(1596 words)
Introduction
As a South-Asian textiles lecturer and designer who’s creative work draws from Indian visual culture; questions of cultural identity, it’s appropriation and ownership are ongoing queries that are addressed through my academic and professional practice. What is cultural appropriation? As people of colour, do we need to be cultural gatekeepers and custodians? Is there room for hybridity and assimilation? When is cultural exchange acceptable and when does appreciation become fetishisation, how does that enforce cultural stereotypes?
The importance of recognising one’s positionality when taking ‘inspiration’ from objects in a museum, the lack of understanding of White privilege, the Colonial gaze and Empire as well as limited opportunities in the curriculum to address social justice and diverse perspectives led me to initiate a workshop on Cultural Appropriation with the CSM Museum back in 2019.
Colonialism led to historical theft, documentation and ultimately selective representation of cultural assets taken by a dominant culture through their viewpoint – often changing the original context and significance of these objects. With recent conversations that question the role of museums in acquiring cultural property, it’s important that we also look at the role of education in art and design when talking about cultural ownership and interpretation. Our students need to make informed and fair decisions when researching topics that belong to other cultures, and a deeper understanding and respect of provenance and cultural identities is required.
For the Inclusive Teaching and Learning unit, my artefact re-visits the workshop and proposes a pre-workshop task that encourages students to reflect on their existing knowledge around some of the concepts (Cultural Identity, Decoloniality, White supremacy, etc) that will be discussed through the workshop, this will be followed up with a post-workshop reading list to encourage them to continue engaging with resources independently. It stems from discussions during the ITLHE that emphasise how decoloniality is an ongoing process and utilises some of the resources and teaching methodologies employed by Shades of Noir during this unit.
Context
I am currently part of the teaching team on the Textiles Design course at Central Saint Martins, where I work primarily with the year 1 team with some input in years 2 and 3. My role was created through the Academic Development Fund and a particular focus from the start has been ‘decolonising the curriculum’ and ‘community building’.
As the only South-Asian undergraduate student in my year during my studies at UAL and now the only South Asian academic in my team, I have lived experience of both cultural appreciation and fetishisation with respect to India, and am aware of the thin line that divides it. The experience of being asked whether India was still a British colony when I was a student at UAL in 2005 was perhaps my first experience of being confronted with the reality that I had entered a space where my peers’ understanding of empire and colonialism differed from mine at best. It made me consider the importance of the role fellow peers play in creating a ‘safe space’ outside the classroom during one’s University experience. ‘Wilful ignorance’ in the age of information is something that needs to be understood, evaluated and combated (Shades of Noir, 2019)
“Teachers need to be aware of these complex relationships within the group and use these concerns and potential sites of conflict as a time to discuss differing viewpoints and the wider impact of art, moving towards some resolution.” (Richards & Finnigan, 2015)
Alongside considering the student cohort and subject matter of the workshop, another point that was raised for me is who can and should run a workshop on Cultural appropriation? Whilst I initiated the workshop in 2019, it was primarily run by my white colleagues at the Museum as I felt I lacked the experience or confidence then to facilitate an object-based learning workshop. The Inclusive teaching and Learning unit has enabled me develop the workshop further through the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and engaged pedagogy. Through the Shades of Noir terms of reference, I am now more adequately armed with the language needed to facilitate discussions around White privilege, Positionality and Decolonising – all important concepts to address when having a conversation about cultural appropriation.
Fletcher (2010) emphasises the need for ‘reflexivity’ where researchers (or teachers in this case) carefully consider their positionality if their research (teaching) is geared towards groups and cultures ‘other’ to their own. He also talks about cultural ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’ and questions the attached or perhaps perceived credibility that comes with the latter. Does the workshop discussing appropriation have to be run by a person of colour to be legitimate?
Inclusive Learning Theory
My approach is underpinned by Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy and Bell Hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy.
Freire’s Critical Pedagogy calls for teachers to encourage students to examine and critique existing structures of power and oppression. He advocates a non-hierarchical approach or the opposite of ‘banking system of education’ (where the tutor imparts knowledge to the students) and encourages learning from each other.
“Seeing the classroom always as a communal place enhances the likelihood of collective effort in creating and sustaining a learning community.” (hooks, b Pg8)
Hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy values student expression (hooks, b Pg 20) To implement my artefact, I designed two activities to scaffold the collective learning in the workshop – one that would give students’ the agency to bring their experiences, knowledge and cultural reference points to inform their engagement and another that would give them additional range of resources to explore and reflect upon independently.
Artefact and Process
Ethics: Preserving Voices Vulnerable to Erasure (Shades of Noir, 2018) poses a range of important questions –
‘How does the representation of non-western heritage materials in western institutions impact the life of cultural traditions?’
‘How does the structure of the museum and gallery perpetuate a capitalist value system of heritage? How does this bias collective memory and public thought?’
The artefact aims to address power dynamics within art and design education, redistributing the responsibility of learning and engagement by elevating and recognising the collective knowledge held and creates a safe space to understand the nuances of cultural representation. Although the questions above have been posed in a museum context, they can easily be applied to a teaching context.
“What does it take to decolonise an art museum when it has a history of pandering to the popular, lowest common denominator stereotypes of geishas, yoga and maharajas?” asked Dr. Levine, the Berkley professor (NYT, 2020)
For the first part of the artefact, I have introduced a pre-workshop task of defining key terms, that I adopted from the teaching methods employed by the Shades of Noir team. The pre-task encourages students to think about their own positionality before attending the workshop in an attempt to bring in their prior knowledge. The google spreadsheet will be a ‘live’ document online that students can anonymously contribute to, so they are able to read other participants’ definitions of the same words. Alongside bringing in their prior knowledge, this serves several purposes –
- creates a safe space where students can confidently and anonymously contribute without feeling threatened
- exposes them to alternate understandings of some of the terms through their peers
- fosters a sense of community as the task is private in a collaborative space
The second part of the artefact is the post-workshop reading list that brings together a range of diverse resources in different formats for students to engage with independently. Some of these will also be referred to during the course of the workshop with CSM Museum as requested by students in an artefact feedback email.
From Priya Khanchandani and Sam Jacob’s 2019 exhibition ‘Pattern as Politics’ that critiques Owen Jones’ historic Grammar of Ornament as opening western design to other traditions while simultaneously flattening those very same histories and cultures (Jacobs, 2019) to Kwame Anthony Appiah’s stance that no one can claim exclusive ownership of culture and often it’s a question of respect. (Mistaken Identities: Culture, 2016); the reading list brings together a balanced range of viewpoints that contribute to the debate around cultural appropriation. Whilst there’s no doubt that ‘cultural appropriation’ is bad especially in a capitalist context, the resources also draw out nuanced and critical discussions about cultural exchange and hybridity.
I received feedback on the artefact from students who attended the original workshop in 2019, colleagues at CSM Museum and academic colleagues on the course.
“The post workshop reading list also seems like a good idea, especially that it’s a mix of texts and other formats. I think many students are more engaged with reading material when it’s in other formats such as podcasts rather than an academic text.” – Clemency Dyer, Textiles student
“I think this is a really interesting proposal and agree that the workshop would work better with some thinking beforehand and some reflective readings after the fact. I think what you’re proposing will make it a much richer session and will require students to dig deeper into their own experiences and knowledge.” – Judy Willcocks, CSM Museum
Feedback from the Anne Marr, the Programme Director suggested that following on from the ‘key terms’ task, students could continue to co-create their own glossary for their studies and beyond.
Conclusion
The ITLHE unit has been instrumental in helping me understand key concepts like Decoloniality, Inclusivity and Cultural identities in the context of Higher Education and the impact it has on our students. The teaching methodologies and resources shared have shown me how an inclusive approach promotes accessibility and social justice, when addressed through an intersectional lens that reflects on our and our students’ positionality.
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