1. Introduction

My name is Flo (she/her), and I work as a Specialist Costume Technician at CSM, in Granary Building. I have been in this post since January 2022, working across the performance programmes. I thoroughly enjoy delivering skills and materials based workshops, as well as the day to day interactions I have with these imaginative, ambitious students in the costume studio.

In previous roles, I have supported the teaching and learning of performance practices primarily as a collaborator (as, for example, the Costume Designer to the student Choreographer or Performer), and as an Academic Supervisor in my field of expertise. A large part of my role in my previous employment (at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance) also included the mentoring of a Costume Graduate Intern, and nurturing of the freelance Costumiers I worked with. In that role, with a desire to consolidate my understanding of my own teaching practice, I embarked upon an FHEA, which I was awarded in spring 2022. I found this experience enlightening, and inspiring, so much so that it led to my application for my current role at CSM, which involves a much larger proportion of direct teaching, and student contact. 

In July 2023 I attended a performance design festival called Prague Quadrennial, at which I met and took part in workshops with other costume educators. The conversations I had and the energy I gained from these events inspired me to apply for the PG cert here at UAL.

Despite only recently having completed my FHEA, I feel that the PG cert will offer me time an space to develop a more expansive toolkit with which to take the newer pedagogic elements of my current role into consideration. Encouraged by the experiences of fellow technicians and academics in my department, I am looking forward to building a deeper understanding of teaching practice, and look forward to questioning and exploring the way I approach my role as an educator in an academic environment.