Cut, paste, connect: Making meaning through collage

In 2023, Simon Abbott, a Work-based Learning Advisor at City St Georges, University of London, and Charlotte Stevens, an academic developer at the University of Warwick, responded to a call to join the events team for Creativity for Learning in Higher Education (#creativeHE), an open collaborative community for creative practitioners and students. Over the following year they extended their practice, both within and beyond the #creativeHE forum, shaping their identities as higher education professionals – all through the medium of collage. In this article they explore how they used collage in a variety of different ways: as a means of communication; collaboration; to facilitate reflective practice and develop research and scholarship. They also explore how the medium played a key role in nurturing a positive and supportive professional relationship, leading them to cultivate skills in artmaking and writing. Drawing on arts-based theory and research, they tell their story through an illustrated journey.