Name: Beyond the Shortcut: Designing Creative and Critical Student Practices with AI
Start: 2026-07-09T11:45:00+0100
End: 2026-07-09T12:15:00+0100

Welcome to the Technology, Innovation & the Future of the Creative Curriculum Conference 2026.

Beyond the Shortcut: Designing Creative and Critical Student Practices with AI

Thursday July 9, 2026 11:45am - 12:15pm BST

Room 2.45

As artificial intelligence becomes embedded across creative industries, media management and communications students are increasingly experimenting with AI tools that shape how they produce, plan and critique digital content. This 30‑minute showcase demonstrates recent pedagogical approaches that leverage AI to enhance engagement and creativity in higher‑education learning environments. It highlights how generative AI—across text and analytics platforms—can accelerate marketing and communications workflows by enabling rapid ideation, lowering technical barriers, and opening new pathways for data‑driven, multimodal campaign storytelling.

The session presents findings from classroom‑based practice exploring how students use AI to develop audience‑informed content. Live demonstrations illustrate how students engage with AI for tasks such as data‑driven communication strategies. Alongside these, the session addresses tensions surrounding ethical usage, LLM styles and critical judgement, emphasising how over‑reliance on automated outputs can flatten creativity or lead to surface‑level work.

A key contribution of this session is showing how structured pedagogical interventions—such as reflective project journals, critical analysis, and guided exploration of AI bias—can transform AI from a shortcut into a catalyst for deeper engagement. In AI‑mediated environments, creativity becomes an act of directing, curating, and interrogating machine‑generated material rather than simply producing finished artefacts. The demonstration highlights practical classroom strategies that help students maintain ownership of their voice, make intentional, authentic creative decisions, and develop critical AI literacy.

Ultimately, this showcase argues that the most effective use of AI in media management and communications is not about the tools themselves, but about designing learning experiences that encourage experimentation, ethical awareness, and active creative agency within an AI‑saturated landscape.

Speakers

Pippa Lea

Lecturer in Management for the Creative Industries & Performing Arts, The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA)

I have over 20 years’ experience in arts marketing in the areas of digital, audience development strategy, press and PR, stakeholder communications, ticketing and visitor experience. I have held press, PR, communications, marketing, audience development and senior leadership positions... Read More →

Thursday July 9, 2026 11:45am - 12:15pm BST
Room 2.45 Art School Entrance

Creative Practice & AI, Demonstration

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Pippa Lea

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