September 2019 – April 2021
Phase Six’s a significant milestone was the formalisation of Shades of Noir becoming the Centre for Race and Practice-Based Social Justice at UAL in October 2020. This was the culmination of many years of negotiation and careful consideration of Aisha Richards, Director. Whilst this development does not change or affect the outputs of Shades of Noir, it does secure long-term stability and legacy for our work.
This Phase, therefore, had a focus on change and growth, adapting processes whilst still challenging the institutional approach.
This Phase also fell at an extremely turbulent time in the global sphere, with significant impacts of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.
Outcomes.
Student Development:
We continued to expand our student team, employing a range of roles to also include dedicated Design and Web Design roles to drive forward our digital development. We also recruited a project coordinator to continue the development of a History project focussed on drawing together ethnographic accounts from our extended community, researching the history of social justice activism at UAL.
The student cohort of ArtsTemps also transitioned into remote working modes and as a team, we ran online staff development days to both celebrate and retain our community.
Academic Staff Recruitment:
Both TW4 and TW5 overlapped within this Phase, with significant changes to the recruitment practice between cohorts. In May 2021 we ran a full online recruitment cycle for TW5, introducing a two-stage guaranteed interview process brought over from our artstemps hiring practices. This allowed us to welcome more applicants to meet with us, understand the programme and share their individual practices of social justice. TW5 saw an overall application rate of 35 people, the highest level of formal interest to date.
Staff Development:
As UAL began launching its Anti-Racist Action Plan, Shades of Noir developed and delivered a pilot programme for internal training and development. This pilot ran in December 2020 and involved over 60 stakeholders from across UAL’s community. Whilst the pilot was recognised to be of significance, it was not commissioned to roll out by the executive board. UAL still continues to search for a delivery partner for this work in 2022.
We continued to build up our consultancy and spent time refining this process focusing on streamlined online delivery, transitioning from physical spaces. The move to an online provision allowed us to scale up our approach and enabled us to partner with a larger number of external partners. We also received a significant number of enquiries following the murder of George Floyd and the global resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Additionally, the delivery of the ‘Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’ Unit moved online part way through the delivery of the unit to accommodate for Covid-19 restrictions. Like many in Higher Education, we needed to adapt quickly to digital teaching and learning and spent a number of fast-paced weeks moving across to new platforms such as padlet, teams and google classrooms.
Events & Publications:
Whilst Covid continued to have an impact on the delivery of Journals and Events, we were still able to publish three publications and deliver an online conference for UALs Group for the Equality of Minority Staff (GEMS) Community.
The day conference online was titled ‘Real Talk’ (and invited stakeholders from across UAL to contribute to the dialogue surrounding three core panels:
- Panel 1: Attainment of Students and Staff: Senior Management in Conversation.
- Panel 2: Progression & Remuneration: Deans in Conversation.
- Panel 3: Leadership and Experience: Heads of College in Conversation.
This series of conversations sought to build on UAL’s ambitions towards social justice, including redefining practices of consultation with this community as another step towards better race relations and a deeper understanding towards change. The objectives of this panel series were to outline the policies and initiatives that are in place or being developed to support anti-racist practices, programmes and policies within the institution moving forward into 2021 and beyond.
The conference, originally billed to run a year prior, was delayed due to ongoing resistance from senior stakeholders to engage in rigorous and critical debate. Regardless, the online conference was attended by a significant number of the staff group, which is the largest staff group at UAL. We were also pleased to be able to send attendees a small gift on behalf of UAL, recognising their significant contributions to the institution throughout a difficult period.
Publications within this phase were; Third Culture Kids, Disabled People: The Voice of Many and Inclusive Practice: Alchemy – Transformation in Social Justice Teaching. Each of these publications pushed the boundaries of how Shades of Noir defines a journal and led to the development of an online journals platform to increase digital accessibility to our resource.
Additionally Keynotes included Rowan University, USA 2020 and University of East London 2020, with features in articles Making a statement isn’t enough, Voice (2020), White staff and a white curriculum: Inside fashion education, Vogue Business (2020), and How can the craft world address its lack of diversity?, Craft Council (2020) were contributed to.
Challenges Faced.
- Adapting to digital working patterns due to Covid restrictions
- Maintaining momentum during a difficult socio-political time
- An increase of enquiries due to preformative demand following George Floyd’s murder
- Onboarding on to new digital teaching and learning platforms
- Pressures of quality assurance around consistency, development and delivery
- Sustaining the delivery of Teaching Within with a new recruitment process.