A’ Course tutor Peter Harvey at work during a student tutorial. Student/Agent Project? Studio A2. 1970-1971? Peter Venn Collection deposited at 10th Floor and MayDay Rooms. December 2009
The Area Designated A Project ran between September 27 and October 13, 1972 and opened the academic year for the incoming 3rd Year students (intake 2). The Project Brief below shows Group A staff, Garth Evans, Peter Harvey, Gareth Jones and Peter Atkins (Kardia) listed as the initial participants. As Garth Evans put it in late 1974 “The Area Designated “A” was a prescribed area of the large studio being used for the Course. The Project to which this referred required that each participant in the Course, including the Staff, occupy this Area exclusively for a full working day. The Designated Area functioned somewhat in the manner of a stage or platform from which the participants attempted to reveal, disclose, or in some way indicate aspects of their interests, concerns and activities”. The project development on the A Course often challenged the principle of assessment and measurement, where staff and students were cast as participants in a process of collaborative learning and where, as in the case of the Area Designated A Project, reading Ho Chi Minh’s Prison Diary was presented as a legitimate activity. As the document itself concludes on Point 4. “We acknowledge that there is disagreement among students as to whether grading in any form is desirable”.
