Patrick Letschka

Patrick’s interests range from: visual research incorporating moving image and drawing; collaborative research into how drawing impacted on students’ learning from two contrasting programmes of study; through to research into the making of wooden objects of ritual used formally and personally. His research interests are an extension of both the making process and pedagogic interests and the role of moving image and drawing as thinking tools are central to his research.

Patrick’s current practice based research project, using an autoethnographic methodology, involves building a nineteen-foot-long Anglo Saxon wooden sailing boat and a small geodesic canoe. Part of this project explores the question of how to make a particular type of traditional craft that floats on water to a very high standard, but it also reflects on the ethics of craft-making and the destiny of objects. The canoe’s function is to go on a specific single journey, where it will then remain. 

Throughout Patrick’s career, drawing has always played an important part in Patrick’s practice. This interest has found its way into his teaching and research activity. He is particularly interested in exploring the common ground between art and medicine and in 2011 he was invited to run drawing workshops at Imperial college London and the Royal Brompton Hospital, introducing medical students to drawing techniques appropriate in balancing awareness and knowledge. He has also introduced an experimental drawing module that specifically focuses on the human body form at the university of Brighton.

Patrick was a Fellow of the Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning Design (CETLD) at the University of Brighton from 2006. He has an interest in the role of drawing in interdisciplinary educational practice, focusing on craft and medical student learning. Emerging from some of the work carried out under the auspices of the CETLD, Patrick has collaborated with colleagues Philippa Lyon and Tom Ainsworth to investigate the potential of drawing as a collaborative educational tool for craft and medical students.

The ongoing research has opened up a range of issues: how drawing the human form challenges and extends the perceptions of self and other; the nature of observation versus imaginative vision; the impact of drawing exercises on manual dexterity and the potential for drawing to expand and increase the subtlety of communication skills. The next phase aims to clarify and deepen the research by concentrating more exclusively on student accounts of how their learning is influenced by participation in the drawing module. This strong interest in drawing also involved Patrick in co organising the Drawing Research Network conference 2010 hosted by University of Brighton together with Pauline Ridley and Dr Angela Rogers.