Keeping Reflective Journals and Sketchbooks

Devising and teaching a new module for Cass Business Management students, based on Reflective Practice, has caused me to revisit my own practice, and particularly keeping up a Reflective Journal or Reflective Sketchbook. This was something I was encouraged to do as a student studying Theatre Design, and now as I work on my first novel, I heavily use journals and notebooks to produce and reflect on my material. As design was my first discipline, these notebooks are also punctuated with sketches, images, pasted in photos, train tickets and all kinds of “detritus” that are grist to the mill for stimulating my imagination and reflecting on sometimes seemingly small events, in order to “notice things differently”.
So as keeping a Reflective Journal is a core part of what I am asking my students to do, I attended The Sketchbook Conference, held in Cambridge by Access Art, both to share our practice and to find out what the innovators are up to. Nothing could have fully prepared me for this extraordinary event, the range of interactive workshops, and the handling exhibition of hundreds of reflective sketchbooks and journals was awe inspiring.
There were many outstanding speakers, drawn from a wide range of disciplines. Eileen Adams was particularly memorable: a teacher educator, consultant and researcher in curriculum development, whose current work as Director of Power Drawing aims to embed the use of drawing as a medium for learning in educators’ practice.
It endorsed the work on Reflective Journals that I and my colleague Clive Holtham have been pioneering now over several years at Cass Business School. When working with talented undergraduates aspiring to a management career in a highly competitive world, the missing elements are often the ability to stand back and reflect, to become critically aware through observation of often “un-noticed “ but crucial things, and in doing so to become more self aware, and effective managers of people
The discipline of keeping a reflective journal, and encouragement to explore visual means of communication is a pioneering idea for business students. The recent exhibition by Cass first year management undergraduates, planned, curated and hosted by the students themselves, depended on their individual reflective journals. They exploited this as a key way of helping them develop their full potential, as future managers and as self-aware individuals.