Mobile-free studios: developing positive studio cultures on 2Y BA Fine Art
The intervention I propose is that certain studios in the 2Y BA Fine Art footprint become mobile phone free ones as part of a pilot aimed at addressing poor mental health and a demise in productive studio culture post-pandemic.
We have approximately 12 different studio rooms across 3 different floors of B-Block at Chelsea, currently with 162 students in the year. Take up across the studios can be limited and the most successful studios are ones which have actively engaged student community. The 25-26 cohort is looking to be 180-200 students with a slightly expanded studio footprint.
Students are to collectively select which studios are to trial this pilot, which will work on an opt-in basis. The aim is to create studio spaces where students:
- Feel safe and want to spend time
- Can work productively without distractive and extractive apps
- Can develop a discursive culture with their peers, and consequently feel less isolated
A colleague in product design has a contact for a charity that supplies ex-office furniture for free to educational establishments. As part of this intervention, I would get some sofas (meeting latest fire safety regulations) for studio spaces in the pilot to help create environments that encourage students to spend time there.
This intervention is informed by:
- My own research particularly 2015-17 into online behavioural addictions and the way that the meshing of telecommunications devices with network culture, helped create a context for the use of behavioural psychology to channel user attention, creating ‘sticky’ environments that people find very difficult to negotiate. [See https://www.katrionabeales.com/arewealladdictsnow & the accompanying book edited by Bartlett and Bowden-Jones (2017)].
- Two significant interpersonal ruptures within the student body 23-25. Both involved messages shared on social media negatively overspilling into the physical space of the college and studio, which had serious and longlasting impacts on studio culture and usage by students.
- Conversations with Sarah Campbell, the Mental Health Advice Manager at UAL, whom I have worked with closely regarding some of my 24-25 students who have experienced severe mental ill health.
- Various campaigns within different parts of the education sector. A network in secondary schools in the London borough I live in (Southwark) have recently banned smartphones [Hill (2024)].
I am aware this could be seen as overbearing and carefully need to position this, as I am not trying to encourage a Luddite position but one of having a critical engagement with technology. I am perhaps confusingly, very interested in digital artworks and am not suggesting it would be a laptop-free space. It is the dynamics around social media apps (reliant on smartphones) that evidence suggests are the most problematic for mental health [Girela-Serrano, B.M. et al. (2022) p.1646]. I am also aware of that many of our international students use translation software in tutorials and need to be careful that this isn’t discriminatory by encouraging the use of laptop or tablet devices as opposed to phones. The transition to using SEATs to mark attendance through student’s mobile phones is also potentially an issue. We can work around this by these studios having an agreement that once they have logged their attendance their phone is stored is off.
I would like to run this as a longitudinal trial over the autumn term 2025, with questionnaires exploring students’ perceptions on studio culture and their mental health in both the mobile-free studios and the ones that hadn’t participated in the pilot. I am aware I might need ethical clearance to undertake some of this research.
586 words
Bibliography
Beales, K. et al. (2017) Are we all addicts now? Digital Dependence edited by Bartlett, V and Bowden-Jones, H. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press.
Hill , A. (2024) Group of 17 London Secondary Schools join up to go smartphone-free, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/06/group-of-17-london-secondary-schools-join-up-to-go-smartphone-free (Accessed: 23 May 2025).
Girela-Serrano, B.M. et al. (2022) ‘Impact of mobile phones and wireless devices use on children and adolescents’ mental health: A systematic review’, European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 33(6), pp. 1621–1651. doi:10.1007/s00787-022-02012-8.
Lopez-Fernandez, O. et al. (2017) ‘Self-reported dependence on mobile phones in young adults: A European cross-cultural empirical survey’, Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 6(2), pp. 168–177. doi:10.1556/2006.6.2017.020.