The OU has not been alone in following in the footsteps of the BBC’s “History of the World in 100 objects,” and telling its history through lists of objects. See for example, Fifty: The University of Stirling in 50 Objects (Stirling: University of Stirling, 2017); Pennies of the People: A History of Aberystwyth University in 150 Objects (Aberystwyth: University of Aberystwyth, 2022).
The below is part of a posting written on an OU blog by Linda Anderson in 2018.
I fetched up at the OU in 2002, already a designer and deliverer of a successful distance learning writing course. Here’s what I knew. Distance learning widens participation in a dramatic way. It is a truly intimate form of shared learning. It empowers shyer people to have their say. Students benefit from a permanent record of feedback and discussions that they can return to as necessary. I also knew about the risk of quarrels that can blaze suddenly, leaving relationships in tatters. I knew on a deeply personal level about tutor burnout. I had been warned about it on the OU training course but had naively failed during the first couple of years to set limits to word counts or frequency of submissions to tutors. In the production of A215, I hope I kept in mind the tutors’ right to have a life.
I still remember how thrilled and challenged I felt by the job. At its core was a highly demanding form of teaching that had to be lucid and accessible as well as replete with lively, planned activities to both practise and test skills. But there was a cluster of other exciting elements: team management, peer review, editing, programme-making, interviewing famous writers, liaising with publishers internal and external, and ultimately, tutor training and supervision.
In the making of A215, what I wanted to import from the Lancaster model was the student-centred approach, to mix tutor-led online conferencing with occasional face-to-face day schools. I wanted students to try their hand at the three main genres of fiction, poetry, and life writing, finally being free to specialise in their chosen form or forms. The production team was a superb one, and despite our fair share of arguments and injured feelings, our work was relatively frictionless. The main authors were myself; Mary Hammond, an expert on publishing; Sara Haslam, a prime mover in the establishment of the ‘Start Writing’ series; W.N. Herbert, award-winning poet based at Newcastle University; and Derek Neale, who was steeped in the UEA writing culture both as an MA and PhD graduate and tutor for many years. Bob Owens, despite his workload as head of department and staff tutor in London, edited the Readings section of the Workbook. He and Shirley Coulson (course manager) contributed their extensive knowledge of how to navigate OU systems, a vital role in a team with so many new staff. Clare Spencer gave us an AL perspective.
I was surprised at how much teamwork kept us to a tight schedule while not curbing our creativity. Different colleagues often pushed the boundaries to create ambitious or unexpected elements, such as Sara Haslam’s recorded panel discussion by eminent biographers – Michael Holroyd, Blake Morrison, and Jackie Kay, chaired by Robert Fraser – a beautifully realised debate. Derek Neale included a range of innovative styles of biographical writing in the Workbook, showing how to mix fact and fiction. Within a couple of years we had an array of audio CDs, a study guide, and a 600 plus page book, Creative Writing: A Workbook with Readings, co-published with Routledge.
The course launched in 2006 with approximately 2500 students and gained the highest retention level in the University as well as high scores of student satisfaction. The Workbook was acclaimed and is still in wide use in other universities. Over a hundred ALs, most of them new to the OU, were trained and supported in online teaching. These successes remained consistent over eight years, so that 22,000 students had taken the course by the time I left in 2013. It was Maggie Butt, our first external examiner, who made what felt to me like the best tribute to the course: ‘You have managed the industrial scale without losing the personal touch.’
Creative Writing has gone from strength to strength. Derek Neale chaired A363: Advanced Creative Writing, which launched in 2008. Although I had some hand in the production, the course materials were largely written or produced by Derek Neale and Bill Greenwell. Derek designed a distinctive approach of experimenting with form. He aimed to deepen students’ engagement with fiction, poetry, and life writing while also introducing scriptwriting for various media. The core text A Creative Writing Handbook: Developing Dramatic Technique, Individual Style and Voice was co-published with A & C Black. When both courses were up and running, we were organising teaching and assessment of more than 3000 students annually with a very small course team.
Research developments
The PhD programme began in 2008. Of the four researchers I co-supervised with Derek Neale, two won internal scholarships against Faculty-wide competition and all gained their doctorates either shortly before or shortly after I retired. Three of their four novels have now been published and widely reviewed: The Longest Fight by Emily Bullock was named as ‘a fine addition to the canon of boxing literature’ in ‘The Independent’; Owl Song at Dawn by Emma Sweeney was shortlisted for the Amazon Rising Star Award in 2016; Heather Richardson’s Doubting Thomas was recently listed by ‘The Independent’ as one of the nine best Scottish fictions of 2017.
In the spring of 2012 I founded The Contemporary Cultures of Writing research group with my creative writing colleagues. I organised and chaired our first series of seminars at the Institute of English Studies, University of London on the theme of ‘The Rise of Creative Writing’ to coincide with just over forty years of Creative Writing in higher education in the UK. We explored the question of whether writing courses had a traceable and positive impact on literary culture. I found that eminent authors and academics like Maureen Freely, Andrew Cowan, and Alison MacLeod, were prepared to travel to London and speak for expenses only. (It’s a generosity that my colleagues have subsequently also been able to rely on.) The audiences were gratifyingly large, with about 25 people showing up to two events and a dozen for one on poetry. These series are still going strong and have given colleagues experience in event organisation and panel chairing as well as raising the public profile of the OU.
Linda Anderson worked as Reader in Creative Writing at The Open University from 2002 – 2013. She is a contributor to the short story anthology The Glass Shore, ed. Sinead Gleeson, which won the 2016 Irish Book of the Year Award. She is co-editor with Dawn Sherratt-Bado of the acclaimed anthology Female Lines: New Writing by Women from Northern Ireland (New Island 2017), described by Arts Council Head Damian Smyth as ‘one of the most important books to be published about Northern Ireland in half a century.’ Her novel Cuckoo, first published in 1986 by The Bodley Head, will be reissued in 2018 as a modern Irish classic by Turnpike Books.
FacebookTwitterEmailShare
Source: https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/english/on-establishing-creative-writing-programmes/
In June 2024 Peter Keogh, Professor of Health and Society in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies attended the graduation in Mountjoy Women’s Prison in Dublin of OU’s first female in Students in Secure Environments (SiSE) to graduate in Ireland.
He said:
“I was incredibly fortunate that the first SiSE graduation I attended after transferring to the OU in Ireland was for the OU’s first female graduate in Ireland. This was a huge achievement for the graduate herself but also for The Open University and the prison education staff.
“Talking to the graduate, I was struck by how little she made of the obstacles she faced studying in a secure environment. She expressed admiration for learners on the outside who juggle their learning with childcare and jobs. But the barriers she faced were all too real and included not only having to overcome the difficulties she faced in her own life but also having to fight entrenched norms against women prisoners learning, and significant technical and IT barriers.
“It was great to have an opportunity to discuss these things with a group of female prisoners who have been inspired to follow in her footsteps and study for qualifications with the OU. The SiSE team in Ireland deserve huge credit for supporting and facilitating all these amazing journeys. ”
“To me, these graduation events go to the heart of the OU’s mission in promoting equality and social justice through education. Never has the term ‘the university of the second chance’ been so appropriate.”
The event was also attended by John D’Arcy, Director of Ireland. He added:
“It was a privilege to attend this degree ceremony at Mountjoy Prison. I was so impressed by our new graduate’s commitment to her studies and how much she was inspiring other prisoners to undertake study. The commitment of the Irish Prison Service Staff and tutors from City of Dublin Education and Training Board with our SISE manager Tony Peoples is a model of good practice.”
On 22 January 2024 an Employment Tribunal found that Prof Jo Phoenix was discriminated against and harassed by her employer, the Open University, because of her gender critical beliefs. See here https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Joanna-Phoenix-v-The-Open-University-Employment-Tribunal-Reserved-Judgment.pdf Prof Phoenix also succeeded in her claim for constructive dismissal.
There are transcripts here: https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/professor-jo-phoenix-v-the-open-university
The Watford Employment Tribunal ruled that:
• Jo Phoenix holds protected gender critical beliefs, meaning that she believes that biological sex is real, that it matters, that it is not possible for someone to change their biological sex, and that biological sex should not be conflated with the gender identity.
• The OU directly discriminated against Prof Phoenix, treating her less favourably because of her gender critical beliefs.
• Prof Phoenix was harassed by her colleagues and by OU management in relation to her beliefs.
• Prof Phoenix was constructively dismissed by the OU.
• The OU victimised Prof Phoenix after she was dismissed.
Jo Phoenix was employed as an OU Prof of Criminology from 1 August 2016. In June 2021, she was one of those who established the Gender Critical Research Network at the OU, a research group focused on the importance of sexed bodies in different academic disciplines. 368 OU staff signed a public letter calling for the group to be disaffiliated from the OU. There were allegations of transphobia. Discrimination and harassment was experienced by Prof Phoenix and she left the OU on 2 December 2021. She issued a statement: https://jophoenix.substack.com/p/my-resignation-letter?r=mt0ab&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true The OU issued a statement: https://openuniv.sharepoint.com/sites/oulife/Pages/Resignation-of-Professor-Jo-Phoenix-.aspx
Rulings from the judgement were:
• The complaints of direct discrimination because of the Claimant’s gender critical beliefs are well founded.
• The complaints of harassment related to the Claimant’s gender critical beliefs are well founded.
• The Claimant’s complaint of constructive unfair dismissal is well founded.
• The Claimant’s claim for wrongful dismissal is well founded.
• The Claimant’s claim for post employment victimisation is well founded.
• The Claimant’s claim for post employment harassment is well founded.
The case received considerable publicity. For example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/22/open-university-academic-wins-tribunal-case-over-gender-critical-views The VC issued a statement. https://openuniv.sharepoint.com/sites/oulife/Pages/OU-statement-on-employment-tribunal-ruling.aspx
Others commented, for example: https://sex-matters.org/posts/publications/learning-from-the-jo-phoenix-case/
In March 2024, Professor Phoenix announced that she had agreed a compensation settlement with the Open University. The amount to be paid was not disclosed. https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/open-university-agrees-settlement-in-gender-critical-belief-case-ou-phoenix/
The OU Council commissioned an independent review of the key issues raised in the ruling. See https://openuniv.sharepoint.com/sites/oulife/Pages/Independent-Review-Announcement–.aspx
Joan Bellamy, nee Shaw, 1926-2023, was an Open University tutor, Staff Tutor and between 1984 and 1990, Dean of Arts. She contributed to a number of courses, modules, including for A101, with Colin Cunningham, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow; The Roots of Western Society; Studying the Arts (1977) and for A102 she co-edited Culture – Production, consumption. She provided ‘Milton and marvell’ for A203 (1981) and for A205, Culture and Belief in Europe, 1450-1600: Royal and Religious Authority. The British Isles. (1996). She also wrote for the OU-focused journal Teaching at a Distance, notably in 1978, an article on ‘Special Support for Students with Academic Difficulties: Experiences in Yorkshire’ and, with John Purkis, Milton Study Guide.
The daughter of Hilda and Tom Shaw (a coal miner and Labour councillor) she grew up in West Yorkshire, read English at Leeds and in the 1940s worked full time for the Communist Party of GB. After her husband, Ron Bellamy, a Marxist economist at Leeds University, accepted a Senior Lectureship at the University of Ghana the couple spent 1963-66 in Ghana where Joan worked in the press office of President Kwame Nkrumah. After a coup ousted Nkrumah the couple returned to Leeds, where Ron became Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Social Studies, 1970-72 while in 1970 Joan (as Communist Parliamentary candidate for Leeds East) received 513 votes. Following the demise of the CPGB she joined one of its successors, her political position unchanged. In 1988, in a collection of essays entitled In search of Victorian values she assessed gender relations while Ron contributed a Marxian economic analysis. Having written for the journal of the South African Communist Party, The African Communist and Communist pamphlets (eg Homes, Jobs, Immigration: the Facts, 1968 and Unite against racism: defeat the immigration bill, 1971 and a ‘Bibliography on Africa’ for the Marx Memorial Library Bulletin (1971), Joan turned to literature. She edited, with fellow OU academics Anne Laurence and Gill Perry, Women, Scholarship and Criticism C. 1790-1900: Gender and Knowledge (2000) and wrote More precious than rubies: Mary Taylor, Friend of Charlotte Bronte, Strong Minded Woman (2002).
Her interest in empowering people and understanding democracy as a process pervaded her work at the OU and her wider contributions. In 1975 she wrote in the CPGB weekly Comment that to rely on the 1976 Race Relations Act was to ‘ignore the potential of the democratic participation of those most bitterly affected by discrimination, the black people themselves’. In 1992, for Labour History Review she contributed a piece on ‘The use of trade union banners in education’. She reported on how she had asked students to analyse trade union banners, her aim being ‘to illuminate the lives, values and culture of sections of the organised working class of the past’. When, in 2018 she offered, via the Guardian, a critique of the proposed developments of OU Vice Chancellor Peter Horrocks, it was in terms of a defence of the OU’s social democratic reputation. She opposed that which could ‘be the final hammer blows to the drawn-out process of demolishing one of Labour’s greatest achievements’. Having travelled to Iraq, Syria, Mongolia, Ghana and Moscow, she returned to the county of her birth and long retained an engagement with the Brontes and with women and Victorian fiction.
The notion of technology supporting freedom was behind Wilson’s ‘university of the air’ idea. This article provides a bit of context.
Josh Patel, ‘The Puzzle of Lionel Robbins: How a Neoliberal Economist Expanded Public University Education in 1960s Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 2022, pp1-26.
Abstract
Lionel Robbins (1898–1984) has been identified as one of the leading ‘neoliberal’ economists of his day. However, his name remains irrevocably linked with the massive state-funded ‘social democratic’ expansion of higher education recommended by the Robbins Report (1963). This article explores this paradox. Examining Robbins’s writings on higher education in the context of his economic thought shows how he blended the liberalism of Adam Smith and J. S. Mill, neoliberal economics, and growing demands for personal choice. For Robbins, the atrocities of the Nazi and Soviet regimes demonstrated how the state armed with new modern technologies could endanger freedom and prosperity. But the ‘good society’ might wield technology to secure conditions of freedom and choice. Robbins advocated a system of state-subsidized universities based on ‘student demand’ and which generated social and individual returns. This system would perpetuate what Robbins called the ‘creed of freedom’: a reimagined interdisciplinary liberal education through which students would understand the importance of their specialism to liberal capitalism. His thought on higher education indicates something of the dynamism of post-war British liberalism and the range of support for higher education expansion. It further counters the impression of the British universities as sites of a static and conservative liberal education.
D Weinbren, Keynote at the Technological University, Dublin, January 2022
Abstract
Available to students from January 1971, the UK-based Open University (OU), by being open to part-time adult learners regardless of their prior qualifications or disabilities, challenged the pre-Second World War status quo. This was when a very small minority of the population in Western societies, often men from the social elite, attended universities. The OU modelled how a central state could seek to direct technological, educational, cultural and economic developments and, through the use of short-term, teaching–only contracts and student fees, normalise a quasi-market within the university sector. At the same time its social democratic ethos, embodied in its Royal Charter objective, ‘to promote the educational well-being of the community generally’, informed its development of learner-centred collaborative engagement. This enabled it to support learners in Britain, in Ireland, including in the H Blocks and in many other countries. Its pedagogies will be illuminated through an assessment of its precedents, personalities and politics.
‘The Open University and Prison Education in the UK – the first 50 years’, Incarceration, Journal of Prison Education and Reentry, 7, 1, 2021, (D Weinbren, J Mehigan, R Earle and A Pike).
Abstract: In 2019, The Open University (henceforth, The OU), based in Milton Keynes in the UK, celebrated its 50th anniversary. Since 1971 it has pioneered the delivery of Higher Education in prisons and other secure settings. Some 50 years on, in 2021 there is much to celebrate and still more to learn. In this article we briefly review the establishment of the OU in 1969 and explore how it has maintained access to higher education in the prison system. It draws from a collection of essays and reflections on prison learning experiences developed by OU academics and former and continuing OU students in prison (Earle & Mehigan, 2019). We begin by outlining the unique features of the OU and the circumstances of its establishment in the post-war period in the UK. We then present an account of its work with students in prison in the UK (and elsewhere) and conclude with some critical reflections on the place and prospects of higher education in an expanding Higher Education sector and an escalating preference for carceral punishment in the UK. No country on Earth can match the penal preferences of the United States, but the UK’s habit of slipstreaming behind its massive carceral bulk tends to obscure the fact that the UK punishes more people with imprisonment, and with longer sentences, than any other Western European state. It also manages to exceed the United States in rates of racial disproportionality in its carceral population (Phillips, 2013). Despite these outlier features in incarceration, a silver lining to the carceral cloud can be found in The OU’s pioneering work with imprisoned men and women.
Keywords: education, prison, prisoner, The Open University
