I am a mixed race woman of British and Nepalese heritage, born into a lower middle class family. I attended primary and secondary comprehensive schools in inner London, before going onto study Fine Art at Chelsea. During my BA. I was one of very few students of colour, a stark contrast to my experience of school, consequently I often had a feeling of being ‘out of place’ in the Arts University environment.
I am now one of UALs 24.9% BAME staff in Academic positions 1. My own experience has informed a drive to address ways in which the cultural capital of marginalised groups is devalued (Burke and McManus) 2 and move beyond the deficit model and in turn contribute to closing the attainment gap.
Rather than devise an entirely new intervention, I would like to focus on a project I have developed and delivered since 2021 for which I believe social justice has been a key motivator.
The Collectives brief asks Stage 2 Fashion Communication students to work in self- assigned Collectives to host a public facing event outside of UAL. A key aim is to encourage students to recognise and centre the value of their own lived experience and tacit knowledge in relation to fashion through building communities of shared interest.
Since its inception, I have hosted a series of talks from London based Collectives working at the intersection of art, fashion and social justice to centre the experience of marginalised communities as part of the briefing.
Through its associated speaker programme, the project promotes an engagement with theories of ‘speaking nearby’(Minh-Ha, 1983)3 and coloniality of knowledge (Mignolo, 2007)4 by platforming recently formed Collectives who activate these values through everyday practice.
I propose adapting and consolidating the projects fashion and social justice lens in the following ways:
- Adding supplementary material to the 2025 Project Brief; including a reading/reference list that reinforces the project’s fashion and social justice lens to be reviewed using UDL CAST Guidelines
- Creating an online audio archive of previous talks which is available internally to UAL staff and students featuring Baesianz, Muslim Sisterhood, Flock Together, New Currency, Diasporas Now, Sportsbanger, Tape Collective, ESEA Sisters.
- Broadening the scope of the project to include guest Collectives who can bring perspectives on disabled, queer and trans experiences of the fashion industry
- Situating the project within the history of London, encouraging students to think more critically about the social conditions of being a young person in the city; Cost of living, the ‘co-opting of culture and art, in its various forms, by property finance’5 and how these affect their status as cultural producers
- Introducing DIWO (Do It With Others)6 As students prepare to enter industry, how can exploring collective models of production enable them to have agency rather than falling into its shape?
As the intervention will benefit staff and students I plan to consult
- A group of six Stage 2 students who will review the additions to the brief
- Staff including Tanveer Ahmed (Senior Lecturer in Fashion Communication and Race) Lucy Robsinson (Disability Support Advisor) Dr Philip Clarke (Fashion Programme Course Leader).
Challenges to this intervention could be making the talks archive accessible in the timeframe/on a limited budget, but this is something that could be implemented in the run up to the delivery of the project, April 2025. I could also investigate UAL staff funds to cover costs.
References:
- UAL Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Annual report 2021/22 ↩︎
- (Burke, P.J. and McManus, J. (2011) ‘Art for a few: Exclusions and misrecognitions in Higher Education Admissions Practices’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(5), pp. 699–712. doi:10.1080/01596306.2011.620753.
↩︎ - ‘speaking nearby:’ a conversation with Trinh T. Minh–ha – chen – 1992 – visual anthropology review – wiley online library. Available at: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/var.1992.8.1.82 (Accessed: 27 May 2024). ↩︎
- Coloniality is far from over, and so must be decoloniality: Afterall: A journal of art, context and enquiry: Vol 43. Available at: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/692552 (Accessed: 27 May 2024).
↩︎ - Regeneration songs: Sounds of investment and loss in East London (2018) by: Alberto Duman, Anna Minton, Dan Hancox, Malcolm James REPEATER
↩︎ - Garrett, M. and says: (2018) Diwo (DO-it-with-others): Artistic co-creation as a decentralized method of peer empowerment in today’s multitude., Feral Class – Marc Garrett. Available at: https://marcgarrett.org/2014/02/12/diwo-do-it-with-others-artistic-co-creation-as-a-decentralized-method-of-peer-empowerment-in-todays-multitude/ (Accessed: 28 May 2024). ↩︎