Humour is a productive tool in teaching that I often utilise.
In Teaching Critical Thinking, bell hooks includes a chapter on humour, identifying “the sense of openness shared laughter can bring. Concurrently, when we shift our minds into laughter, we move from the left brain to the right brain creating a whole new place for thinking and dreaming, for creating great ideas” [hooks (2010) p.74]. Laughter also has a direct relationship with mental health and well-being, which artists like Barry Sykes explore through his practice of laughter-yoga [Sykes (2017)] .
Credit: Barry Sykes ‘An Introduction to Laughter Yoga’ in the Olympic Cauldron gallery, part of The Festival of Radical Play, The Museum of London 2017. https://barrysykes.com/laughteryoga.html
Within art practice we can also use humour as an effective tool in institutional critique and in critiquing power. However, it can tip into something more cutting or even harmful. Graciously, hooks notes, “Attempts at humour can be misunderstood, sometimes what we hope will amuse will instead create tension” [hooks (2010) p.72].
I experienced both ends of the humour spectrum during this research into Year meetings.
Year meeting 1 was a happy one – we started by playing a year-wide rock, paper, scissors championship and one lucky winner won half a multi-pack of monster munch crisps. There was lots of laughter which spilled into the rest of the meeting.
Year meeting 3 was the opposite experience. There was a specific context, I had been off sick the week before and still wasn’t feeling well. Students were feeling stressed and under pressure. It was one week before their first assessment, and approaching the first onsite collective exhibition that there were mixed feelings about. I had planned my first trial of mentimeter as a way of agreeing the name for the collective exhibition but the engagement spiralled into something quite negative after the first contribution was “I want a refund” *laughs*. One student’s suggestion was “the blind leading the blind” and I found this hurtful. I was able to use humour in this moment to redirect some of this energy by saying “thank you fans” *laughs*.
Credit: Slide 5 from my ARP Presentation – Mentimeter results Year meeting 17 and 24 Nov
The experience made me aware of the vulnerability of my position, and the difficulty of anonymity and the dangers of it too – enabling freedom without accountability. One contributor used the anonymity of the platform to suggest “Epstein island” as an appropriate name for the Collective exhibition, which I found particularly difficult given the epidemic in the UK of violence against women and girls. It made me reflect on:
- Elaine Hatfield’s work around Emotional Contagion and the way affective states can travel across groups.
- the way engagement can be productive or destructive, and is not necessarily de-facto positive. This shows in the data (Year meeting 3 had a high level of engagement).
- digital tools can offer the space for more engagement but this must be carefully framed and come with accountability.
In Year meeting 4 I learnt from this, gathering post-it notes contributions first before entering selected suggestions into Mentimeter for voting. Future uses of Mentimeter will be set up so that students’ names whilst not visible to the audience are traceable.
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Appendix: https://kbealespgcert.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2026/01/15/arp-mentimeter/
References:
Braidotti, R An Ethics of Joy p221-224 in Braidotti, R.and Hlavajova, M. eds (2019). Posthuman glossary. London ; New York ; Oxford ; New Delhi ; Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic.
Hatfield, E., Hatfield, C., Cacioppo, J.T. and Rapson, R.L. (1994). Emotional Contagion. Cambridge University Press.
hooks, b. (2010). Teaching critical thinking : practical wisdom. New York: Routledge.
Sykes, B (2017). An Introduction To Laughter Yoga | barrysykes.com. [online] Available at: https://barrysykes.com/laughteryoga.html [Accessed 15 Jan. 2026].