Month: January 2024

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My Positionality

As a practitioner, my industry experience in upcycling, sustainable fashion design and campaigning is instrumental in my teaching style and approach. Since graduating from the BA Fashion: Womenswear course at Central Saint Martins in 2017 and the MA Fashion course in 2020, I have worked with global organisations such as Fashion Revolution, Slow Factory and the British Fashion Council towards fostering a dialogue around social, racial, and climate justice within the arts. Since 2022, I have been the only Sustainability Lecturer for the Fashion Design Programme at Central Saint Martins.

In 2021, I co-founded Trash Club, a global community and support network for independent creatives and students worldwide. Trash Club is an advocate of knowledge exchange and well-being, acknowledging the intersectionalities and lived experiences of its members, particularly working-class creatives such as myself.

As a white gay European man working within fashion and academia, I understand that my position is one of privilege, and I’m considered a majority demographic of staff at University of the Arts London (UAL, 2022). Throughout this course, I’ve aimed to re-evaluate my social biases, foster conversations around diversity and inclusion within my teaching practice, and implement diverse and radical pedagogy into the curriculum. (Freire, 1971)

My intersectionalities are that I am neurodivergent, I am queer, and I am from a working-class mixed-heritage background (Czech and English). I have always lived in the UK, and my first language is English. Yet, my dual-cultural upbringing has influenced me to learn about different cultures and relate to student experiences of dual heritage (not belonging to one place).

Living with my partner, a Muslim man from the British Bangladeshi diaspora, has given me insights into the challenges that underrepresented minority groups are exposed to in the arts. This discrimination is recurringly nuanced within fashion academia, a sector in which he also teaches. 

References

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Research Methods

Quantitive

Analyse staff interviewee demographics, with reference to UAL data and interview response data, through graphs and charts. 

Qualitative

To assess staff interviews through thematic analysis, observing patterns and recurring topics that may inform how, why, and what factors influence the ability to teach social, racial and climate justice to fashion design students in higher education.

Interview Schedule

  1. Is it possible to teach social, racial, and climate justice within higher education? 
  2. What are some of the difficulties that you have in your role? By instilling these new ways of thinking? 
  3. What makes for a good fashion educator?
  4. What accountability is needed to embed these approaches?
  5. If it were mandatory, would it make a difference in student engagement? 
  6. Have you encountered similar resistance in other places you’ve taught at?
  7. Imagine an ideal scenario; how would we teach?  
  8. In your opinion, has the purpose of fashion design education evolved?
  9. Why do you think CSM Fashion has the reputation it does? Is this the same now?
  10. Are students today more aware due to their education, or is it intrinsic? 
  11. How do you approach the potentially subjective task of evaluating student work that is socially and culturally motivated?
  12. How can we teach social, racial and climate justice within a framework rooted in white Western perspectives and teaching methods? 
  13. How do you balance acknowledging cultural diversity and adhering to academic standards?
  14. How do you encourage a more inclusive evaluation that respects diverse cultural aesthetics and avoids imposing a singular viewpoint?
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Action Research Project: Rationale

With a shift in the zeitgeist leading academic institutions to question how climate, racial and social justice is embedded within design pedagogy, I am interested in understanding, as a department, where our resistance is placed in this shift. We know that sustainability is rooted in deep ethical and spiritual commitments (Hawken, 2007). So this research project will investigate whether this can be taught and assess the factors that influence the fashion programme contributing to Central Saint Martins becoming a Social Purpose University (UAL, 2023).

The questioning of my positionality within my job role and the unconscious bias that may come with it have catalysed this research project. Please see post from Unit 2 on Unconscious Bias here. Throughout the Pg Cert, I have asked myself whether my opinions and knowledge around sustainable methodologies are inclusive and expansive enough to create a culturally relevant teaching environment (Aronson B., Laughter J. 2016) or if my experience has been influenced by the western gaze of the industry, often reappropriating indigenous sustainable techniques within fashion education (Ahmed, T, 2019).

My research will analyse and evaluate how staff and students believe that we currently embed these themes within our curriculum and what the limitations are. Although some fashion design degree programmes currently embed debates around broader ethical issues concerned with sustainability, climate change, and consumption (Fletcher & Grose, 2012), I aim to understand whether the fashion programme at Central Saint Martins would be considered in this group. I will be interviewing staff members and asking students to complete feedback on a workshop series I host with them currently. 

Through this research project, my personal motivations are to aid my personal and professional development in my role as an educator and creative practitioner. I would like to use this project to gauge a greater understanding of how I can utilise my role to embed social, racial, and climate justice into my teaching methods and the course curriculum.

Ahmed, T. (2019) Anti-Fashion: using the sari to decolonise fashion. Modes of Criticism, Vol 4. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/41404957/Anti_Fashion_using_the_sari_to_decolonise_ fashion (Accessed: 19 Dec 2023)

Aronson B., Laughter J. (2016). The theory and practice of culturally relevant education. Review of Educational Research, 86, 163–206. Crossref ISI. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101.

Traditional teaching and learning in universities largely ignores ecological principles, and prepare learners to be successful in unsustainable cultural systems, thus perpetuating these systems.

(Burns, H. 2011) 

References

Aronson B., Laughter J. (2016). The theory and practice of culturally relevant education. Review of Educational Research, 86, 163–206. Crossref ISI. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101.

Burns, H. (2011). Teaching for Transformation: (Re) Designing Sustainability Courses Based on Ecological Principles. Journal of Sustainability Education, 2. Available at: https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/sites/agscid7/files/teaching_for_transformation-_redesigning_sustainability_courses.pdf (Accessed 10 Jan 2024).

Fletcher,K. and Grose,L. (2012) Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change UK: Laurence King

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Opressed. London: Continuum.

Hawken, P. (2007). Blessed Unrest. New York: Penguin Group.

UAL (2023). Our Strategy 2022-2032. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/strategy-and-governance/strategy (Accessed: 20 Jan 2024).

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My research question: Can Climate, Racial, and Social Justice be taught to Fashion Design Students in Higher Education?

This study is part of my research on the PgCert Academic Practice in Art, Design and Communication at UAL.

I am conducting an enquiry into whether climate, racial and social justice can be taught to students within higher education and embedded within the curriculum. With a shift in the zeitgeist leading academic institutions to question how these themes are embedded within design pedagogy, I am interested in understanding, as a department, where our difficulties and strengths are placed. I will be interviewing staff members at random and asking students to complete feedback on sessions I host with them.

My research will analyse and evaluate how we currently embed these themes within our curriculum, and which factors come into play by analysing data collected. The methodology will be both quantative and qualitative, taking a responsive evaluation approach. This will consist of interviews with staff members and questionnaires wit students. Responses will be transcribed and analysed anonymously.

Please see my first ever blog post here where I outline my Academic Practice context.