages with radical archives. This is important work, as it will be used as a basis for our radical database.