This week in our #CreativeHECovid Zoom Cafe we talk about the multiple challenges of homeworking for CreativeHE academics, very often involved directly in creative practice, alongside teaching and research.  Get involved if you want to join the conversation on Wednesday 3-4pm (UK time). 
If you cannot make it you can use the Comments area below on our blog to leave your views / notes (Comments are moderated and can be anonymous). 

We will discuss how home working happens in relation to teaching but also research and practice for academics in Creative HE courses.
What is the capacity of our homes (including your garage, studio, garden or kitchen table) to accommodate the infrastructure or materials needed to create and practice? What other affordances (technologies, softwares, coffee...) are needed?
We will also consider how home working connects with other caring responsibilities or challenges in connection to work-life balance.
Finally, what new practices are needed to ensure our personal well-being (physical and mental) when working from home? Is there such a thing as healthy home working? 
We look forward to learn from your experience and discuss your views. 

This week we launch our first bite-size survey.
A quick opportunity for anyone involved in Creative HE to discuss the impact that Covid-19 is having on the sector.
The survey this week focuses on Degree Shows: Current practice and Future Scenario. 
The survey will only take 3 minutes to complete. We will discuss the results and share them with you in a blog post in the next two weeks. 
Please share the survey with others and if you want to join us for our Zoom Cafe' online on Wednesday 20th 3-4pm UK time we will talk about Degree Shows: current and future scenarios.  Register here to receive the invitation to join our Zoom discussion. 

Research on the home learning environment has been developed in relationship to early years development and primary – secondary education (Sutton Trust 2010), particularly in relation to inequalities around cognitive development and attainment level. Less attention has been paid on the relationship between the home learning environment and Higher Education (HE). In our last #CreativeHECovid zoom café which focused on coursework and assessment, the impact of the home learning environment for HE students was raised as an issue that the switch to online current assessment criteria has not yet taken into account.
In the discussion on younger children’s home learning environment data has exposed how C-19 has exacerbated the social inequalities within education (Sutton Trust report April 2020). There is a noted concern that C-19 will widen the attainment gap through unequal access to technology, support and space within the home learning environment, having a potential long term impact on social mobility. The report considers the impact of the home learning environment in relation to HE but acknowledges that there insufficient knowledge and evidence on the variable ability for students in HE to continue with their studies. It acknowledges that issues relating to space, resources including internet connection and other technological platforms plus caring responsibilities for family members will create barriers for certain students across their circumstances, making standardised online assessment frameworks problematic.
In our zoom café hosted last Wednesday on learning and assessment within Creative HE, the complexity of this shift, in relation to creative subjects was highlighted. Unlike other subjects, whereby essays or other forms of written work could be uploaded online (although acknowledging that there will still be variance across accessibility to online platforms) the shift to online assessment linked to creative subjects necessitated skills not necessarily linked to the curriculum – filming, editing and then uploading performances for example or creating a blog or online platform for a visual arts presentation. Access to the skills and resources to share coursework was therefore not equal and not part of the original learning outcomes. Participants spoke of the radical shift from group-based to individual assignments within certain subjects, particularly those in relation to the performing arts following C-19, and the loss of the collaborative thought-processes and development that emerged from group-based work. There was an acknowledgement of the difficulty in re-producing the studio-based environment within the home, and how artists, craftworkers, media practitioners would be able to access the material resources necessary for their assignments. Childcare came up as a particular impact on those students who could no longer concentrate on their coursework whilst managing home learning for their children. Although it was acknowledged that there were development opportunities in relation to innovation, planning, development and individual responsibility, participants in our discussion were mindful that there was an inequality of access to the resources, space and time needed for the online creative HE learning assessments which would be likely to create further divisions across gender, socio-economic status that are already problematic in both the creative HE sector and the creative economy more broadly.
You can access the forum discussion on learning and assessment through the creativeHEcovid  padlet by registering to take part in the project. 

Written by Dr Tamsyn Dent, King's College London

​Covid-19 has exposed the unsustainability (in the light of a global pandemic) of the creative and cultural workforce. Immediately following the lockdown came a series of surveys from different creative/cultural organisations illuminating the fragility and vulnerability of those employed across their respective sectors. But what has C-19 exposed about a similar culture of short-term and insecure working patterns that operates across Higher Education (HE)? And what is the position for the casual worker who operates within both the creative sector and HE?​

This pandemic has enlarged the financial hole in British HE (potentially more so for Creative HE) and exposed its over-reliance on International students, both in terms of the fees they pay but also their economic contribution to the wider surrounding community. Given the indications that applications from International students will be significantly lower in 2020/2021 who will bear the responsibility of plugging the financial burden? The immediate victims, it seems, are the casualised HE workers, those employed on fixed term, or hourly-paid contracts who sit outside both the furlough scheme and, potentially, self-employed support (many may be ‘employed’, even part-time and not registered as ‘self-employed’ with HMRC, or claiming their full salary as a self-employed worker) they will be left jobless without much prospect of employment in the near future and limited access to financial support. The University College Union (UCU) conducted a survey in 2019 that exposed the extent of casualisation within HE and newspaper reports have revealed the level of redundancies and job-losses that have already taken place within certain institutions as an immediate reaction to C-19.