We all judge and we know that we are judged also. We are judged within seconds of entering the interview room: judgments made on our body posture and our appearance. We are judged in exams, in our performance reviews and in some cases (such as teaching observations) on spot checks of our performance. Once judged we are sorted into categories and filtered into situations that require further judgement on a wealth of subjective matters: how well we understand something, how much we have improved even how creative or original we have been.
How do you pass judgement on creativity? In November Culturemouse, wrote that when reading submissions for publication, she is always sure to remember that the act of writing is a creative process, the words on the page demonstrate that creativity has taken place, regardless of the quality of the work.
As a teacher I have to make a lot of judgments. I have to write my own criteria specifying the requirements of a Distinction piece of work, a Merit and Pass. I find the process torturous. By listing requirements I am limiting creativity. By specifying justification of decisions made, I am asking my students to sell their work to me, but they are not training to be sales people they are training to be Game Designers and Producers. My husband once explained that during his brief stint at Art College he was often required to justify his art, he said he couldn't do that, he was an artist not an orator, were he able to express himself via another medium he wouldn't be expressing himself through the medium of paint.*
On Saturday I popped my judgement into my handbag, alongside an umbrella because rain was forecast and a packed lunch, because I couldn't be sure I would like the food and set off for the Roland Levinsky building at Plymouth University. I was a judge in the semi finals of the YRS Festival of Code. But who was I to judge?
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In fact it was easy, because we all know a good thing when we see one. You don’t need to say why, you can just tell, fortunately during the judge’s discussion, I had the words to say why it was good (I took rather a lot of notes) and the best kids went through.
Some got it more right than others. No one got it wrong.
If there must be a competition; then there must be a judge and I hope that in my role I was fair, honest and above all non judgmental.
*This is a translation.
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