note to reader: I have adopted an essay form of approach to summarise and evaluate my project findings as I find this method best capture the qualitative data I collected from both primary and secondary sources and be used to build an argument. Contrary to the presentation, I focus here on the literature first in order to set the scene first before diving into findings from primary research.
Secondary research – Literature review
Literature on the topic of decolonisation is abundant. The Argentinian professor Mignolo argues for epistemological disobedience, which is that de-colonial thinking presupposes de-linking (epistemically and politically) from the web of imperial knowledge and from disciplinary management, putting humanity and human lives first before larger abstract concepts. For example, instead of asking how we can save capitalism in light of a financial crisis, we ask instead how human lives can be saved or conditions be improved. He proposes decolonial options such as cultural diversity and stressing indigenous knowledge (Mignolo 2011) From a broader perspective, in Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature, the Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o critiques the colonizing effect of the language of English and French, and call for abandoning English colonial names and the adoption of indigenous language for writers and scholars.
Problems of colonial mindsets pervade the university, which in itself is colonial product. In the book, Decolonising the University, sociologist William Jamal Richardson argues that Eurocentrism in the discipline of sociology allows for intrinsically racist and colonial theory and findings to be developed and disseminated within academe and among the public. He argues that the sum total of these processes is that in many spaces sociology, like the social sciences more generally, perpetuates systems of inequality and the social logics that justify them. Unfortunately, these processes are repeated across disciplines. In the same book, Azumah Dennis’s chapter ‘Decolonising Education: A Pedagogic Intervention’ in the book , explores what it might mean to decolonise education. Dennis proposes a decolonised educational project places counter-hegemonic curricula and pedagogy at its core, by recognising different forms of understanding, knowing, experiencing and explaining the world. Through an Ubuntu pedagogy, Dennis offers an alternative way of thinking about and being in the world, which challenges the hegemony and universality of capitalism and the Western logic of “civilisation”.
These alternatives are also explored in Paolo Freire’s The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) and bell hook’s Teaching to Transgress (1994). Freire advocates critical pedagogy, which advocates the importance of non-hierarchical dialogue to develop critical consciousness in students. The student and teacher learn together to generate new knowledge. bell hooks speaks about building community within the classroom to foster a climate of openness and intellectual rigor, and to build a community in a classroom is to recognize the value of each voice. A decolonised pedagogy framework emphasizes on the learner to create a new framework to negotiate concepts such as knowledge and intelligence that is both critical and action oriented towards social change and political action.
Homing in on literature on decolonisation in arts and design, similar conversation could be found. UAL staff member Jo Shah argued that one way to decolonise arts and design higher education curriculum is “by opening up critical conversations and contexts that look beyond a limited Eurocentric lens to consider global art and design” and that there is a “need to broaden knowledge base and contexts to exceed Eurocentrism” (2018, p.16). Similar arguments and problems are found in contributions by Dr. Gurham Signh, Visiting Fellow of Race and Education (2018, p.1), and other student and staff members such as Joel Simpson (2018, p.18) and M.F., (2018, p. 7). However, the curriculum is only one piece of the puzzle in the process of declonising higher education. Richard Hylton in Art Monthly (2019) argues that despite efforts in the museum and art history courses to include black and minority artists, the academy itself is still reluctant to employ black and minority staff. He cited a statistic from the Guardian that in 2011, it was reported that 50 out of 14,000 British professors were black, while in 2016/17, 25 black women and 90 black men could be counted among 19,000 professors. This goes to show that decolonising the curriculum is not the full picture.
If one looks at UAL’s statistics, one can learn of the relevance of the call for decolonising the university. Consistently, there is a performance attainment gap between home and international students and between white and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students (see chart 3 in the rationale section), a colonial mindset in higher education structures as evidenced by predatory development strategy, and under-recruitment of staff and students of colour. Overall UAL’s Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff population is currently 23.13%. This is lower than HEIs in London (27.9% of all staff) (UAL Communications 2021). This is to bear in mind that the ratio in professional services staff will skew the data as the ratio of academic staff is likely lower that 23%.
In the literature reviewed, there is ample evidence and cogent arguments for the need to decolonise the curriculum. However, most of the discussions have been to diversify knowledge base and contexts to exceed Eurocentrism. There are still questions to be asked. Such as: What are the concrete strategies that can be incorporated into our teaching practice? What are we teaching? How’s it being taught? Under what conditions, and via what assumptions is it being taught? How can we in practice broaden ways of seeing within the BA Fine Art course at Chelsea College of Art?
Primary Research – Interviews and questionnaire for Chelsea staff and students
These are the questions I’d like my ARP to shed some light on. The secondary research I have done answered some of the personal questions I have around decolonisation vs de-westernisation of the curriculum. In many instances, decolonisation is to de-Europeanize art history, the curriculum and to shift away from the European canon, so is the intention of the questions of the interview and the questionnaire.
I am hoping to gain an insight on the ground from staff as well as students what their perspectives are on how Chelsea is doing on this front and how we can do better.
The results of my primary research confirmed the discussions in the literature surveyed. The personal insights and experiences of staff and students added invaluably to the research findings. They highlighted specific problems within Chelsea and some practical suggestions to improve.
On the understanding of what decolonising ways of seeing or non-western ways of seeing. It was agreed upon that for those educated in the power centers of art, decentering yourself from your own education and experience and to constantly requestioning your position and what can be called research, as well as have respect for other means of artistic expression and cultural production. embrace diverse narratives beyond the traditional Western canon.
Interestingly, a student’s experience suggests that there is a colonial mindset within the Western position on inclusivity and diversity.
Student 1: “as a black woman who makes art. In my first year of art education I always felt pushed to make art with things specifically pertaining to my race. I found this unusual, unspoken assumption that black artists can not be just ‘artists’ but must be ‘black artists’, who only make art that will cater to the usual conversation of what it means to be black. There is nothing wrong with this, until the expectation is only on making art based on race, and not being free to think outside ‘race’.” This is invaluable insight for those who care about diversity and inclusion to not repeat the colonial imposition of one’s expectation and idea of what one’s art should be.”
Her experience leads to a third important point of what broadening ways of seeing in the teaching practice means: Listening and empathy. Listening with care, not in a disabling way or to input what you know about it but listening with intent of understanding. This point echoes bell hooks’ idea of community building through listening to each voice.
Passionate voices were heard during the interview process on decolonisation in the context of higher education. They criticized the use of the term decolonisation in relation to UAL’s own predatory and exploitative practices on student and staff recruitment, estate expansion and waste management. It was entirely understood that one finds it difficult to speak about decolonisation without addressing the elephant in the room.
There is also concern over decolonisation as a term being used as a vacuous rhetoric, an administrative box-ticking token gesture for liberals to promote diversity equality and inclusivity without real intention and sincerity behind. This is also a valid criticism. There have been major and highly visible campaigns within UAL such as the work done by Decolonising the Arts Institute and Shades of Noir, however, on the ground, the lack of impact is felt by the students.
Student 1: “In art education, there should be space within art history and theory to introduce other cultures that existed concurrently and even impacted the development of Western art.”
Student 2: “The university’s commitment to embracing diverse perspectives almost became propaganda through the promotion and inclusion of additional sign-up talks and resources, particularly during liberation months. However, the core curriculum itself exhibited a clear prioritisation of certain knowledge, and the staff lacked adequate exposure to perspectives beyond this dominant (Western) framework.”
The concern by student 2 is echoed by a member of staff during our interview. They lamented the lack of knowledge and expertise they have on modes of cultural production and don’t want to put students in an awkward position or offending them by misrepresenting these other cultures.
The data also showed that there is a consensus that, at Chelsea, conceptual and more cerebral type of art production is deemed more legitimate. This is partly a legacy of teaching the historical Western canon. From an interview, a member of staff admitted that there is a conundrum in the desire to embrace the intellectual tools inherited by the historical canon and to reject the canon at the same time.
Staff member 1: “But there’s the present day. Kind of, I suppose, center, I suppose which has a lot to do with criticality, which I don’t disagree with. I mean I think criticality is absolutely fundamental, but I think that it also alienates people because our mode of criticality, I suppose, has its norms and its expectation and inherited from the canon.”
This has been a problem at Chelsea. On the one hand, students are enocuraged to be “critical” with their art practices and this “criticality” is inherited from and understood in relation the historical western canon. In a way, to make legitimate art at Chelsea one needs to embrace the canon. What is the solution?
One member of staff offers invaluable insight into this. To subvert Audre Lorde’s famous saying, we bring in the masters’ tool to dismantle the master’s house. It is to bring in concepts that are from the canon and from the power centre, go within in, redefine and reshape it to make it your own. On the point of criticality and historical canon, we bring in the intellectual tools inherited from the canon but get rid of the canon. Like this we make the concept of art moldable and anything can be incorporated into art and as art. They gave an example of running a seminar on a text by the canonical Hal Foster from the October Magazine but making the students understand what the power the magazine has, at the same time discussing and dissecting the core ideas from the texts, and encourage the students to tear them apart and redefine them as their own.
Staff member 2: “Giving every student the tools like dismantle concepts and institutions and sort of like in a way that’s the goal, isn’t it, to make sure each student can turn its back and refuse art college and university.”
Another invaluable insight from another member of staff is that, there is not necessarily a need to have a seminar series on marginalised voices as marginalised voices many of whom they do not want to be marked as marginalised. Instead, the series can be about the mainstream and the canon but to make sure we incorporate different voices that can change, affect, and move it forward not for the good of the mainstream but for the good of those who aren’t in the mainstream.
Staff member 3: “to borrow Angela Davis, it’s not about being at the centre, but knowing that your voices at the margins have been fought for, you are in flocks around the centre, constantly developing and evolving, so the seminars could be seminars that focus on talk about the mainstream and how those different voices included can change, can affect, can move it forward not for the good of the mainstream but for the good of those who aren’t in the mainstream.”
There are other good suggestions for seminars ideas from the research include involving grass-root level organisations to run student projects and with which to build a horizontal network; introducing insurgency in mode of delivery, thus encouraging disruption of codified/stable powers in formats and concepts; as well as reading group on art writing and texts from non-Western artists and writers. These are all ideas which need to be taken forward for thorough exploration.
Conclusion
Both primary and secondary sources point to the need and urgency to decolonise, de-westernise and broaden our curriculum to make it fairer and more inclusive. The aim of the project is to explore ways to integrate strategies into my teaching practice and in particular, how this would look like in an informal seminar series. What I have found is that whilst there is a consensus amongst staff and students that it is imperative to look beyond Western narratives and make each voice heard, it is not necessary to disregard it completely. Broadening ways of seeing can mean going inside the Western historical canon to dissect, dismantle, redefine and create new meanings and knowledges to change and affect for the good of those underrepresented. Broadening ways of seeing is linked to changing modes of thinking and operating – not to be fixated on representation but to constantly question and challenge centres of power and fixed modes of thinking, to be equipped with the confidence and the tools to dismantle the master’s house and rebuild houses for those previously encaged. To quote Wilfredo Lam, a black Cuban abstract painter, “My painting is an act of decolonisation”. This echoes with the student’s lament of how she was “expected” to make work about race, which has racist undercurrent. If we can free our minds to imagine the marginalised having a voice in the mainstream without it being an exception, that would be a significant first step to change.