I’m Saint John Walker, @halohello_VFX I’m Deputy Dean and Deputy Director at Escape Studios, Pearson College, London. This blog is the online equivalent of an inverted mosquito net, to keep the thoughts I have about education, pedagogy, ed-tech in one place where they can grow and breed, in the stagnant waters of my old practices.

VFX as a discipline is at the cutting edge of code, image and motion, but it’s a conservative world in terms of its expectations of new talent and how they are taught. In short, it needs new pedagogies, new teachers thinking further than skills acquisition.

This seems partly to do with the employability agenda, and the current employer business models. Very narrow margins mean the neophytes who know the software and workflow best can join the priesthood.

Across the land, degree courses are reacting to this nuclear arms race of software supremacy. However I believe there is room for applying theory to this domain and seeing if it can produce real and robust prototypes for how to teach and learn in new hybrid ways, and ultimately the subject of VFX as an academic discourse.