Unthinkable Dialogue #05
Design + education + play = an exciting space for exploration
An interview by Justin Spooner
This is the fifth of our series of Dialogues with associates and partners of Unthinkable. In this one I am delighted to share a conversation I had with Ella Zeki, one of our fabulous designers. We were very lucky to meet Ella early on in her design career, and as soon as we met we realised we had loads of overlapping interests. In this Dialogue we explore what design and play can bring to the learning experience (plot spoiler: a lot!)
J: Hello Ella, thanks for joining me in this dialogue today. Let me start by saying how great it is that you are part of the Unthinkable team - each of the designers we work with brings something different and you have already really made your mark on the projects you are working on and of course our new website. Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up working with Unthinkable?
E: Hi Justin, yes of course I can… I am a graphic designer and playful thinker, I studied Graphic Communication Design at Central Saint Martins. I went through the course with a very open mind trying lots of different things and responding to different subjects each time. When my final year came round I connected the dots. Each project of mine was very colourful, fun, and interactive. All geared towards a purpose, of trying to fix something in the world. That's where play comes into the mix, it’s my style, my way of expression and how I connect with my audience.
For my 3rd year project I decided on a collaboration with a friend (Alice Gough), who is an illustrator. We weren't sure on the content exactly but we were sure we wanted to design something educational for children. Then the unexpected happened, we went into a national lockdown. In response to schools being shut due to COVID-19, we designed a set of books to encourage parents to use the skills and knowledge they already possess…and to create a fun pressure free learning environment at home. Little Lessons are a set of activity books, these activities were designed with play in mind, but have strong life-lesson qualities. The child’s publication was fun and playful, and the parent's publication guides the parent on how to approach the different activities whilst enriching the learning qualities…and most importantly guiding the parent on how to open up conversations and reflect on the learning together.
And this is how I ended up falling into the education space. The combination of playfulness and the education kind of go hand in hand, and can be useful to a person of any age. I’m fascinated by the endless possibilities this area holds. And after a year of searching for the right job, I had a message from you asking me to join an exciting educational project Unthinkable were working on.
J: Yes indeed - a huge thanks to our friend and associate Paul Finn for pointing us in your direction. And it wasn’t long before we asked you to contribute to the design of our new website.
E: Yes not a task I took lightly, it felt like I was being passed the torch. It has been a privilege to be a part of the next chapter of Unthinkable, and evolving its identity. It’s been great to see the process from start to finish and now we can share it with the world!
J: That's absolutely right and I could already feel your sense of play that you brought to the process. Today we wanted to make our conversation a little bit around play, but also around this big question that you obviously asked yourself in that project you just described - how knowledge, ideas and wisdom can move from one generation to the next? And I also have picked up a bit of frustration you have with the way schools are doing it at the moment, and your hope that there might be the opportunity to do learning a different way.
E: What's most important for me to get across in my work is that learning doesn’t only happen in the classroom, it happens in our everyday lives, and sometimes when we aren’t even aware of it. Of course having my own experiences at school, and some experiences as an adult in the environment of primary and secondary schools highlighted for me the slight disconnect in the way we are headed as a society vs how we teach the ‘curriculum’ and the younger generation. Ken Robinson puts it best “It’s education that takes us into a future we can’t grasp”.
Small elements of the curriculum change every year, but I feel like it needs a full makeover. It’s just not set up for future generations to succeed and take over the world in an amazing way.
J: Tell me a bit about that school and college experience - you did go to a world class creative education organisation - Central St. Martins.
E: I guess I always knew I wanted to have a job I loved and was passionate about, and that was my driving force. Doing something creative was always an option for me and I chose my secondary school based on that, somewhere that would allow me to express my creativity.
Funnily enough I didn’t think university was something that was available to me. I was the first person in my family to attend university. So going into my last year of A-levels it was something my teachers encouraged me to pursue. I was very lucky to have teachers that pushed me in the right direction and challenged me, there were so many that shaped my experience in different ways.
But as each year went at my secondary school the funding for creative arts got less and less, now they are massively cutting funding for arts at university level. I was lucky, and had a rough sense of what I wanted to do, but I know so many don’t and if they aren’t even given the chance to try their hands at a creative subject that could be a talent lost and opportunity missed. Creativity is the best problem solver and without that element being taught, vital life skills aren’t conveyed and passed down through the generations.
J: Tell me a little bit about some of the ideas that have been emerging for you around how to do things differently - what might be the better way?
Zooming in and starting small, we can teach from experience. Linking back to our project Little Lessons. One thing I’ve started to collect are the statements that begin with “I wish I'd learnt that in school…”. The more I learn and grow as an adult we are faced with new concepts like bills, mortgages, our mental health and wellbeing as we start to fly the nest, cooking for ourselves/large groups - the list really is endless! No one ever taught me how to do those things, and we have to source the answers out for ourselves. Which is a great lesson in itself. But I believe even an introduction into some of these really important things would set children up for a better chance of living a full, rich life.
And if we then zoom out to the bigger picture, the longer term goal is looking at the ecosystem of school. What is it? How does a classroom of the future function? We are at a pivotal point, where change needs to happen. Not only for the benefit of students but for the benefit of the hard working teachers.
J: So I'm hearing three things. I'm hearing about a big systemic change for schools. Making sure that creative skills and practices are recognised and celebrated in schools. And then I'm hearing this third thing about the missing curriculum - the things ‘I wish I had learnt at school’.
So if we pick one off for a minute. Tell me a little bit about how you think creative thinking and practice could be better celebrated and embedded in our formative learning experiences.
E: I think our education system is geared up to assist children in getting good jobs and that is its sole purpose. But we should be teaching that life is far much more than that. By allowing the individual to navigate through the abundance of information we now have would definitely allow them to take away far more knowledge, and useful experiences that relate to their own individual lives. We are all unique, which is the beauty of it and everyone learns in such different ways.
Acting creatively can come through the form of play. It’s an act we are all experts in but for some reason leave it in our pasts. Being playful breaks barriers, it asks for no questions, just pure enjoyment. A great example is the task of building the tallest building from marshmallows and spaghetti. No one is an expert in this field, so everyone's ideas are valid, and no idea is too silly.
J: Enabling creativity as a way to free ourselves up and find new ideas and solutions - sometimes without any question to prompt us - just a direction to explore maybe…
E: Yes. On my point about broadening skills - I don’t think we necessarily need to have whole classes around life after school, but I think there are engaging ways of having important conversations around these topics. I know from my experiences of PSHE/Citizenship lessons they were not taken seriously. And I think it’s a missed opportunity for a change that can happen right away. A chance for live industry talks, group tasks and real life experiences from engaging and inspirational people. And most importantly a chance for the students to have a say in what they learn about.
These things are important and exciting, and to feel confident when leaving school is empowering. What's missing is the creativity and play in the approach to exploring those ideas!
J: So you're saying that the teaching of a broader set of skills could benefit from some creative thinking themselves…
E: Yes, definitely.
J: And going back a little bit to you know your own practice and design, and I noticed that there's a lot of joy and playfulness in your own design. As compared to say for example, a designer that's all about monochrome palettes and grids. Was that exuberance always in you or did you sort of find it? Is it just an expression of your personality?
If you compare my work against my personality you can certainly see the resemblance. The everyday is far too mundane to shy away from colour, I am playful in every sense of the word. My main goal for designing anything is to bring something positive, giving my audience a take away. Something they might learn from my work and think about it in the context of their own lives. And maybe make a change or a difference for a bigger purpose.
The one piece of work that encapsulates that the most is the growing card game I designed called “Mix and Patch”. It teaches children how to grow their own fruits and vegetables with things they find lying around the house. Instilling a scrappy, and sustainable outlook on food could encourage a whole generation, who will have the understanding and passion for growing their own food.
J: I think you’ve mentioned this serious aspect to play a few times now - that you have a strong sense that playful and engaging design can better communicate ideas.
E: The visual aesthetics can make a real difference to engagement, but having a whole system all designed under the same umbrella or style and language could make a real difference to pedagogy and efficiency on the side of the teachers.
Imagine how different a school could operate if a designer worked alongside the teachers, to assist bringing their visions to life. Working on implementing a well designed and unique system to support the school and its community. It would be a pretty exciting venture and would create a limitless adaptive learning environment.
In one breath I say imagine, but actually that kind of sums up the project I am currently working on. I am a part of a brilliant production design team, and we produce digital lesson content for a global school. Day to day I am designing lessons and supporting materials, all mapped out by the teachers and learning designers. The best part of all is the world of bespoke characters I have created that sit alongside their lessons.
J: Absolutely - design used to support a pedagogy to convey ideas and create a kind of dialogue with ideas. There was that exciting part of the project when we started thinking about narrative arcs that played out over a six week period and that could connect lots of disparate ideas with story and characters.
Having designed characters that sit alongside educational content, and better yet when they have a whole narrative weaved into their lessons… you can clearly see how much more engaged a child is when this character is following them through subjects and asking them questions as they go. Creating these narratives and bringing in the learning is one way to playfully immerse students into the world of whatever it is they are learning. And best of all making it a memorable moment for them to return to.
J: I think we both have faith that combining specialisms like design and teaching opens up huge opportunities for the development of new ideas and approaches. So finally tell me a bit about how you would like to see schools do things differently.
E: The format of school has always been the same, with each year that passes it just seems to change ever so slightly. I think it’s time we hit the reset button. I ponder this question as if it was a design problem, if everyone could erase their memory of what a school system is. The new one we would design to fit our lifestyles right now, would be totally different, and probably look and exist nothing like the one we see today.
We are rapidly changing and evolving as a species, studies show that 65% of children will have jobs that haven’t even been invented yet. So how can we prepare students to be prepared for something that hasn’t been invented yet. I think an interesting approach would be to take the skills and knowledge we have and start being more dynamic. Why not teach science, history, geography through the lenses of maths and english. Throwing up new ideas and perspectives by opening the conversation up and encouraging exploration into the unknown. I think the subject silos work against our natural desire to connect ideas.
Fundamentally my goal is to better equip children from all backgrounds with the knowledge and bravery to do whatever they want to do when they leave school, and feel like they are fully equipped to achieve it. And designing a future that is an inclusive learning experience for all! Play and education are very similar in the sense that we should never stop practising either of them!
J: I Love it. Well, thank you for sharing your very expansive vision about what learning can be like. Thank you very much.
E: You're very welcome.