Stop Saying “Be Creative” And Start Unpicking It

I recently attended an event at Nottingham Trent University that wasn't really aimed at me — but it got me thinking in ways I wasn't expecting. Industry designers were talking to final-year product design students about what it takes to succeed in the profession, and I found myself scribbling notes and asking: what does any of this mean for D&T classrooms?

In this episode, I share my reflections on that event and dig into some of the ideas that stuck with me. We're talking about concepts like problem framing, vision, taste and judgment — the kinds of things that experienced designers do almost instinctively. But here's the thing: when knowledge becomes tacit, when you just know how to judge a good design without being able to explain how you got there, it becomes really difficult to teach.

This is something I think matters enormously for D&T teachers, particularly those who've come into teaching through a design or industry route. The professional knowledge you've built up is genuinely valuable — but your role in the classroom is to recontextualise it. To select, simplify, and make it visible for your pupils. That's not straightforward, and I don't think we talk about it enough.

I also reflect on how easily professional language — taste, creativity, empathy — can become the very clichés we're trying to avoid, if we don't stop to unpick what we actually mean.

So here's my challenge to you: what's the tacit knowledge you have that you've never fully examined? And how might unpicking it change what you do in the classroom?

Developing “Taste” in D&T: Reflections from an NTU Event

Transcript

Welcome And Why This Matters

Alison Hardy 0:06

You're listening to the Talking D&T Podcast. I'm Dr. Alison Hardy, a writer, researcher, and advocate of design and technology education. In each episode, I share views, news, and opinions about D&T. Last

A Nottingham Trent Industry Panel

Alison Hardy 0:24

Friday I attended an event at Nottingham Trent where I work that was facilitated by the School of Architecture and the Built Environment, specifically by the product design lecturing team. And I want to give a shout out to Karen Winfield and Simon Cavill. I've got their names wrong, I've not going to look them up, but they know who they are. They're the two colleagues who organise this. And Max Pownall, another colleague of theirs who's part of Archer Exchange with myself, forwarded me the invite and said, Alison, you need to go to this. And I kept saying, Why? Why do I need to go? Anyway, I'm really glad I did. I wasn't the intended audience, but I'm still glad I went because it was an event with representatives from industry and a couple of speakers who have their own design companies, and then a panel of alumni who've gone into the field of design, and it was aimed at mainly the final year students for them to hear about what the professions, what the industry were saying they needed, and how to get there and how to grow once you've finished your degree. So it was really interesting, but as I said, I I wasn't the audience, so I was sat and I was thinking, so you know, where where is this making me think in what I do as a design and technology teacher educator, former teacher, somebody who writes and talks about this school subject of design and technology. And I was reflecting on if I was a teacher in the room, how would I pick this up? And how has my thinking moved on since then about how now, if I was a teacher, I might pick this up and take it into my classroom.

Taste And Problem Framing In Design

Alison Hardy 2:10

So I did an article on LinkedIn about it. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. It was specifically about one word that came up and from Kevin. Um I'm not going to remember everybody's surnames, so I'm just going to call him Kevin for the moment, which is about developing taste as a designer, , developing taste, which kind of resonated with me about how do we do that, how do we do that in children, what what do we do to do that? And at one point, Kevin Kevin talked about that when one of the things that designers learn how to do is is problem framing, you know, understanding the context, the situation, the users. Um and he he said it was important to set this out at the start. So I kind of spent spending that time at the beginning to really interrogate the the situation, the context, and so on, to be able to frame the problem correctly. And if you can do this, then he said you can avoid or don't use cliches that mean nothing. Oh, it's got to be user-friendly or it's got to be innovative, it's got to be interesting. You know, these are big words that actually, when you unpick them, what what do they actually mean? And I thought that was that was really interesting because I thought if I was a teacher in the room, or when I was a teacher, I would have sat there and I would have listened to some of the things that he was saying that the students needed to develop as they were on their next step into industry. And some of the things that he said that they needed to develop was framing, problem framing, um, vision, ,

When Big Words Become Empty

Alison Hardy 3:55

taste and judgment, and craftsmanship. Now I I was thinking, okay, so if I was a teacher, I might start to think, okay, so I'm going to develop children's ability to frame problems, or I'm going to develop children's taste and judgment. I'm not going to touch the word craftsmanship because I have a an issue with the word man in that sentence. Some people might go I'm being overly feminist in that, but I do think so. This is just going off a slight tangent about the use of words. I think craftsmanship is a is a traditional word. We're in a a more enlightened era now where we try not to use gendered words, you know, we talk about actors, not actors and actresses anymore. It's interesting to note that location, location, location. If you're in England, you might see that they don't talk about the master bedroom anymore, they talk about the main bedroom. These words are are really loaded. We don't, you know, in the classroom we try and avoid using the words like guys, we might talk about folks, um, you know, more neutral words. So, anyway, that's just going off at a tangent. I like to do that. so then that got me thinking about let's just stick with these four words, whether I what do you say in terms of terms of craftsmanship? Was it craftship? Degree of crafts, anyway. There we go, off at a tangent. I'll leave that one with you because that's not the point of what I want to talk about in this episode. So we've got frame and vision, taste and judgment, and craftsmanship, these four, these four things, taste and judgment is one, and that they needed to develop those. Now, so going back to what I was saying about he said, if you really understand problem framing, if you really understand the problem and the context, then you'll for the cliches. I'm thinking about this as a teacher educator and as a design and technology person, those words of framing, vision, taste, judgment, craftship could be all cliches. What do we actually mean by them? So I see my role as an educator, whether that's into students who are trained to be D&T teachers, or if you're listening and you're a teacher, I think your role is how do you translate and make visible these these types of learning that are happening in the professions, or these pieces of knowledge in the professions about you know, um, to design you you develop taste and judgment. How do we translate that into the classroom? Because the danger can be as an educator is that we hear experts like Kevin and David who are on the stage talk, and we see those headlines, and there were some really sexy headlines, um, as I said, about taste. And David talked about stuff, bridges, and ice, you know, which is a whole other talk, and I'm not going to go into that one. And we think that's what we should be teaching. And as I said, ironically, these then become cliches, you know, like empathy. We need to teach empathy, or we need to teach skills, but we don't really unpick these. so for me, as an educator, good educators start to unpick what this looks like in a design and technology classroom. So then what became more interesting as well was that

Tacit Knowledge And Teaching Taste

Alison Hardy 7:35

at the end there was a bit of a QA. just I'm not I'm going to keep my mouth shut on that that that thought. I had a little bit of an internal rant at one point, but I'm not going to articulate all of that here and now. and Jim Dale, who's a principal lecturer in product design, asked Kevin and David, how um, so how do you teach taste? How do you develop taste? And and initially Kevin was a bit sort of, oh, I I I need to think about that. And and David came in with some answers. And I thought, ah, that's really interesting because it's kind of tacit. We have this knowledge, or they have this knowledge, but they can struggle to articulate how they gained it. Now, that that's okay in many ways for them because they're in a role where it needs to be tacit, it needs to be instinctive. I mean, I would argue that they also need to be continually questioning their judgment and taste, and I'm sure they do. That's not I'm not making a judgment about them. It it and so many teachers who come into design and technology have also come through a design route, they've done a product design, architecture fashion, and all sorts of different design degrees and possibly worked in professions, and and their their knowledge has become tacit, it's almost instinctive, they don't know how they've developed it. And so I sometimes hear student teachers say, We need to teach children to be creative. And I think it's my job to go, well, what do you mean by that? How how do you teach that? What strategies will you use? What are the techniques? How do you develop somebody's creativity? Now, again, just going off aside, Bill Nichols's done some fantastic practical pedagogical stuff that's underpinned by really rigorous theory and research to develop some strategies that you can teach in schools about creativity. But I think that's something that's really important for teachers in the profession who've come from a design background where that professional knowledge is developed and they come into schools. Your role is to recontextualize that knowledge that you've developed as part of your

Recontextualising Professional Knowledge For School

Alison Hardy 9:55

degree into the classroom. You're you're recontextualizing it. Now, that then got me thinking is I'm sure a theorist, an educational a social scientist theorist. I'm going to get that wrong, so I'm going to scratch all that. If you've if I don't remember to edit this, don't listen to that. But Basil Bernstein did an awful lot about knowledge structures. his stuff is ridiculously hard to read, it blows my head off. I haven't looked at it for quite a long time. But he talked about the the recontextualizing of knowledge from higher education into schools is part of the role of of that that translation, and we have to as educators select, reorder, simplify, and transform it. So we can't just stand in front of pupils and go, today I'm going to teach you how to be creative or I'm going to teach you about taste. You actually have to think about what are the steps that is the order or an order for for developing that, you know what what what how do you reproduce that in the classroom? Now Basil Bernstein talked about knowledge being developed from universities and recontextualized into schools. Um now I'm talking about professions, um, so I'm kind of expanding Basil Bernstein's idea about this reproduction, but I think I I think new knowledge is created in the professions, in the design professions, alongside what's happening in universities around design and technological developments, and that comes together, and so it it is our role as teachers, is how we how we reshape that into the classroom. And I think this thinking about tacit knowledge is really important because through practice in the professions, this these things are called the ability to frame a problem, to have a vision for what the future might be, to develop taste and judgment, to develop craftship, all come through practice and and picking up new bits of knowledge or being taught new bits of knowledge. So I I kind of feel like I'm going around the houses, but it's it's it's kind of to me quite complex, and I had to spend some time sitting and writing while I was listening to them too to try and get this out of my head. Is this seeing this tacit knowledge that if you're a teacher who's come through that route of the professions, to see it, and I put C in inverted columns, comma, comma, columns, commas, to then be able to identify what this tacit knowledge is. So then thinking about the ways of learning that over time, and we have to be able to unpick that, you have to be able to unpick that to create a good curriculum. I just think that

Taste Without Gatekeeping

Alison Hardy 13:20

is so fundamental, okay. So that's what I'm left thinking about, and that's what I'm sharing. It's a bit of a ramble today, but I hope you've kind of got the points. I'm challenging people to think about what is the tacit knowledge that you have, that you know how to do something, but you don't know how you got there, or you know how you're you know to judge a good design and a bad design. I mean, that's really subjective language, and Tristram Shepherd took the time out to email me this weekend about this. because we've got to be very careful that when we're developing some of these things, teaching these things in young people, that we're not deciding what good taste is, right? We're actually encouraging and teaching children ways of developing their own taste, and I think that is about exposure to different designs, designs that challenge, designs that feel comfortable, um, and giving them new vocabulary. But I've written about that in the post and I'll put that link in the show notes. but you know, I think I've obviously tapped something here that's made people think because I said Tristram has has written to me and said that he's been thinking about

Where The Wider D&T Conversation Goes

Alison Hardy 14:50

what we mean by taste and how do we develop that understanding. And then I also see on LinkedIn that Frank Peters, the chief exec of the Chartered Society of Designers, has picked up on the conversation. Tony Ryan's posted as well, and saying that actually maybe there's something here for the Chartered Society of Designers and the D&T Association to come together and explore how it's developed and thinking about some of the kind of the pedagogical approaches that can be used. So I'm really excited to see that that idea develop. Um I'm quite happy to be on the sideline in the back of the room watching that rather than being active and creating that space. I'm I'm really hoping that that from this talk I went to on Friday, which wasn't aimed at me, but it was really interesting, that the way I've thought about it, about this idea about recontextualizing knowledge as where the bridge as educators into the classroom, that therefore some of us have to understand what tacit knowledge we have. This doesn't speak to me because I didn't go into the professions of design, but for those of you who did, what's the tacit knowledge that you need to be able to identify to unpick, and which Kevin did, and I've I've put some of that in the show notes. And then this idea about bringing this professional body of the Chartered Society of Design of Designers together with the Design and Technology Association. I I don't know if this is going to happen, I'm just seeing it on LinkedIn now, it is really exciting. Um so yeah, so thanks for listening to that really rather long ramble I've just realised and some of my dithering around in the middle. I hope if nothing else, it's made you smile. I'm Dr. Alison Hardy and you've been listening to the Talking D&T

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Alison Hardy 16:45

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