Kwame Anthony Appiah: 2016 Reith Lectures Creed, County, Colour, Culture
‘We need to get comfortable being uncomfortable’ Asif Sadiq says. We learn through experience, sometimes those experiences can be uncomfortable but to drive change we need to embrace ‘uncomfortable’ because that’s how we learn. (Sadiq, 2023).
Delivering a lecture to a room full of diverse students on modernist and post-modernist graphic design can be an uncomfortable space. I’m acutely aware that the work of the designers and the designers themselves that are presented to the students are held in high esteem. They are mostly male and are all white, a handful are women and are also white. None of them look like me or the diverse range of students that I teach. I’m also aware of the inherited ‘history’ that I was once taught.
The history of graphic design is important. In Martha Scotford’s essay Is there a canon of graphic design history? not only emphasises the absence of female graphic designers and or designers of colour. It also raises the question of whose history is being taught, whether some designers’ works are more revered than others? And Why? Are judgments implied when certain designers and works become better known than others? Sadiq questions the traditional ways of teaching Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion suggesting that ‘training is biased, built with stereotypes, has assumptions, and is not always diverse or inclusive’ (Sadiq, 2023). Education for Sadiq had failed him. He questions the ‘history’ he was taught in school, and through whose perspective? In university amongst the books depicting successful global leaders, he struggled to find his own reflection; a Muslim, from Uxbridge, born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya. Our perceptions and assumptions of the world and the people within it are shaped by the education we receive.
Alice Bradbury argues that during reception age, children’s educational trajectories are established, and imagined futures impacted. Using Critical Race Theory and sociology she examines the role of policy, and the policymakers, in reproducing racial inequality highlighting how those already marginalised are further disadvantaged. Policies help to create specific identities, like the “underachieving student” or “troubled family,” what it means to be a “good” teacher or student, establishing certain ideas as normal or true; enforcing stereotypes and biases.
An important part of my teaching practice is working with UAL’s outreach program Insights, where ‘specific identities’ can also play a positive role within UALs Guiding policy strategy. They deliver a programme to students from low-income backgrounds, whose parents never been to university, in receipt of benefits, looked after children and carers. Their aim is to ensure the admissions process is fairer and that UAL is reflecting Britain in its fullest. It’s not just about reflecting *diversity, the learning environment can also create a sense of unbelonging. Rhianna Garrett uses CRT and Intersectionality to examine how imagined futures and career choices of racialised minority PhDs are impacted through white organisational spaces and lack of diversity. Her positionality of Chinese ‘mixed race’ female PhD researcher underpins her focus on underrepresented of racialised minority academic staff in UK higher education. She emphasises the importance of cultivating a sense of belonging, that students need to see themselves represented without having to change who they are to ‘fit in’, or worse still not being able to imagine themselves in higher education and beyond.
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References
BBC (2014) Kwame Anthony Appiah: The Reith Lectures Creed, County, Colour, Culture. 16 June. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z43ds (Accessed: 18 May 2024).
Bradbury, A., 2020. A critical race theory framework for education policy analysis: The case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England. Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), pp.241-260.
Bunbury, G. (2021) Diversity and inclusion by design. Available at: https://bunbury.co/ (Accessed: 18 June 2024).
Garrett, R. (2023) RHI-Mixed Views. Available at: https://rhi-mixedviews.blogspot.com/ (Accessed: 18 June 2024).
Garrett, R. (2024). ‘Racism shapes careers: career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education’. Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp.1–15.
Sadiq, A. (2023) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Learning how to get it right. TEDx [Online}. Youtube. 2 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4wz1b54hw (Accessed: 18 June 2024).
Sadiq, A. (2023) Where are you from?. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/where-you-from-asif-sadiq-mbe (Accessed: 18 June 2024).
UAL (2024) Our strategy 2022-2032 Guiding policy 2. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/strategy-and-governance/strategy/guiding-policy-2 (Accessed: 18 June 2024).
Your piece on Kwame Anthony Appiah’s 2016 Reith Lectures, intertwined with perspectives from Asif Sadiq, is compelling and thought-provoking. It effectively highlights the importance of confronting uncomfortable truths to drive societal change, particularly within the realms of education and diversity in graphic design.
There’s so much to admire in your writing. You tackle significant and contemporary issues in education, diversity, and inclusion with depth and relevance. By integrating various perspectives and referencing key figures like Sadiq and Bradly, you provide a multi-dimensional view that is both informative and reflective.
I especially appreciate the personal touch you bring in through your own observations and experiences in teaching graphic design. This adds a layer of authenticity and relatability to your argument that resonates well. Your clear articulation of the issues of representation, biases in educational content, and the necessity for inclusive practices really stands out. Additionally, your examples, such as UAL’s outreach programs and Garrett’s research, provide concrete instances of the broader issues discussed, making the abstract concepts more tangible.
Hi Leila, thank you for your comments. On the one hand categories are useful, although at times it feels as though individuals are just lumped into groups without consideration for our complex intersectional identities. Alice Bradbury’s perspective made me think about how damaging these categories can be regarding policies, yet teaching on outreach programmes makes me realise how the categories in UALs Guiding Policies have a positive impact on the students who attend them.
Hi Sheran,
Thank you for posting your blog, a lot of ideas also resonated with my teaching practise, I have also grappled with inherited design history and ‘known’ esteemed designers. I think the questions you pose are very relevant such as why some designers’ works are more revered than others?
I wanted to add add this quote below from this article I read about what it means to decolonise design:
“The work designers make is inspired by taste, and taste is often derived from what we’re exposed to during our upbringing. But design values and history is taught through a canon; that accepted pantheon of work by predominantly European and American male designers that sets the basis for what is deemed “good” or “bad.” The authority of the canon has undermined the work produced by non-Western cultures and those from poorer backgrounds so that Ghanaian textiles, for example, get cast as craft rather than design.”
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/what-does-it-mean-to-decolonize-design/
I wonder if there is a way to unlearn and reinvent what we know and were taught from a western
version of design history?
I also picked up on the uncomfortable notion Asif Sadiq mentions In the resources and how we have to embrace it to learn. I like how you highlight that uncomfortable events can happen in seemingly normal teaching activities such as a lecture about post modernist design. Perhaps the embracing of uncomfortable spaces could create opportunities for students to debate and question as well as challenge why they are not represented or seen.
I greatly appreciate you connecting this session’s themes to your own pedagogy. You specifically highlight the issue of race and diversity when it comes to the question of graphic design. The Western canon of design (and, in fact, many creative disciplines) champions such a small sample of designers who are often white and male. This hierarchy gets repeated and fossilized making it even more difficult to change opinions about “what a designer looks like”. To change the future of diversity in these disciplines we also need to consider changing the past: not by rewriting history but by meaningfully opening it up. Your blog post highlights that necessity, offering some meaningful interventions that can expand the perspective of students and educators alike.