RACE

Shades of Noir website

It is brilliant to see the array of articles on offer on Shades of Noir, and how up-to-date they are. As a White person, I approach the website feeling like the resources are not necessarily ‘for’ me, yet the messages are universal, the content relevant not just for my teaching but for me. For example, I have been really perplexed by the recent show of patriotism for the Jubilee, trying to work out what national identity is asserted in it. Reading recent MA graduate, Ndzalama Rodney Sihlangu’s article, Our Majesty Plc. published only last week (June 17, 2022) highlighted further difficulties around support for the Royal Family and its finances.  

Having conducted reading groups and workshops for Year 1 and Year 2 BA students, I have similarly tried to offer them an array of short pieces of writing that they can engage with that our critical and relevant but that do not put ‘theory’ on a weighty pedestal that is hard to digest. I would therefore definitely suggest Shades of Noir as a reading group, essay or workshop resource to my students. If possible, it would also be great to ask Shades of Noir to come and have a session with our cross-course groups. Moreover, I would suggest that students with relevant concerns to be voiced could engage further with their writing but submitting pieces to Shades of Noir for consideration. This could help to give their writing meaning and focus in having an audience and reach in mind.   

Hahn Tapper article: A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education; Social Identity, Theory and Intersectionality (2003).  

Since my MA in Fine Art in 2011-12, at a time of enforced austerity and arts cuts, I became interested in social justice in the context of my art practice – and incorporating the circumstances in which I was working into that practice. The anger and powerlessness I felt against the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government was felt at a personal level as my long-term employment fragmented during the course of the MA and my existence became more precarious, but more embedded in my changing art practice. My PhD, The Feral, the Art Object and the Social, was borne out of my interest in reclaiming the “feral underclass” referred to by the Lord Chancellor in 2011 in reference to the London Riots, and the racialised social group he denigrated – albeit I am White. As the PhD developed I discovered my own feelings of ‘feral’ subjugation as a student parent navigating the restrictions of childcare and parental responsibility whilst studying. I therefore wholeheartedly agree with the principle of Societal Justice Education, and encourage my students to acknowledge and draw from their own intersectional backgrounds, extending to points of both marginality and privilege, in contextualising themselves and their practices.  

The definition provided in the text is useful for framing what social justice is, however I think it is a bit too academic for me to suggest to my BA Fine Art students to read in itself.  

I enjoyed the secondary quotation of Freire in terms of an education that can ‘liberate’ us in terms of social mobility but my provocation would be to search for a better term than ‘domesticate’ as the inverse of this. This usage perpetuates a heteronormative characterisation of the domestic space as being intellectually and socially confining, which is unhelpful to artist parents such as myself, who may struggle with social mobility in terms of money and restrictions of childcare, but do not wish to be defined by these restrictions.    

The proposal to create experiences with rather than for students is exciting, and I try to incorporate such an approach in the events I organise for my students. However, I do not always introduce my background and identity as part of the sessions, aware as I am of being majority White and female and this being boring and dominant. However, on reflection, perhaps this is something I could do more often- and if I invite students to share similarly where it is not already volunteered, this may open up dialogue on difference, and help generate further content for our sessions and areas to explore.     

The Ted talk video “Witness Unconscious Bias” by UCU contained a good provocation and made a clear and compelling case that bias should at this point be conscious, given how much knowledge we have generated in this area. It aroused feelings of guilt and culpability as a White person who benefits from such biases without even realising it. It would be an interesting starting point for a workshop or reading group with students around discrimination. However, I would prefer to show them a more creative, engaging approach to this issue, thinking of the work of Dr Ope Lori in this area – for example her video Alpha and Beta (2015) https://opelori.com/gallery/alpha%20and%20beta where she subverts expectations in terms of race, gender, clothing, class. I also point out in relation to the next topic, we sadly did not manage to retain Dr Lori as a member of UAL staff. The UCU (who made the Witness Unconscious Bias video) is continue to negotiate in relation to addressing the race and disability pay gap as part of its Four Fights strategy – see update here – https://mailchi.mp/174b755e8632/after-the-boycott-what-the-outcome-means?e=50f90788eb which we should all support as UCU members. (If you are not a member, become one!)  

Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design, Finnigan and Richards 2016.  

I was aware through UAL’s stated strategic objectives and learning I have undertaken in relation to AEM, of the attainment and retention gaps we are seeking to address. However it was still shocking to read some of the figures,  

-Firstly, “Art and Design is one of the disciplines with the highest percentages of students leaving with no award (6%) with a disproportionate difference between White students (6%) and Black student groups (Black British Caribbean 9%, Black or Black British African 13%, other Black backgrounds 10%).”    

– Secondly – Another area where there is a noticeable difference in leavers without a degree is between part-time students (13%) and full-time students (6%).  

I have been working on a course in which one of the students of colour is at risk of failing a second unit in his first year. I really struggle with this because I have not been involved in his assessment or formative assessment for the current unit, but he has been very engaged in-person in my larger group sessions- so I had assumed that his studentship had really improved since his failed unit earlier in the year. The group work I have been doing seems to have helped in terms of his feelings of belonging, but a further failure surely risks losing him. Having left home at aged 16, I still regret not having studied an undergraduate degree (despite now having PhD!) and am committed to equipping those without familial or educational scaffolding to be recruited and retained by CCW. I feel like we need to do more to help students like him who are managing studying and working side-by-side, and who missed out on a Foundation. Rather than just offering sign-up sessions to all students at the end of a unit, perhaps we should be putting on targeted extra sessions for students at risk of failure, where we can work on documentation together. This would tally with the quote on page 6 on student experience “I wasn’t expecting to be left to do projects completely on your own. I was expecting more guidance with it being first year and I didn’t know what kind of work they were looking for. (Yorke, M. and Vaughn, D. (2012) Deal or no Deal?: Expectations and Experiences of First-Year Students in Art and Design.  2012, p. 24)”. I could also invite feedback from my own students on what we can do to help them in this area.  

 As a provocation for UAL in terms of recruitment, from my own experience of interviewing students at recruitment stage and what a huge cohort of students we are taking on right now, it doesn’t seem to me that it is so much a case of students of colour being turned down, but that we are still not seeing enough applications from students of colour to say yes to. I am aware of work being done in this area – since 2018 I have worked for UAL Insights, our outreach programme to encourage applications from minority groups such as students of colour, students from low socio-economic backgrounds, care leavers. However, for me, I think our introduction into Secondary Schools needs to start even earlier to encourage students to think about the contribution they can make to Fine Art, and how their positionality becomes a strength they can draw from, and a unique perspective they can offer. In addition to the report’s suggestion (page 19) of increasing the role of staff of colour in recruitment, perhaps more students of colour could be invited (and paid if appropriate) to be involved in recruitment.

Shades of Noir, Race, Issu publication: 

Shedding Whiteness by Jon Straker. I chose this article as it was enlivened by images of practice and written in a way that I thought my students could engage with easily and could form a provocation for them to consider their own subjectivity. As further reading I would also put this piece in conversation with two texts: 
1.Mel Y Chen’s incredible book Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (2012) -as the yellow stain Straker depicts to invoke his Asian heritage reminded me of a quote in that book regarding “racist logic of associative qualities such as poverty, dirt, and crime” (p.95) in terms of skin colour, and 
2. Disidentifications : queers of color and the performance of politics by José Esteban Muñoz (1999) which, like Straker’s piece, complexifies how we form identity in terms of what we are ‘not’, that may not be in alignment with how we look, the race or gender we are born into, reflecting on how we respond to conflicts and intersections between how we are seen and how we feel internally. I find this helpful even as a heteronormative White person and a mother, seeking to form an identity that transcends conservative formation. 

I have encountered this year some incredible work from my students on BA Fine Art in relation not just to racism, but also phenomena such as Asian Fishing where non-Asian people make themselves up to appear Asian, and the alienating affect of this particular form of racism. It would be good next year to incorporate their practice-based research into a collaborative platform cross-course led by students and the issues they encounter which present forms of racism that staff might not even be aware of.