In 2019, I initiated a workshop on ‘Cultural Appropriation’ to create a space for Year 1 Textiles and Jewellery students to discuss the concept through an object-based learning workshop facilitated by colleagues at the CSM Museum.
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.
Pre-task for Cultural Appropriation Workshop with CSM Museum
Key Terms:
Please define as many of the following terms on the Google spreadsheet in your own words. We want you to reflect on what you already know, so avoid using the dictionary and aim to describe them, even if you are not familiar with the words.
| Colonial gaze | Diversity | Positionality |
| Cultural Capital | Ethnicity | Privilege |
| Cultural Identity | Empire | Race |
| Cultural Appropriation | Hybridity | Whiteness |
| Decolonise | Marginalised | White Fragility |
| Diaspora | Orientalism | White Supremacy |
Post-workshop reading list to reflect on the session
- Colour of Britain (1995) Directed by Pratibha Parmar. [Documentary]. London, Channel 4
- Cultural Appropriation and Misappropriation on your course?, Shades of Noir
- Chiraag Bhakta (2019) The Whitewashing of “WhitePeopleDoingYoga”, Mother Jones
- Deconstructing White Privilege with Dr. Robin DiAngelo
- Ethics: Preserving Voices Vulnerable to Erasure. Shades of Noir Publication
- Jones, J (2021) ‘Cultural appropriation is a two-way thing: Yinka Shonibare on Picasso, masks and the fashion for black artists’, The Guardian
- Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Reith Lecture, Mistaken Identities: Culture
- Sathnam Sanghera (2021), Empireland: How Imperialism has shaped Modern Britain, Penguin Books Ltd.
- Terms of reference on Race, Shades of Noir
- The Politics of Pattern, Monocle on Design
- Wax Print: 1 Fabric, 4 Continents, 200 Years of History (2018) Directed by Aiwan Obinyan. [Documentary]