eilis searson

All 115 students who showcased were photographed by Andrea Capello. Please let me know if you would like to view the additional student work not pictured in the presentation slides and I can send you the link to this content directly. This link will not include any student work in the case of students who have opted out of their photos being shared.

Our year co-ordinator also uploaded additional documentation of the showcase onto the course instagram (all photographs by Andrea Capello) —

Instagram story highlights: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/18065856505718521/

Instagram post 1/6: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFnWkTzgTiY/?img_index=1

Instagram post 2/6: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFnW6LfAaYV/?img_index=1

Instagram post 3/6: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFnXSRiAlLv/?img_index=1

Instagram post 4/6: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFnXhxstlQT/?img_index=1

Instagram post 5/6: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFnYVYZtEBt/?img_index=1

Instagram post 6/6: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFnYd0dNNJb/?img_index=1

I would also like to include here some observations from colleagues, gathered through my data collection:

“One student said the Formative Assessment Session felt like being in a club, in a good way”

“When I spoke to my tutees, several said they were scared and very nervous before the catwalk but as soon as they went through the curtain they really loved it. These were particularly shy students, and we spoke a bit about that moment of passing through the curtain and how nothing else could be done at that point so they were able to just surrender to the moment. All agreed that pushing through those uncomfortable feelings was worth it for the experience.

From my perspective – it was such a positive experience for everyone involved and the format of the formative as an event was very successful (I think we had a healthy level of participation, no complaints), students supported each other and the atmosphere was one of sheer joy! Look at the crowd in all the photos, everyone is smiling!!”

“On the Pigeon – This is Tiangyang [Ma] – they started looking at ideas of ‘beauty’ in the city, while discovering London as a new place they have recently moved to and looking for links to ‘taste’ in their new and previous home.  They started looking at views that people found ‘tasteful’ or ‘beautiful’ but then also started to think about why not everyone finds the same meaning using those descriptions.  They then started drawing birds that most people find beautiful and there tasteful – particularly ducks and swans.  But then also found that they were more drawn to pigeons…..It probably strays a bit away from taste at points, but it’s been an interesting journey and the outcome is amazing – and will be even more so if they can complete something beak-ey….

Then, on another interesting conversation we’ve had [with] – Sam Vasquez – They have found this project really interesting as its helped them completely clarify their interests in fashion and image making as they were not 100% sure if they should have been studying fashion or illustration as they have such a big interest in fashion.  But because of the way this project has asked students to consider the cat walk/wearable/performative elements as presentation, its clarified that these are interests for Sam, but that the image making and visually communicating Fashion/music/culture and identity is what they really want to do and fashion is maybe quite limiting to this, but on our course they can still work with wearable things, but in a more communicative and flexible way[…]

Also, just one more on how this project – maybe not just the outcome, but the process of exploring and theoretical and visual exploration has really helped […] – Josie [Sarfo] – when they started, they were really unsure, unconfident and not making anything.  But by the end of this, they have made so much good work, using so many processes, and made this outcome which is really ambitious and really good, and has built on a use of screenprinting using stencils, but making something that could be worked on a lot outside of the workshops because of booking constraints, but is completely evolved from working through a process which wouldn’t have happened in the previous unit that ran at the same time[…]”

I will analyse these findings during the Action Research Project presentation and Q&A, where I will also be wearing this t-shirt (created by me, using the some of the leftover making materials from the BRANDING and BOOTLEGGING workshop [a preparatory workshop held ahead of the catwalk showcase]):

(Does this t-shirt count as meta-data?)

In order to collect data on the impact of the intervention, I considered the advice offered in the second ARP Workshop in creating questionnaires. I tried to write an open (but structured — thank you Audré Lorde) questionnaire on how the inclusion of selfhood as subject matter within the project affected the student experience, intended for dissemination in January 2025, after the catwalk showcase:

After initially sending this questionnaire to our Year One Co-ordinator and our Course Leader for revision, although I received constructive and supportive responses, we collectively decided not to share this questionnaire with the students. Around this time of the academic year, we worried that students suffer from survey overload — and I also worried about the validity of data gathered through a questionnaire that was so clearly written for my own pedagogic growth, rather than necessarily benefitting the students.

From here I decided to collect data through anecdotal conversation with students in the learning environment, through asking my colleagues for their observations and feedback, and through reflecting on the creative outcomes and the success of the learning environment through analysing photography of the catwalk event itself.

The following selected learning resources are inclusive of the key moments in the taste project where students were asked to consider notions of identity. THE CATWALK SHOWCASE BRIEFING SLIDES are the key piece of context here, which are attached via a wetransfer link. All resources made in collaboration and consultation with my colleagues, namely my co-lecturer, Ching-Li Chew, our Year One Co-ordinator, Maisie Noble, and our Course Leader, Angela Michanitzi, and used alongside resources that open up concepts of constructing tastes and identities outside of the self (not included on the blog but available upon request). All resources included here were context specific and discussed in-depth and collaboratively in the live teaching space.

Project Brief:

Project Briefing Slides (also made in collaboration with Sam Gathercole from the CTS team):

Semiotics Workshop Slides (exploring cultural contexts in understanding imagery — students were asked to bring in an object that related to their identities for the drawing tasks):

National Portrait Gallery worksheet:

Catwalk showcase briefing slides (as these slides contain visual references that surpass the file size limit, I am attaching these larger files as a wetransfer link — if the link expires during the assessment process please contact me and I can send you the file directly): https://we.tl/t-vV2LIbvMq8

Branding and Bootlegging Workshop Slides:

Design Museum worksheet (analysing the Barbie exhibition):

As both my Action Research Project, and the project on taste that I am leading for the Level 4 students, relate to exploring positionality in both teaching and illustration practice, auto-ethnographic research methodologies felt like an appropriate starting point. Initially accessing Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject (2000), which explores how the discourses of qualitative research can be used to imagine and create a free and democratic society,¹ I felt rather encouraged — lofty motivations during the IP unit not only hoped for the initiation of a learning community, but for that learning community to hold the power to challenge, subvert, or change industry bias.

Next, I was recommended an exercise in free writing by my peer, Peony Gent, from Autoethnography Study Toolkit (Yu Lun Eve Lin, 2023),² which follows Jennifer Moon (2004)’s framework for reflective writing.³ I have often encouraged free-writing processes in the classroom myself, when students are struggling to respond to a workshop writing task. It is for this reason that I was taken by surprise when I completely ceased up during the free-writing task[s] offered via the Autoethnography toolkit. Engaging with this methodology in the renewed position of being a student has made me completely question how much structure and conceptual underpinning should be offered to students when approaching potentially open-ended tasks. It has also made me question how realistic it is to think that learning at this level could indeed hold the potential for creating a free democratic society,⁴ bringing me back to the Ghislaine Leung quote that continually refreshes it’s offer…

“Freedom is often conflated with autonomy, but dependence is perhaps less the incarcerator than the liberator. I am free with support, not without. […] I am as dependent as you are and this is not an issue because care exists socially, is required and reciprocated a thousand times over in a moment. That I fail to acknowledge this is the price I pay when I misattribute agency to individual life, as identity in a monological sense, in my vivid financialised disincorporated life.“⁵

I am free with support, not without! Free-writing doesn’t offer me enough support!

Although grateful for this resource, I knew I needed to continue the search for a resource in auto-ethnography that would have a tighter focus to both the student body and myself. In the spirit of ‘context-sensitive’ thinking, I ventured to the LCC zine archive to see if any independent publishers had anything to offer. This is what I came across:

Begin by journaling and answering these questions:

1. What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, “for what do you not have
words, yet?”]

2. What do you need to say? [List as many things as necessary]

3. What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your
own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? [List as many
as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after.]

4. If we have been “socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for
language and definition,” ask yourself: “What’s the worst that could happen
to me if I tell this truth?” [So, answer this today. And every day.]

Adapted from “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,”
collected in The Cancer Journals.

Afterward: 

— Pair and share questionnaire; what did you write down and why?

— Doing this is being honest with ourselves and where we are at; looking
at what we are facing right now; sharing these problems with someone else
to maybe lessen the burden a little bit

— Invitations

+ What is hard about sharing our personal experiences with people?
What is something easy?

+ What is a time you shared something and really felt like you were seen?

+ How can you continue/work on being honest with yourself and others?

+ Recognizing the human dignity in others and the power of storytelling;
we become closer to others and understand people more

Check-out: 

Share something you need to do and something you want to do this weekend⁶

It felt so pertinent for Audré Lorde to discuss the ‘silencing’ nature of everyday tyrannies through her questionnaire, as throughout the IP unit (as I was researching course content in relation to industry bias), I just couldn’t find a word as simple as ‘silence’, or even ‘tyranny’ to guide my thinking on the nature of the perpetuated power imbalance present in late capitalist illustration career landscapes. Engaging in Audré Lorde’s exercise also took my mind in so many directions — one of my favourites being in the direction of something I ‘want'[ed] to do this weekend — this prompt felt completely synonymous with Emma Warren’s case for valuing everyday culture[s]⁷ and took a lot of the pressure away from the daunting gravity of ‘social justice issues’ and ‘tyrannies’. The personal is always political.

A note, then, on exactly how ‘context-sensitive’ research methodologies should be — why did Audré Lorde’s questionnaire work for me? Was it the sensitive structuring? Or was it — what felt like — the discovery of a friend, or solidarity, in the democratic setting of a zine archive — relating back to Guglielmo Rossi’s You Must Live Your Politics? ⁸

Either way, it became increasingly clear that actioning this rationale for research methods meant offering the methods themselves directly to the students in the form of structured questions, prompts, activities, and resources — in as democratic and friendly a setting as possible.

1. Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S.(Eds.) Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject, Handbook of Qualitative Research (2^nd Ed.), Sage Publications ↩︎
2. Lin, Yu Lun (2023) Autoethnography Study Toolkit, UAL Research Online <https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/20529/> [Last accessed February 2024] ↩︎
3. Moon, Jennifer (2004) A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning, Routledge <https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/id/eprint/12995/1/4215.pdf> [Last accessed February 2024] ↩︎
4. Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S.(Eds.) Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity: Researcher as Subject, Handbook of Qualitative Research (2^nd Ed.), Sage Publications ↩︎
5. Ghislaine Leung, Bosses, London/ Brussels: Divided Publishing (2023), p.1 ↩︎
6. Lorde, A. (Date Unknown)  Questionnaire to Oneself, LCC Zines Collection, Folder 81 ↩︎
7. Warren, E. (2020) Document Your Culture, London: Sweet Machine Publishing p.18—19 ↩︎
8. Rossi, G. (2023) You Must Live Your Politics in Agitprop Notes, London: MayDay Rooms p.103—111 ↩︎

Dear Design,

What happened? 

You used to be dangerous.

You used to scare the shit out of people.

Then you forgot how to play.

You chose to stick with the straight lines and rounded corners… Polishing and glossing your cynic clean typography, editing out the mess real life is.

You alone can shift the foundations of this failed system – conjure up new tones, new ambiences & new aesthetics for the planetary endgame we’re in. 

You hold Prometheus’ holy fire in your hands.

Now use it!

Thinking about the student’s potential future space on the catwalk as an experimental space for ‘publishing’ ideas, this blog post presents 3 extracts on publishing as practice. I was a bit apprehensive about scanning at first, as these are all from small publishers/artists who really need the money, but Emma Warren’s last line[…]: ’pass this on to someone who needs it’ offered a bit of good faith! 

These pieces of reading have not only inspired my research methods, but each represent active+approachable practitioners/spaces that I can see students involving themselves with now/after graduation, should this project resonate with a social purpose within their practice. Sportsbanger offers courage and reason towards originality, Emma Warren bolsters confidence in the meaningfulness of sharing even the most quotidian of ‘culture’, and Guglielmo Rossi offers the [May Day Rooms] archive[s] as a space for finding each of the above: firstly, courage; secondly, methodologies for publishing… and with both: solidarity.

Reading of this nature has been a repeating facet of the Action Research Project in its latter form — research and resources with dual purpose — a use for me as a researcher, and a use for the students as practitioners.

If we consider all of the previous blog post (PROJECT IDEA 1) in line with the ‘Action Research Cycle’, at this point, after PLANNING, ACTING, OBSERVING and REFLECTING, I found myself back at the beginning of the cycle. It was time to re-visit the initial intervention report with all of the knowledge I had acquired throughout the Action Research Project so far. Working through the initial ARP cycle helped my re-gain my confidence — especially in discovering my discomfort in the potential limitations or issues related to targeting social justice issues as ‘content’ for student to work through, and also in the drawbacks of giving students material limitations in creating work that is supposed to reflect their individual voice (despite the necessity of this in a time-pressured learning environment).

My intervention report discussed the idea of staging a ‘catwalk’ showcase, acknowledging the challenge of determining the conceptual underpinnings that would guide the students in creating outcomes, in line with our research in Inclusive Practices. In summer 2024, I wrote that the potential conceptual underpinnings of the students’ making processes could relate to the nature of the catwalk medium itself. Writing and delivering project resources on the socio-cultural nature of wearable artefacts, I could later ask the students to consider these contexts in line with their own positionality and making processes. For bibliography and full details of the inital plan, please see my intervention report:

What became clear to me as I worked through the first cycle of the Action Research Project, was that limiting the potential subject matter of the students’ responses to the brief — especially in limiting the subject matter to something as potentially harmful as a student’s identity on the intersectional framework — needed to be addressed within the plan for the intervention. I spent a lot of time discussing this with my co-lecturer, Ching-Li Chew, who I would be co-delivering the Unit with. We knew we needed an anchor point that had the potential to support students who wished to use the project to explore their individual selfhood and positionality, but we also wanted to protect and be open to students who did not feel they wanted to share inherently personal subject matter with the class. After all, the main goal that was outlined in the initial intervention report was for the class to have an opportunity to recognise each other as resources¹² and individuals who make up a learning community³ — and of course, the value of a student ‘as a resource’ extends exponentially from the self and into a myriad of knowledge[s] and experience[s].

It was from here that we began exploring notions of individual ‘taste’, rather than selfhood. Asking questions such as:

Where does our taste come from? Cultural heritage? Consumerism? Vibe-shifts? Music? Politics? Fundamental needs? The algorithm? How can we define our taste? Aesthetics? Identity? Language? Behaviour? Social Media? Semiotics? Is there such a thing as good or bad taste? And how can we argue this one way, or the other?

These questions, and the conceptual underpinning of ‘taste’ helped re-focus my initial research question[s] to become, more broadly:

How can creative methods be used to examine, interpret, and describe socio-cultural narratives?⁴

It was from here that the revised (and final) ethical action plan took shape:

Full bibliography contained in the footnotes of the above .doc files.

1. hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p. 8 ↩︎
2. Sadiq, Asif (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right, TEDx. Youtube, 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw (Accessed: 26 July 2024) ↩︎
3. hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p. 8 ↩︎
4. Research question borrowed and adapted from: Fauchon, Mireille (2024) Illustration, Narrative and the Suffragette, Bloomsbury Publishing
   
   ↩︎

After receiving feedback from the IP unit on my intervention report, my confidence wavered somewhat. Some of the more densely philosophical and political reading from the unit, though deeply informative on a personal level, appeared to translate only in abstract terms according to the intervention report:

“It is clear that you engaged with the unit thoughtfully and drew out meaningful knowledge and potential actions that can inform your practices. The blog posts and comments you share are good evidence of critical analysis and synthesis of a range of practical and conceptual knowledge.

I’m really pleased to see you bring class into the intersectionality conversation as UAL’s move to being more ‘social purpose’ focused inherently raises these questions. This is a completely valid topic to consider. To push your work further I recommend you compound this approach by highlighting the relevant data sets. I believe you can unlock deeper criticality within your intervention by adding a layer of specificity to the student cohort you are designing for. The thinking and questions are important, but they need more support. Contextualising the importance of this work by naming the groups of people most impacted can help. Embedding the data to your critiques will strengthen them as you move into the next unit. I would encourage you to pursue this intervention and consider the successes and challenges as you implement this work.

Overall, you demonstrated good intention within the subject, and your communication has shown purposeful approaches to social justice and inclusive practices that have been made clear will be a continuous journey as a result of your learning during this unit. I look forward to hearing what you do with these awakened approaches in your teaching practice beyond the unit.”

What I understood from this feedback was twofold —

Firstly, I would need to directly reference the UAL Data Dashboards in the ARP Unit — focusing less on a literary approach to action, and more on targeting and naming specific groups of students who are most impacted by social justice issues, as named in the data sets — rather than through my understanding of the more personal observations, or reports written by thinkers and academics such as Kimberlé Crenshaw¹ and Rhianna Garrett. ²

Secondly, I would need to work to make the intervention more tangible in terms of the data sets and their direct inclusion. My tutor states that ‘a layer of specificity’ is required in addressing ‘the student cohort [I am] designing for’. As the class I am addressing in this intervention contains 129 diverse individuals, adding a deeper layer of specificity to the intervention teaching content (that would have the potential to speak to/address each student directly), might require re-designing the intervention to take place outside of the larger cohort, in a more focussed group.

I felt there would be challenges in implementing this advice: my personal view is that, although this feedback is exquisitely intentioned, the UAL Data Dashboards do not offer a full picture of the groups of people most impacted by social justice issues in the classroom. As a neurodiverse person, I am completely averse (through genuine difficulty) to filling in forms and surveys — and through this, I can imagine that a significant portion of students with disabilities feel equally impacted by this barrier when offered the opportunity to fill in a form by UAL data teams. Perhaps [all of] this is too personal an assumption — but I also feel slightly averse to students offering institutions data of this nature, as I can’t help but be suspicious of ‘box-ticking’, ‘becoming a number’, or, ‘tokenism’, as bell hooks describes in Teaching to Transgress:

“All too often we found a will to include those considered ‘marginal’ without a willingness to accord their work with the same respect and consideration given other work. In Women’s Studies, for example, individuals will often focus on women of color at the very end of the semester or lump everything about race and difference together in one section. This kind of tokenism is not multi-cultural transformation, but it is familiar to us as the change individuals are most likely to make.”³

These feelings present themselves as a challenge in implementing the intervention: how can a group of students who are impacted by social justice issues be identified in a personal and inclusive manner at the outset?

I came across this image in an anthology of the independent postcard press, Leeds Postcards. The question in the image caption, ‘How would you get [information about yourself] corrected if it was inaccurate?’ resonated with me deeply.

Through this question, I knew that in updating the intervention plan, students would need to have autonomy over the way they presented themselves as ‘data’ in the project, and to have access to that data, in order to update what information represented them, should they wish to. In what ways can data be initiated or requested? What information or imagery is left behind, waiting to be made ‘tangible’ through data?

With my confidence yo-yo-ing, I went back to the feedback, and to the overwhelming feeling that the ‘tangibility’ of the social justice elements of the project was the largest issue in the intervention design.

Potential ramble: on tangibility, I started thinking about touch and intentionality in making illustrative works or outcomes, and wondering when an outcome of a making process becomes something worth sharing, or being seen. If a work addresses a social justice issue physically or visually, is this tangible data? And should it be seen? Should it be attributed a name, or does this kind of tangibility or ‘visibility’ make the work difficult to understand, unravel, or update, like a number, or a pie chart with a tough, opaque crust, illustrated in digital teal and turquoise?

Is an image enough? What do words do? What can they do?

I started to become interested in both the power of language, and in the anonymity of data sharing. Two projects came to mind on this thread of thinking: Allan Bridge’s Apology Project, and Matilda Della Torre’s Conversations from Calais: Sharing Refugee Stories.

Initiated in 1980 New York, the Apology Project‘s author, Allan Bridge, invited callers to phone an anonymous answering machine and ‘apologise’ for their ‘wrongdoings’. I found the call-out fascinating in relation to it’s transparency in data usage, and the way in which the social groupings juxtapose [and potentially subvert] notions of privilege/power:

Conversations from Calais is described by Matilda Della Torre as:

Documenting conversations between volunteers and migrants met in Calais. Sharing them with the world by pasting them on our cities’ walls. Re-humanising the refugee crisis.

Again, anonymity plays a role in this project towards humanisation, and freedom of speech, rather than towards categorisation and statistical accuracy. This idea brings me back to the questions posed in Leeds Postcards:

“A [document] could contain [up to 3000 words of] information about you. How would you find out what was on it? Who has access to it? How would you get it corrected if it was inaccurate?”

In making these documents public, both Allan Bridge and Matilda Della Torre offer open access to the information they have gathered, inviting the conversation to continue. In their use of anonymity, participants are presented with an opportunity to see their data made tangible, and to reflect on that data without fear of being tied to it.

At this point I went back to my tutor’s feedback to ask myself how I could ‘push [my] work further by highlighting the relevant data sets’ — deciding that the only way to do this would be to somehow humanise our data sets. In exploring this idea, I trialled a workshop with my MA student group at the Royal College of Art, inviting the students to bring in ‘academic’, ‘published’ or ‘acclaimed’ writing, then guiding the students in prompts to test how this language could be ‘translated’ through their own voices.

MA student Lukman Ipese brought in the quote “Poor people don’t have time for investments because poor people are too busy trying not to be poor.” Through my workshop slides, I offered Lukman the prompt: “Whose is the voice delivering your piece? Imagine another voice, preferably that of a character already existing within the work in question. (This doesn’t have to be a person; it could be an animal, inanimate object, or other being.) Rewrite the story from its perspective.” The intention of this prompt was for students to question the power and authority of the original perspective, to see if this affected the validity of the data that the piece proffers. From here, the writing transformed into a new text, written from the perspective of an imagined investment opportunist: “Ay, yo, my boy can triple your money. Ever seen donkey hooves? The finest delicacy for the elite. Leave me some cash and in a few weeks you’ll be eating good!” Something happened here — something that felt human, individual, and much more descriptively specific — coming back to my tutor’s advice in ‘adding a layer of specificity’ to the data. Lukman’s work made me consider whether voice could be an integral strand of the action research project. As a piece of writing, Lukman’s statement felt like a ‘tangible’ example of student voice — what remained was only to find a way to physically publish and disseminate the ‘data’ that the students were creating.

It was here that I wrote the first draft of my ethical action plan:

I planned to stage an optional Relief Print workshop where students had the opportunity to make their voice/writing ‘tangible’ — setting students a brief within a 2—3 hour workshop, to write a short form piece of text (using their individual voice), which they would then document through printmaking within the workshop.

All the while, asking myself the pedagogic research questions:

1. How can printmaking and/or experimental communication be used to make everyday histories and student voices physically present?

1. How can creative methods be used to examine, interpret, and describe socio-cultural narratives?⁴

John O’Reilly’s notes on the ethical action plan were interesting, especially in unpacking the potential meanings of terminologies such as ‘everyday histories’ and ‘student voice’. He recommended a text called Notes Towards a Speculative Methodology of Everyday Life by Mike Michael (2016)⁵, where I discovered complexities both in support of, and challenging, the desire for the ‘multisensoriality’, in making student voice ‘physical’ or ‘tangible’:

“a ‘sensory ethnography’ that ‘attends to the multisensoriality of the ways in which ethnographers and research participants experience their lives and worlds, and to the tacit and unspoken as well as verbal actions and categories they use to classify and represent these to others.”⁶

In my mind, this reading highlighted a need for individuality in the workshop’s approach to visualisation, that was potentially lacking in the action research project at this stage — as in order to stage the print workshop as a stand-alone, optional learning activity (rather than embedded in the 14 week unit, where my IP tutor felt specificity was lacking) I would need to provide pre-designed making materials and letter sets in order for the brief to be achieved in the timeframe.

I decided the best approach would be to begin testing the workshop, and discussing the potential call out materials, with my Level 7 RCA students and with my PGCert tutor group, in order to gain feedback on the idea, and to re-work where necessary, before opening the call-out to my Level 4 UAL students.

Testing the call out was enjoyable on a practical/visual level, but again the problem of conceptual ‘specificity’ arose in writing the copy for the poster — and my PGCert tutor group all agreed that the social justice element of the invitation needed to be more explicit at the outset. In spite of feeling the same, I was already feeling uncomfortable about the prospect of potentially closing the type of content/subject matter that the workshop welcomed, or steering students in a direction that felt potentially self-serving (in terms of the PGCert brief which specifies the necessity of ‘tackling a social justice issue’) and even harmful (in terms of the inherent risks involved in sharing struggles of social justice or marginalisation in the University space). More testing/researching/writing was necessary.

I tested the physical workshop materials on a group of 23 RCA students, asking the students to develop “statements” from their research (rather than paragraphs/essays) as a nod towards accessibility, immediacy, and audience — offering the students each a piece of a lino for carving, and also use of my custom letter sets to save them carving time if limited by the workshop hours. I was particularly interested in this idea of questioning ‘audience’ and ‘accessibility’ after reading another text recommended by John, called Bitter After Taste: Affect, Food, and Social Aesthetics, by Ben Highmore:

“Anyone interested in the history of aesthetics must be faced with this odd predicament: how does a form of inquiry that was once aimed at the entire creaturely world end up as a specialized discourse about fine art?“⁷

Which made the RCA students and I question [through making]: by ‘shortening’ our research statements, will they become more accessible or more immediate to a wider audience?

The student work came out of this workshop was of an excellent standard in terms of visuals, and the students reported that the process of ‘simplifying’ their research was useful and held inclusive potential for engagement. Despite all of the students really enjoying the tactile nature of the making process, some of the students felt that the limitations of the medium of relief printing was not entirely successful in terms of their preferred individual visual palette, and that the time-consuming nature of the process meant that making/disseminating multiple copies of these research materials/outcomes would be laborious. Again, more testing/researching/writing was necessary…

1. Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1990) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review43 (6) ↩︎
2. Garrett, Rhianna (2024) Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education, Globalisation, Societies and Education, Routledge, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2024.2307886 ↩︎
3. hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p.38 ↩︎
4. Research questions both borrowed and adapted from: Fauchon, Mireille (2024) Illustration, Narrative and the Suffragette, Bloomsbury Publishing ↩︎
5. Michael, Mike (2016) Notes Towards a Speculative Methodology of Everyday Life, Sage Publications ↩︎
6. Ibid. p.4 ↩︎
7. Highmore, Ben (2010) Bitter After Taste: Affect, Food, and Social Aesthetics, Duke University Press, p.122 ↩︎

I have commented on Andrea Marfo’s Disability, Faith and Race blog[s]: https://homeofhewondering.myblog-staging.arts.ac.uk/

I have commented on Amba Sayal-Bennett’s Disability, Faith and Race blog[s]: https://ambasb.myblog-staging.arts.ac.uk/

I have commented on Sidney Hope’s Race blog: https://sidhopepgcert.myblog-staging.arts.ac.uk/

I have commented on Michelle Ussher’s Disability blog: https://pgcertmussher.myblog-staging.arts.ac.uk/2024/05/17/blog-post-1-unit-2/

I have offered email feedback on Michelle Ussher’s Intervention, and offered my blogging group in-person feedback at a wonderful, supportive session at Chelsea College of Art, organised by Sidney Hope:

• What is the context of your teaching practice, your positionality in relation to your practice?

I am a 0.6 lecturer across the BA (Hons) Illustration and Visual Media course at LCC. I teach across all years of the course, from Level 4 to Level 6. I am also a 0.2 Lecturer on the Visual Communication MA course at the Royal College of Art, teaching at Level 7.

I am a cisgender, white woman, with Irish and English parents. I am agnostic, although I was brought up as a Catholic. I am heterosexual. I am disabled by two specific learning difficulties, dyspraxia, and dyslexia.

I am a first-generation University Student. I hold an MA from the Royal College of Art and received my Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in 2021. In undertaking my MA, class consciousness[1] has become an important part of my research and teaching practice — navigating a journey from a working-class upbringing to my position in Higher Education.

My positionality in class terms has driven my approach in writing this intervention report, which is centred around the perceived purpose of gaining a university degree. As I have worked through my blog posts on disability, faith, and race in this unit, and through conversations with my tutors and peers, I have become increasingly concerned with the idea of inclusivity in relation to teaching towards industry bias. I believe the purpose of gaining a university degree should reach towards the practice of freedom[2] for the individual (especially intellectual freedom), rather than toward a pre-supposed position within society, or toward limited imagined futures.[3]^,[4] I would like to clarify at the outset of this report that, having experienced financial pressure and disadvantage in my own experience of education (and life outside of the institution), I am aware of the importance that the role of employment and financial security represents for students, graduates and academics — I do not wish to suggest that a university should not equip students with the skills necessary to work towards financial security, I only wish to enhearten, or to dream, that financial freedom may co-exist with intellectual freedom, and a depth of understanding in selfhood.

• What is the intervention you have designed in your teaching practice (what is the aim, when will it take place, what resources, training, support is required)? Why and how is it inclusive? Include references that cite critical pedagogy, social justice theories and data that supports your designs.

The aim of my intervention is it to help strengthen the classroom as a communal space, or as a learning community,[5] where there is an ongoing recognition that everyone’s individual experience influences the classroom dynamic, and everyone’s individual contributions act as resources towards learning.[6]^,[7] I would like this communal space to encourage excitement[8] in Higher Education. I would also like this understanding and presentation of individual experience to be centred around an intersectional framework.[9]

This summer, following successful re-validation of our course at LCC, we will be re-writing all of the course content for our Level 4 students. I will be co-leading on the first fourteen weeks of planning and delivery, alongside my colleague, Ching-Li Chew. We have already begun this planning process, confirming the practical processes of making that we hope to guide the students through, and beginning to write the project brief. The project will culminate in a public showcase, in the form of a ‘catwalk’, where students will create wearable illustration (this could be anything from a garment to a placard) and model their individual outputs, at this collective event.

There is clear opportunity here for our learning community to be initiated in a manner that is collective, and celebratory. What we are yet to write into the brief is the conceptual initiation for these processes of making, i.e. what we’re asking the students to communicate through their experimental works of illustration — this is where the intervention will be instrumental.

Wearable, visual communication, or fashion[10] that is approached through illustrative methodology, can be understood as a cultural signifier, as well as a cultural disruption; each concept intersects and collectively serves as a symbolic form of communication.[11] This can be especially true for marginalised groups (as well as their allies) posing ‘radical questions’ and seeking social change.[12] It is a mode of communication that can be wordless, and simultaneously loud, for those who feel it is safer not to speak — which is important in considering the classroom dynamic, where politics of domination can be reproduced in the educational setting,[13] and where asserting subjectivity[14] can feel uncomfortable, or even risky, especially for students with protected characteristics.[15] Finding a way to make this project space into a democratic setting, where everyone feels responsibility[16] (and empowerment) to contribute, will be a central goal in achieving transformative pedagogy.

It is my intention that these cultural and conceptual facets of the medium will be introduced to the students early on in the project, and that students will begin to recognise their positionality within an intersectional framework. Asking the students to use this project to communicate their individual contribution[s] to the classroom dynamic will require a concurrently gentle and complex introduction to understanding intersectionality. At Level 4, I believe it will be important to create some bridging resources to help make Crenshaw’s seminal essay on Mapping the Margins[17] accessible and actionable for the class as a whole. In researching for this intervention, I have been inspired by Womankind Worldwide, a women’s rights organisation who help amplify action in women’s movements through creating resources and building projects/spaces for change.[18] They have created a resource titled Intersectionality 101: What is it and why is it important? that I think will be useful for our students in its simplicity, but also in its suggested activations for understanding:

What can I do? […] Here are just a few ideas:

• Check your privilege: […] Reflect on [your privilege] and consider how this impacts the discriminations you do and don’t experience.
• Listen and learn: […] Intersectionality is about learning and understanding views from other[s] […]
• Make space: Ask yourself if you’re the right person to take up space or speak on certain issues. Centre stories and actions on those with the lived experiences. Don’t speak for them, don’t speak over them.
• Watch your language: So many of the words we use every day are ableist, exclusionary and downright offensive to marginalised communities[…][19]

These guidelines will be helpful in the students understanding modes of interrogation, representation, and platforming — it is essential that the students consider the complexity in approaching what is a potentially political medium, avoiding tokenistic involvement in speaking out or embracing change,[20] in order to find a meaningful entry point towards communication, and/or, self-actualisation.[21] It is important that this project is understood as the initiation of practicing who we are within our learning community,[22] establishing the aforementioned idea that ongoing recognition of everyone’s individual experience will positively influence the classroom dynamic, and opportunities for learning.

We learned early that our devotion to learning, to a life of the mind, was a counter-hegemonic act, a fundamental way to resist every strategy of white racist colonisation.[23]

In bell hooks’ seminal work, Teaching to Transgress, (which has been an instrumental resource in writing this report) there is a suggestion that the traditional role of the university is the pursuit of truth and the sharing of knowledge and information.[24] She goes further in suggesting that the idea of the intellectual questing for a union of the mind, body and spirit has been replaced with the notion that being smart mean[s] one [is] inherently emotionally unstable and that the best in oneself emerge[s] in one’s academic work.[25] hooks contends this development, through her commitment to education as the practice of freedom, and towards offering knowledge that empowers students to live more fully in the world beyond academe. It is my own observation that in the current Higher Education landscape, particularly within the arts, there is a systemic understanding that ‘the best in oneself’ emerges in one’s contribution to industry. It is my view that this focus holds inherent tendencies towards oppressive marginalisation and limited opportunity for self-actualisation.

• How have you reflected on feedback from peers, colleagues, students on your idea? Where possible, include how the intervention impacted inclusive teaching and learning (if you were able to deliver this)

I have been discussing all of these ideas with my students,[26] peers and colleagues. Culture towards the importance of employment is correspondingly present amongst students, who are understandably anxious about their futures. It is also worth considering that the role of fees, finances, and the corporatisation of art schools, contributes considerably towards student’s expectations of what they hope to receive from university tuition. Les Back suggests that the marketisation of education has reduced the process of education to a financial transaction,[27] which negates the idea of a dialogical learning model and harps back to the aptly titled ‘banking’ model of education, as outlined in Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.[28]

This brings us to the consideration of expectations of subject matter, and what is/should be delivered in the field of Illustration — a point of feedback that both my peers and colleagues have raised in these discussions. Here, bell hooks echoes this consideration:

Teaching in a traditional discipline from the perspective of critical pedagogy means that I often encounter students who make complaints like, “I thought this was supposed to be an English class, why are we talking so much about feminism?” (Or, they might add, race or class.)[29]

In reflecting on this, and through closely studying bell hooks, I believe there is a necessity to explain the philosophy, strategy, and intent of the inclusion of the transformative pedagogies utilised through this intervention, to the students themselves.[30] It is encouraging that by nature of subject matter, wearable illustration is inextricably linked with themes of identity and culture, both visually and symbolically — and I hope for this fact to act as a bridge for students to understand the value of these considerations in their field.

It is also my hope that through the students focusing on embracing community through this intervention, they are better prepared, too, for the necessary collaboration and support networks involved in sustaining an enriching professional life — and aware of the need to reconstruct and to question processes of industry, towards inclusion.

…to begin always anew, to make, to reconstruct, and to not spoil, to refuse to bureaucratise the mind, to understand and live life as a process — live to become…[31]

BIBLIOGRAPHY —

• Back, Les (2016) Academic Diary, or, Why Higher Education Still Matters, Goldsmiths Press
  
  
• Boyce, Travis D., Lenoir, Lisa D. and Chunnu, Winsome M. (2021) Expanding the narrative: ‘Fashion, Style, Aesthetics and #BlackLivesMatter’, Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, Volume 8, Issue Black Lives Matter: Fashion, Style & Aesthetics
  
  
• Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1990) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review43 (6)
  
  
• Doerr, Nicole (2016), Fashion in social movements, in K. Fahlenbrach, M. Klimke and J. Scharloth (eds), Protest Cultures: A Companion, Oxford, NY: Berghahn Books
  
  
• Freire, Paulo cited in hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge
  
  
• Garrett, Rhianna (2024) Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education, Globalisation, Societies and Education, Routledge, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2024.2307886
  
  
• hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge
  
  
• Moore, Barrington (1978) cited in Levin, Michael, (1980), History of Political Thought Imprint Academic Ltd, Vol. 1, No. 3.
  
  
• Mower, Sarah (2018), Dressed to protest: Can fashion help bring about change?, Vogue Magazine (UK), 20 January 2018, https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/clothing-fashion-protest. (Accessed: 31 July 2024)
  
  
• Phillips, Mike (1973) Black Teachers, Open Door, BBC Broadcasting. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06ctzhf (Accessed 26 July 2024)
   
• Rekis, Jaclyn (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38
  
  
• Sadiq, Asif (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right, TEDx. Youtube, 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw (Accessed: 26 July 2024)
  
  
• Taylor, Bridie (2019) Intersectionality 101: What is it and why is it important? Womankind Worldwide, https://www.womankind.org.uk/intersectionality-101-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-important/ (Accessed: 31 July 2024) 
  
  
• Womankind Worldwide (2024) What we do, https://www.womankind.org.uk/what-we-do/ (Accessed: 31 July 2024) 

---

[1] Awareness of one’s place in a system of social class, especially (in Marxist terms) as it relates to the class struggle.

Moore, Barrington (1978) cited in Levin, Michael, (1980), History of Political Thought Imprint Academic Ltd, Vol. 1, No. 3. p.499

[2] hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge

[3] Phillips, Mike (1973) Black Teachers, Open Door, BBC Broadcasting. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06ctzhf (Accessed 26 July 2024)

[4] Garrett, Rhianna (2024) Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education, Globalisation, Societies and Education, Routledge, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2024.2307886

[5] hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p. 8

[6] Ibid.

[7] Sadiq, Asif (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right, TEDx. Youtube, 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw (Accessed: 26 July 2024)

[8] hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p. 7—8

[9] Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1990) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review43 (6)

[10] “Fashion (or clothing; we can debate what we should call it) isn’t on the sidelines […] it’s a constant ally in times of trouble, a medium open to infinite nuances of meaning in the hands of ingenious people to show their beliefs.”

Mower, Sarah (2018), Dressed to protest: Can fashion help bring about change?, Vogue Magazine (UK), 20 January 2018, https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/clothing-fashion-protest. (Accessed: 31 July 2024) 

[11] Doerr, Nicole (2016), Fashion in social movements, in K. Fahlenbrach, M. Klimke and J. Scharloth (eds), Protest Cultures: A Companion, Oxford, NY: Berghahn Books, p. 205–12

[12] Boyce, Travis D., Lenoir, Lisa D. and Chunnu, Winsome M. (2021) Expanding the narrative: ‘Fashion, Style, Aesthetics and #BlackLivesMatter’, Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, Volume 8, Issue Black Lives Matter: Fashion, Style & Aesthetics, Jan 2021, p. 13 – 19

[13] hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p.39

[14] Ibid, p.40

[15] Rekis, Jaclyn (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38, p.786

[16] hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p.39

[17] Crenshaw, Kimberlé (1990) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review43 (6)

[18] Womankind Worldwide (2024) What we do, https://www.womankind.org.uk/what-we-do/ (Accessed: 31 July 2024) 

[19] Taylor, Bridie (2019) Intersectionality 101: What is it and why is it important? Womankind Worldwide, https://www.womankind.org.uk/intersectionality-101-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-important/ (Accessed: 31 July 2024) 

[20] “All too often we found a will to include those considered ‘marginal’ without a willingness to accord their work with the same respect and consideration given other work. In Women’s Studies, for example, individuals will often focus on women of color at the very end of the semester or lump everything about race and difference together in one section. This kind of tokenism is not multi-cultural transformation, but it is familiar to us as the change individuals are most likely to make.”

hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p.38

[21] “In our everyday lives we speak differently to diverse audiences. We communicate best by choosing that way of speaking that is informed by the particularity and uniqueness of whom we are speaking to and with.”

hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p.11

[22] hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p. 8

[23] Ibid, p.2

[24] Ibid, p.29

[25] Ibid, p.16

[26] I have focused my conversations on the process/expectations of graduation and employment with my postgraduate RCA students, in spite of the fact that this intervention will be made in my undergraduate teaching, primarily. This chosen focus group for feedback was intentional, in that my postgraduate students have experience in industry (or lack thereof) upon undergraduate graduation in correlation with their expectations/desires that has been useful to draw from.

[27] Back, Les (2016) Academic Diary, or, Why Higher Education Still Matters, Goldsmiths Press, p.23

[28] Presented in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the “banking” concept of education represents the teacher-student relationship / hierarchy of knowledge or skills transmission that is prevalent in most Western education models.

Freire, Paulo ([1968] 2017), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans by Myra Bergman Ramos, Great Britain: Penguin Classics.

[29] hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, p.42

[30] I will do so in the introductory session of the project.

[31] Freire, Paulo cited in hooks, bell (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge