And I agree with you. Our satisfaction as teaching staff is a very good measure, but also not a straight forward one. I can tell you about the many ways I feel discriminated and exploited by UAL, but also how…Read more

I left this comment and recommendation for Andrea’s post on race but I think it is very relevant here as well.

Do you know this graphic novel:
The Roles We Play – by Sabba Khan?
https://ethicalshop.org/the-roles-we-play-by-sabba-khan.html

I highly recommend it!

Sabba Khan is a British Pakistani woman, wearing a hijab, who s…Read more

Do you know this graphic novel: The Roles We Play – by Sabba Khan?
https://ethicalshop.org/the-roles-we-play-by-sabba-khan.html

I highly recommend it!

Sabba Khan is a British Pakistani woman that studied BA Architecture at Central Saint Martins. The book is beautifully illustrated, and the recollection of her UAL experience,…Read more

I had to take the mandatory training few weeks ago which included anti-racism and breaking biases courses. They are institutional top-down courses which focus on limited definitions and perspectives, the bar is really low, but I didn’t dislike them or got angry at any point. Maybe because I have seen much worse.

The point that…Read more

Thanks for your comments. I am glad that the post felt provocative somehow and that you took something from it.

I agree with you that the most powerful creative responses are the ones that can turn constrains and barriers into opportunities. However, ‘constrains and barriers’ are not the same as ‘precarity and scarcity’.

While…Read more

Yes …
There is an enormous gap between discourse and practice at institutional level happening at UAL, and I am seeing that gap increase year after year at an accelerated pace. For years I’ve been “volunteering time” to practice what I called “filling the cracks”, literally doing extra hours (outside my hpl contract) to…Read more

A friend who is an academic, once gave me a piece of advice that stuck with me. He told me that, to start a piece of writing, you can start writing with your heart to capture your thoughts and feelings as they come. And that, the process of translating thoughts and feelings into words on paper, allows us to then take and analytical…Read more