The Spiral

This piece represents the core of my PhD, which ended up being about The Role of Writing in undergraduate Design Education in the UK and was the first time I properly came in contact with Higher Education from the teaching side.

The spiral itself represents the structure I had in mind – I was trying to turn Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle into three dimensions, which represents the research process as well as both the design and writing process (one of the points I made in the PhD). I used little images of it to preface chapters, always highlighting where in the spiral the reader was at this point.

I like the idea of this, a spiral that gets tighter and comes to a point as the focus of the research becomes clearer, becoming the starting point of an outgoing spiral, as the (initial) centre point on my quilt. And while I didn’t end up in Higher Education for a couple of years, this was the spark that in the end did start my current career (and got me my job).

I realise this might not remain in the middle of the quilt, but for now I will work outwards in a spiral…