By definition intellectual property is a set of international legal rights that protect the financial and reputational interests of creative and innovative practice. This includes copyright, trademarks, patents, design rights and trade secrets. ​They can be commercial assets and/or shared freely to collaborate, build communities and encourage knowledge exchange.
What is the relevance of IP for UAL students?
IP plays a central role in students journeys through UAL and into their careers after graduating to ensure that their skills are respected, their contribution to society is recognised and their voices are heard. Whether it is through creating, capturing or delivering value, creatives can be taught to recognise the value they add to their industries and how to safeguard their reputation. At present IP education is not embedded in every course at UAL but we are working closely with different pathway and course leaders to embed core IP thinking practices into their curriculum. Having an IP element in courses can help students find out more about their rights and make informed decisions based on this.
What is the current IP offering at UAL?
When I started my role at UAL in February 2021 the IP Education team was just one person! The existing offering was scarce and involved a very responsive approach to urgent student enquires and providing IP sessions or workshops when requested by course leaders. As our tiny team doubled in size once I had started in my role I was able to offer further support to cover some of the 121 enquiries and additional sessions. On reflection during the summer months we reflected on the offering and started to test a co-design approach working closely with course leaders to design unit relevant workshops that could be embedded from September.
What might the IP offering look like in the future?
To some extent due to the nature of the work there will always have to be a reactive nature to my role. Students may have urgent IP problems that they need to tackle and expert advice is needed to manage the situation in a speedy manner. The initial co-design tests that our team implemented from September have thus far been successful so we have adapted to streamline the process and will continue in this vain to deliver workshops. In the last few months I have reframed my personal 121 offer to be more enterprise focused as this is where my areas of expertise sits. In the near future I hope that our team continues to grow in order to support the large number of student and staff enquiries that enter our inboxes each week and we are able to continue to enhance our offer to reach as many students at different touchpoints as possible.
How might my PGCert journey impact the IP offering?
One of the main things that I wanted to achieve with the PGCert was to give myself time and space to get creative with the way that I approach my workshop session planning. In my previous sessions (I started taking sessions in September 2021) I have focused on the content and making it as relevant to the course in question as possible. Within just a week this can vary from architecture to illustration and fashion management to interior design. In my time at law school problem-based learning was one of the main teaching methods used to promote our learning of difficult legal topics. This term I would like to implement some problem-based learning scenarios into my teaching sessions based on the reading and development I have done around the pedagogical approach through my PGCert reading.
