On Tuesday and Wednesday 21st and 22nd June, the Open qualifications team of the Open university in partnership with the Associate Lecturer Support & Professional Development team hosted an interdisciplinary conference, Blurring Boundaries. The purpose of the conference was to engage staff from across the University in conversations about interdisciplinary teaching and learning, encouraging discussions about the benefits of blurring boundaries across subjects and disciplines as well as the value of learning from one another.
The conference began with a joyful keynote address from Lou Mycroft who introduced the Campaign for JoyHE. Lou is an FE changemaker, social entrepreneur and TedX speaker (‘The Ethics of Joy’).
Lou said, “I’m here to talk to you about joy and how over in FE we’ve been baking this value into practice for the past three years or so. FE faces separate and equal challenges to HE as of course it would. We all face similar external challenges, as do our colleagues in schools and early years. It’s all a mess. And yet here we are, doing our best. In our classrooms, in our admissions practice, in our libraries, in our timetabling, in our one-to-ones with students, in moderation meetings. We are trying to operate with kindness and ease when everything feels urgent. It isn’t. But with so much noise around us it’s sometimes impossible not to feel that it is. Where do we think? When do we rest?”
To read Lou’s keynote in full, please visit https://loumycroft.substack.com/p/blurring-boundaries-the-campaign or to discover more resources, have a look at the Padlet page Lou put together for the event.