Introduction,
As year 2 lead, senior tutor on the BA textile design course at Chelsea College of Arts. The main focus of my role is the following.
- Lead on the creation of engaging Unit project briefs and the subsequent timetable programming of relevant studio -based workshops that support the students successfully answering the brief, meeting the assessment criteria & the learning outcomes.
- The pastoral care of the Y2 cohort throughout the academic year.
- Taking the lead on having an external, future facing industry perspective, actively reaching out to external practitioners for students to engage with and embed their best practice into our programme offering.
In my professional practice I’m a sports footwear designer who’s worked at a senior level in-house and as a consultant for the top global sportswear companies. As a cis gendered black Londoner from a West Indian background, throughout my career, both in industry and academia I’ve been in the minority within the spaces I practice my trade.
From left to right: The Spanish civil war anti-fascist slogan on the Clapton CFC shirt. Photograph: Clapton CFC,The Clapton CFC kit. Photograph: Clapton CFC,A Spanish civil war propaganda poster. Photograph: handout/Spanish Civil War exhibition.
Intervention concept
‘Identity is not as transparent or an already accomplished fact, which new cultural practices then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a production, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation. This view problematises the very authority and authenticity to which the term ‘cultural identity’, lays claim’.
(Hall, 2021)
Create your own identity sports team/kit/flag, 6hr workshop.
Students would take part in a day workshop (6hrs in total) where they would be given a task to make a sports team shirt/flag/or scarf, using their chosen team paraphernalia to visualise their identity and community, and to make a tangible expression of their positionally within their design practice. Prior to the task students will be given a presentation on the following:
- Positionality/intersectionality
- What does it mean to design ‘responsibly’
- Positive and negative associations with football shirts, for example Chelsea football shirts, what do they mean / what is their intersectional symbolism ?
- How do symbols translate across contexts? Choices of colours and patterns – origins, lineages.
Aim: To get the students to have a deeper understanding of:
- The concept and importance of positionality when designing responsibly for an audience.
- To start to have a deeper understanding of the nuances that make up their positionality whether they’re in a perceived minority culture/community or not.
- To explore the concept of inclusivity.
- To promote a culture of equality and empathy within the BATDY2 student cohort.
The intervention would take place within the programming of Block 1 of the academic year within Unit 5, Material Design Practice, September 2024. Resources would include the following:
- Textile waste/surplus
- Old magazines/editorials
- Basic sewing tools, needles threads, scissors etc
- Visiting lecturer/ practitioner with experience delivering E.D.I focused creative workshops to support with me the delivery of a 6hr workshop.
Bibliography
Hall, S. (2021), ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, Ch 13 in Selected Writings on Race and Difference (eds. Gilroy, P. and Wilson Gilmore, R.), Duke University Press, p257
A PDF version is available here: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/asiandiaspora/hallculturalidentityanddiaspora.pdf