For our second workshop, we were allowed to choose from a list of texts, and so I chose the one entitled “How do art and design technicians conceive of their tole in higher education?” (Sams, C., 2016) as I am currently working as a technician in higher education. In this job role, I have always found that I am truly unsure of how I am defined, and I have always had a feeling that the university doesn’t have any more of an idea than I do. Across my college, LCF, the technical role wears so many hats that even in the same departments, two people with the same job title can be doing two different jobs.
This case study was done across all of UAL, so technicians of different grades and specialisms all took part. It was unsurprising to see that when you strip away specialism from the technical job role, you get the same consistency in perception of what is left. Sams (2016) concluded that “three key themes emerged when comparing the responses from this study, establishing notions of supporting, helping, and teaching as fundamental to the technician roles.” I would agree that supporting, helping, and teaching are all tenets of technical roles, but I am disappointed that within those final three themes there is little to no mention of technical expertise or artistry. Sams (2016) writes responses from select technicians describing not feeling valued by academics or administrators for their technical artistic knowledge but fails to include that in their conclusion. I feel that this is exactly why higher education fails to pinpoint what a technician actually is – to be able to support, help, and teach, you must first acknowledge the requirement of the breadth of knowledge and expertise of a specific craft needed to accomplish those three tasks. You cannot have one without the other.
Sams, C. (2016) ‘How do art and design technicians conceive of their role in higher education?’, Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, Volume 1 Issue 2, pp. 62-69.