The first film works as a good introduction to the social model of disability. However, when I watch it, I cannot help feeling frustrated at UAL. (University of the Arts London, 2020) The disability service works well at identifying diverse needs of students, but in my experience, there are many students who do not get accommodated appropriately. Mainly thinking about students with overwhelming social anxiety and/or immune deficiency.
My only evidence for this is the students I have met during my 4 years teaching and young people that attend the hybrid art school service that I run called Queer Youth Art Collective. In both workplaces I have met current and ex UAL students who have been unable to fully take part in the courses they were enrolled in. They have been failed by UAL who are happy to put them in debt by charging the full fee without providing the same level of education as other students.
(Photo of me with the 2024 cohort of Queer YOuth Art Collectives group exhibition “Dream This Silly”)
Read more about Queer Youth Art Collective here: https://qyac.org.uk/
One thing from the other films that really caught my attention was in the third example where Christine Sun Kim mentions “the privilege to be misunderstood” and that “misunderstanding can affect my rights.” (Art21, 2023). Looking at the current climate in the UK this resonates with me. Benefits are being cut and recent changes to the equalities act actively harming trans people in the UK. Now more than ever we need to speak loud and clear in order to educate students, colleagues and people around us about what human rights actually are.
In my institutional teaching practice, my only introduction to better support students is by receiving ISA documents with loose guidelines on how to better support my tutees. But I have never been briefed by a manager around how to best achieve an accessible space or having the limitations for the classroom be fully acknowledged.
In unit 1 I identified issues around noise in our open plan classroom. So, I made plans to better support students with language barriers and students who struggle with sensory overload. The solution in short to this was to provide written workshop guides that can be translated beforehand, designed printouts themed around the workshop (ex a folded zine for a workshop around zines) and stating beforehand to students that they are allowed to use fidget toys and other sensory support tools during class. I want to continue to develop these ideas to include ideas of intersectionality, community care and student agency further in unit 2.
In reflection to this, I am starting to formulate an idea for my intervention. I want to create a teaching manifesto for my workshops and tutor groups, which will help the students get to know me and what I stand for in my reaching practice, while also giving them more agency to shape how we treat each other in the classroom. Instead of only offering students the option to opt out of difficult situations like public speaking or triggering topics I want to give them the responsibility to decide best practice to enable us to overcome these hardships together.
I will design this with the help of my peers and by researching and building ideas around transformative justice into my practice.
Bibliography:
University of the Arts London (2020). The Social Model of Disability at UAL. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNdnjmcrzgw [Accessed 19 Nov. 2021].
Paralympics GB. (2020). Ade Adepitan gives amazing explanation of systemic racism. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAsxndpgagU.
Art21 (2023). Christine Sun Kim in ‘Friends & Strangers’ – Season 11 | Art21. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NpRaEDlLsI.
ParaPride (2023). Intersectionality in Focus: Empowering Voices during UK Disability History Month 2023. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yID8_s5tjc.
Qyac.org.uk. (2020). Queer Youth Art Collective. [online] Available at: https://qyac.org.uk/ [Accessed 2 May 2025].
Your post highlights the gaps of UAL’s disability policy and the omission of immunocompromised students and students who suffer with mental illness, which you have noticed as a tutor through the lack of clarity/support/training around disability and student support as well as experiences that UAL student’s have shared with you.
I like how you have highlighted Sun Kim’s quote about the privilege of being misunderstood. Could you be more obvious in explaining the link to this privilege with recent anti-trans legislation in the UK?
I relate to your frustrations around the lack of training for staff around accessibility and how to meet students needs highlighted in the ISA documents. What would adequate training/support from UAL look like to you? You refer to your reflections in unit 1 and how you have identified accessibility issues within the classroom around noise and how this impacts people’s experience of your workshops. You have already considered this by allowing coping devices such as fidget toys, sending out materials prior to workshops, to help cater to different student needs.
Continuing to develop upon these methods of teaching and creating an inclusive space through creating a teaching manifesto that gives students agency and input into the class sounds like a positive step forward.
Thank you Charlie.
I would say that people who are struggling with disability rights suffering from governmental cuts right now have a lot in common with the stripping of rights for trans people in the UK. Both things are happening due to a rise in far right politics and the arrival of the tory labour party.
Your blog post felt very personal and was written in a clear, approachable way. Thank you for sharing.
The part you mentioned about students paying full fees but not receiving university support reminded me of a friend who applied to UCL. She is visually impaired and requires a notetaker to accompany her to classes. Due to delays and miscommunication across departments, UCL couldn’t provide the support, and she was eventually transferred to a partner institution (University of London) for an online degree. This aligns with a finding from a SU (2022) article, which reported that many disabled students from UCL felt they were denied equal access and often felt unwelcome. (Disability Discrimination Faced by UCL Students and Recommended Measures, 2022)
https://studentsunionucl.org/articles/disability-discrimination-faced-by-ucl-students-and-recommended-measures
Regarding policies and teaching practice, I began as an Associate Lecturer in Games Design. I learn about my role and policy mostly from a lecturer whom I support in teaching. However, as I took on more contracts, I noticed inconsistencies; some courses assumed we already knew institutional policies like ISA procedures, session planning, or student communication guidelines. Much of this information was front-loaded (PDF, Canvas, etc) and rarely explained, which I found overwhelming.
Even now, I continue to discover new (to me) policies, like learning that a student carer was once granted EC for a unit but then must reapply for EC under the Parent Carer Support Agreement (PCSA) to get EC for the unit in another semester.
I found your manifesto interesting, especially in how it aims for a more inclusive and flexible curriculum for student to choose their suitable learning pathway. As I mentioned in my blog post, many art and design courses remain rigid and fail to accommodate introverted or disabled students. While institutional change may be hard, there’s real potential for us on the front line to make meaningful adjustments that improve their learning experience.
Thank you Herman.
The information you shared about your friend is very sad but informative. The article will be very useful for my research for my manifesto.
Hello Fred,
Thank you, I enjoyed reading your interesting and inciteful blog post.
I welcome and agree with your open and honest points raised about your frustration with the gaps in UAL’s disability service provision.
I teach into Year 1, Graphic and Media Design at LCC and have experienced similar situations where students’ needs have either been missed and/or not accommodated appropriately during the application and onboarding processes.
We work on rotation with large cohorts in each year on GMD (approx.160 x students) which can (at times) make tracking and monitoring students wellbeing and progress a challenge.
Fortunately, my colleagues are a highly empathetic, compassionate and pro-active team and we work well together to identify, support and remedy such situations as and when they arise within the course.
I read about Queer Art Collective with great interest, what a wonderful initiative. It’s interesting that you’re able to view and reflect on student learning experiences and offer support from different viewpoints. It would be great to hear more about how this area of work feeds into your teaching practice at UAL?
I was also interested to read about your practical approaches and methods to working with students with different needs in often noisy and open plan studios. This is something I keenly relate to, and I also discussed similar issues in Unit 1.
Your concept for a teaching manifesto sounds great – building practical, positive and supportive shared communities of practice – and I would welcome the opportunity to share further thoughts, ideas and experiences as we start planning for the Intervention and ARP.
Best, Kelly
Hello Kelly.
Thank you for these comments. I will hopefully be elaborating on how I combine grassroots organising with HE teaching practices in my final report. But to put it simply it is a way of allowing students to define a learning space by asking them what they need in order to feel welcomed.
The biggest struggle is when people have overlapping access needs. I would be super happy to have a chat at some point as I would like to go over your positionally exercise seen on your blog.