Visual: Report on the 2nd Art, Design, Media Subject Centre Annual Forum

Visual reports on a series of debates on visual learning, visual research and visual literacy in art, design and media higher education. The report includes a paper on visual research by the editor, summaries of speakers' presentations, reports on the debates by delegates and by guest student reporters. Contributors to the forum debate and the report have worked with or undertaken research on visual media. David Crow’s book Left to Right discusses how pictures, rather than words, have become the dominant form of communication. Trevor Hearing worked for many years as a TV cameraman and is interested in how documentary video will be used as a “creative academic research tool”. The TechDis project offers resources to assist disabled students, many of which are focused on how visual media can assist learning. Alistair McNaught, Senior Advisor for Further Education, has been discussing how these materials might be of particular use to art, design and media students. Simon Ofield is a contributor to the journal: Visual Culture in Britain and is particularly interested in connections between spatial and visual cultures. The massive potential of mobile technologies to form social networks and digital photography has driven an exponential rise in the number of images we are attempting to manage and is part of John Piper’s work at Kodak’s European Research Labs. Finally, Anita Taylor is a teacher and painter with a particular interest in drawing as a means of creative development, not only for artists, but for all of us living and working in the knowledge economy. David Clews' introductory essay discusses these contributions and wider issues of visual research and visual thinking. His paper builds on earlier work on visual learning including a research project, Imaging in Education funded by the Eastman Kodak Research Fund.