Joy, Curiosity and Connection
FACE Talking: Online event 26th February 2026
Chair: Sharon Lloyd
Speakers: Caryn Franklin, Caroline Alexander and Nada Koreish.
Chaired by Cofounder Sharon Lloyd, this FACE Talk explored joy, archives, stillness and connection within creative education and practice. The session combined short speaker contributions followed by open discussion and structured reflective prompts. Attendance included FACE members, academics, practitioners and creative educators across institutions.
The session opened with a prompt asking participants to identify what currently brings them joy. Responses included:
Family rituals and Ramadan Students’ energy and interviews with prospective students Collaboration and sharing knowledge Music, food memories and intergenerational culture Archives and creative research Everyday practices such as gardening and listening to birds.
*
Speaker 1: Caryn Franklin - a brief provocation
Focus: Curiosity and Humility
Our brain circuitry includes a ‘SEEKING’ system
Curiosity has been vital in our development. Our brain circuitry includes a ‘SEEKING’ system. It drives curiosity, exploration, and motivation to delivers a dopamine hit. The brain enjoys the chase more than the catch. We are primed to continuously seek and learn.
Humility builds good relationships
A good learner is humble. In educational spaces and DEI learning when ‘seeking’ learning from another’s experience. Be it perceptions, opinions or feelings, humility is vital in this personal exchange. Humility builds good relationships. Listening not interrupting, empathy not lethargy, kindness and willingness to hold another’s truth is an act of compassion and is associated with greater group status.
Acknowledgment for knowledge gifted by someone else requires gratitude. Do we say thankyou for the learning? Are we humble enough to recognise our own gains socially and intellectually?
*
Speaker 2: Caroline Alexander
Focus: Archives, Tactility and Material Memory
Caroline’s father is inspiration and connection
Caroline’s talk explored her joy for, and work in archives, and focused on the notion of archives as sensory experiences and embodying history, through her own case study of south Asian family archives. Caroline also presented the Fashion Archive at Kingston School of Art, along with examples of student project work where archival research has been used to explore identity.
The notion of archives as sensory experiences and embodying history
Discussion points included:
Expanding access to collections and making them more inclusive
Embedding archives in projects as a pedagogical tool
Decolonising archives
Organising a group visit
*
Speaker 3: Nada Koreish
Focus: Stillness, Decolonising Archives and Recognition
Stillness as an intentional creative method, allowed this speaker to address the emotional and intellectual labour of decolonising archives. Key points included:
The need to permit pause within accelerated academic and creative system, and the constant fight mode we live in. To be allowed to breathe and not be an agitator or activist for a day, to be free to NOT fight for anything in a pure moment of joy and stillness.
Recognition as a form of joy, validation, LIBERATION
The critical re-reading of archives, the ever evolvingwork, of terminology change, language and the power that holds, being able to find new decolonial modes of communication through archives, through curation, through reflection.
The generative function of the question “what if”
Reframing stillness as a sharpening tool rather than a retreat
Nada Says: I don’t know the last time I wasn’t fighting. Or raging. Or simply moving. I cannot recall a moment where I was just… still.
We vibrate constantly — with inherited trauma, resistance, and the relentless call to action. A drumbeat that never quiets. And although I continue forward, I am still searching for what it means to be calm, fulfilled, and at peace.
Yet along my journey as an academic, I have found joy.
Joy in witnessing my students unlearn. In watching them dismantle colonial ideologies, deconstruct what they were taught to believe, and awaken through their work. In their pride. In their courage. In their refusal to remain silent.
I have found curiosity, too — through discovering global perspectives that are so often erased, hidden, or deliberately left out. Through confronting my own loss of identity, and learning to understand others not only intellectually, but deeply, in my heart. And I have found connection. A feeling so powerful that I call it belonging.
I found it through FACE — and I have only ever experienced that depth of closeness, that sense of being held and understood, within the friendships and relationships formed there. It is the only place where I have felt truly close to calm in my career — the kind of belonging I once only felt at home in Egypt, and later in New York City.
And for that, I will forever be indebted to my brethren.
Response from attendees:
A huge thanks for the wellbeing session. I loved how different it was in its approach, very honest, candid and soulful. The positive impact stayed with me for weeks after the the event.
A moving prompt to look for the joy. An honest reveal of what keeps others connected.
Grounding and timely.