Following feedback from colleagues, peers and the recent Camberwell Fine Art Re-approval which has integrated the Justice Considerations more broadly into the Year 1 (Y1) curriculum beyond Units 3 and 4, I have decided to redesign my intervention.
REVISED PLAN – 7/07/25
I will lead a three-day workshop on racial, social and environmental justice for Y1 Drawing students who I teach, in Unit 2.
Justice Considerations (JCs) were introduced last year as a requirement for the Unit 3, 1000-word exhibition review. With limited time and a lack of teaching guidance, Y1 staff quickly delivered a workshop demonstrating how to consider justice using an exhibition as a case study. Additionally, we shared a PowerPoint of suggested resources and invited student input. Having assessed this unit twice, I have observed that many students treat JCs as a tick-box exercise, resulting in superficial rather than a meaningful, reflexive engagement.
My aim is to reorient this workshop from a banking model to a dialogic and embodied learning process that positions students as knowers and fosters critical consciousness of systems of power, oppression and resistance. This intervention draws on engaged pedagogy (hooks, 1994), intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1990), brave spaces (Arao and Clemens, 2013), translanguaging (García and Wei, 2014), UAL’s Educational Ethics Code (2022) and participatory methods from my professional experience.
DAY 1 & 2 (35 students/ day)
AM
Co-creation of ground rules
Multilingual reading of justice questions (Fig. 1)
Personal and collective interrogations of justice
Drawing, writing, and paper-sculpting justice experiences using sensory recall
PM
Collective mapping with thread to explore intersectionality
Discussion of ethical dilemmas (informed by UAL’s Ethics resource (2020) and questions from previous workshops (2025)
Sharing one justice-related action step from personal practice
Introducing Padlet resources (Fig. 2) and inviting student contributions
Day 3 (2 sessions, 35 students each)
Exhibition visit to Drawing Room exploring artworks addressing environmental (in)justice (Fig. 3)
Group readings, discussion and feedback
243 x 152 cm
Featured in Drawing Room exhibition opening Sep 2025.
I will model my multilingual positionality by alternating between English and Ga (my mother tongue), encouraging students to use their own languages. This use of translanguaging aims to legitimize multilingualism in formal learning and foster authentic self-expression of identity (García & Wei, 2014), while challenging English-dominance in academia (Thiong’o, 1986; Odeniyi, 2022).
Our Y1 Leader is supportive and interested in the use of positionality to facilitate embodied, critical reflections on justice. I will deliver this intervention from 24 – 26 November, with his assistance.
A Detailed Plan:
Bibliography
Arao, B. & Clemens, K. (2013). From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces. Routledge eBooks, [online] pp.135–150. doi:https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003447580-11.
Crenshaw, K. (1990) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), pp.1241-1299.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.
García, O. and Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging language, bilingualism and education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Odjidja, R. (2025). Considerations of Racial, Social, and/or Climate Justice – Some questions compiled by Camberwell Year 1 Drawing staff and students [online] Padlet. Available at: https://padlet.com/rodjidja1/considerations-of-racial-social-and-or-climate-justice-in-pr-klcjorhifx4lflmc/wish/R7dXad6AgLE0Z6bl [Accessed 10 Jul. 2025].
Odeniyi, V. (2022). Reimagining Conversations by Victoria Odeniyi. [online] UAL Decolonising Arts Institute. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/107636056/Reimagining_Conversations_by_Victoria_Odeniyi [Accessed 6 May. 2025].
Thiongʼo, N.W. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey.
UAL (2020). Resources – Ethics for Making. [online] Available at: https://ethics.arts.ac.uk/wpx/resources/ [Accessed 8 Jul. 2025].
UAL (2022). Code of Practice for Educational Ethics. Available at: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/documents/sppreview/755e92b3-f2c4-4c6e-8164-60bee388dbfa
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PREVIOUS PLAN
I propose to lead a day-long workshop on justice principles (JP) for students writing about exhibitions. This will sit within Unit 3 where students write a 1000-word exhibition review considering questions of social, racial and/or climate justice. Additionally, the workshop will be students’ first introduction to justice within the Fine Art curriculum, hopefully serving as a crucial point to awaken or deepen critical consciousness.
It is notable that students have varying degrees of critical consciousness, literacy and emotional latitude to engage in justice discourse whether individually and through an intersectional lens. It will require, as Boller (1999) highlights, collectively questioning held assumptions, recognizing discomfort as an embodied and affective dimension of this pedagogical activity and inhabiting it.
Drawing on Freire’s dialogic model (1996) and Rancière’s concept of ‘the ignorant schoolmaster’ (1999) in emancipatory education, I aim to create an environment that fosters horizontal teacher-student relationship, counters the normative hierarchy of intelligences, and engenders openness and inclusivity. While lived experience is important, I will emphasize that I do not expect marginalized students to carry the burden of becoming ‘native informants’ (hooks, 1994, p. 43) because experience does not confer expertise.
Plan
AM
- Introduce JPs using UAL’s Glossary and Crenshaw’s intersectionality.
- Case study of one exhibition exploring the different JPs.
- Small group discussions on JPs and how they connect them to exhibitions and artworks seen.
- Collective sharing and discussion.
PM
- Movement/sensory icebreaker.
- Groups select 1 of 4 exhibitions provided (maybe local) and map out how they will consider 1 JP critically.
- Collective sharing and discussion.
- Share Padlet resource with relevant references.
I will collate qualitative feedback from students and staff on this plan. A recent related workshop has already informed adaptations such as extending from a half day to a full day allowing for more discussion; selecting exhibitions where justice is not visibly or thematically foregrounded to demonstrate nuanced approaches for revealing JPs; and changing our resource format from PowerPoint to Padlet (in progress) to streamline content and prevent endless scrolling.
Bibliography
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.
Boler, M. and Greene, M. (2009). Feeling power: emotions and education. New York; London: Routledge.
Crenshaw, K. (1990) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), pp.1241-1299.
Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by M.B Ramos. London: Penguin.
Rancière, J. (1999). The ignorant schoolmaster: five lessons in intellectual emancipation. Translated by K. Ross. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Wow Renee, your workshop sounds brilliant. I would love to take it!
I’d love to hear more from you sometime – if not here then in conversation – about how you facilitate your small group discussion moments/”break out” moments, before coming together again. It’s something we do a lot in our sessions too and sometimes I feel it works better than others. What sort of things do you find help to facilitate these moments?
I also love using padlet – yours looks so rich with resources. I am always trying to think of new ways to structure padlets, depending on usage. At the moment, yours appears as a rich repository of resources. Is there a way with it you might encourage students to share their own resources, too?
I think your reference to hooks, regarding lived experience and how it can be “burdensome” is very important to keep in mind.
Thank you.
(I am just emerging from a week of feeling a bit unwell so apologies for the delay in commenting! I’ll also go back and have another look at my intervention. I might post a ‘Version 2’ as a new blog, for transparency!) 🙂
Hi Lucy, thanks! You are welcome to join in spirit but I think you might prefer my redesigned workshop even more!
For facilitating breakout groups, I will draw on previous project experiences. For this one, my idea is to use the Pyramid or Snowballing principle where students work alone, then share in pairs, then in table discussions, followed by whole group discussions. I will also provide rolls of paper across the tables so students can draw, map, and write as they listen.
For Padlet, yes, what you are seeing already contains students’ contributions. During the two previous workshops we asked students to contribute links and questions. I will do this again for my workshop in November. While the Powerpoint resource was only used in Year 1, I am hoping by transferring material to Padlet and sharing the links with BA Drawing staff, it will become a valuable resource for all years.
I love how hooks talks about the “passion of experience” as a way of knowing that is often expressed through what has been ‘deeply inscribed on body, usually from suffering’. Yet advocates for multiple positionalities and a combination of experiential and analytical ways of knowing that allow for diverse perspectives to be shared (1994, p. 92 – 99). My challenge will be how to sensitively engage minoritized students in a way that truly honours their contributions without being “burdensome. Still thinking on it.