by Madeleine Davis, Department of English Literature
Between 2018 and 2020, staff and students in the Department of English Literature developed an innovative collaborative book project with staff and students in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication. In June 2020 we published the latest book from the project,
A Room of Our Own: The Virginia Woolf Learning Journals. This joins Second Sight: The Margaret Atwood Learning Journals (UoR, 2018), and Celebrating 100 Years of Women’s Voices (UoR, 2020).
A Room of Our Own presents final year students’ 500-word reflections on the work of Virginia Woolf on the final year module, ‘Virginia Woolf & Bloomsbury’. Using a variety of forms, the students respond personally, creatively and critically to Woolf’s ideas; the pieces are sometimes playful, often witty, and consistently moving, and artwork created specifically for this project responds to Woolf’s writing in alternative forms.
Brief background
The ‘Diversifying Assessments’ research project I co-led in 2016 aimed to identify ways of moving away from conventional assessment formats (generally, essays and exams) to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. Replacing the exam on my Part 3 modules with the Blackboard Learning Journal produced extraordinary writing and thinking and I felt strongly that more people should enjoy the students’ work as I had done. The collaborative publishing project was born. Working with ‘Real Jobs’ design students in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, and with student editors in the Department of English Literature (DEL), we draw students’ work together, learn proofreading and editorial skills, and collaborate on every aspect of design.
The process begins with securing sponsorship: our Vice-Chancellor generously supported A Room of Our Own from the Endowment Fund, and we’ve been very grateful for past support from the Teaching and Learning Deans. The next vital stage in the process of developing a new book involves securing a ‘Real Jobs’ student from Typography: the scheme is run by James Lloyd who posts professional commissions from internal and external customers. The scheme supports students’ employability by giving them hands-on experience of publishing and design commissions. Supervised by staff members in Typography, the students consistently produce exceptional work.
To extend employability opportunities to students in DEL, and to incorporate a wide range of expertise and experience, I then seek final year student editors. For A Room of Our Own, I found three gifted writers who joined the team to share editing, design decisions, and publicity options.
Between September 2019 and March 2020, the team met regularly to develop design ideas, to identify the material for the book, to edit it, and to develop the ‘vision’ for the book. Professor Eric Kindel, Geoff Wyeth and James Lloyd supported the project every step of the way, contributing their ideas and identifying issues before they had arisen. When the Covid lockdown began, we all moved online and brought the project through to completion in June 2020. All of us have been amazed by the quality (and beauty) of the book that has resulted.
A Room of Our Own includes a range of design features which contribute significantly to the originality of the final product. The editorial group, for example, was keen to include some pieces of Woolf’s handwriting, in her characteristic violet ink, for section titles. To turn this into a reality, Katy needed to analyse Woolf’s handwritten letters and create a hand-drawn bank of multiple forms from one letter to another so that she could pull the individual characters together to form new words. The result is stunning. The editorial group also wanted to use a female-authored, original font for the book (Woolf, we felt, would appreciate this detail). Katy identified a beautiful design by Kaja Slojewska, a former MA student in Typography. A last-minute issue with our original book-cover triggered a little panic, but Georgia Courtney-Cox, a very gifted artist in DEL, produced our arresting front cover within days.
Awards, and the value of the collaboration
The initiative has been recognised with two University Collaborative Awards for Excellence, a Times Higher Education shortlisting in the category of ‘Most Innovative Teaching’, and is now the University’s nomination for the HE Advanced CATE Award (July 2020).
The value of the collaboration can be demonstrated in numerous ways, not least in terms of the success of the designers and editors in using their work on the project to gain much-coveted early roles in publishing. But the true value of the project, I think, lies in alternative areas: I cannot find the words to express how proud I am of my students who have put heart and soul into our book. We like to think that Woolf herself would have appreciated our desire to build, and furnish, a ‘room’ of our own.
If you would like to obtain a copy of our book, please follow the following links:
