Cecilia Pritchard PGcert 2022

The artifact I choose to develop in this unit and to reflect on, is a diverse model bank I have worked to set up this year where our teachers and technicians can book diverse models to use for demonstrations, classroom activities and recordings. The model bank has already been approved and is supported and costed by the school (SMC) and has also been rolled on to BA (Hons) Hair and Makeup for Fashion.

There has been an ongoing issue within the performing arts, especially related to our area of hair and makeup where training has not been diverse enough for hair and makeup artists, leading to a global industry issue where BAME actors, models and performers don’t always have skilled enough practitioners to work with their hair and skin.
Many black actors have expressed their frustration on Twitter using #ActingWhileBlack and actress KJ Smith said in a tweet ‘With a disproportionate number of stylists in the industry unfamiliar with the intricacies of Black hair, many actors have to bring their own styling kits to work. “I’ve incorporated wigs and weaves into my set life because I can’t rely on set stylists to be trained,” says Smith. “Sometimes I bring four to five different options to set to make sure that I’m covered.”

It has been my priority to implement the model bank during 2021-22 as part of the UAL Anti racism strategy aligned particularly to the anti-racism action plan with UAL EDI objectives.

This project is also a part of my personal Social Purpose Objective(Inclusion of an EDI anti-racism objective) embedded in my PRA 2022.

I started my career as a hairdresser in Sweden, growing up and studying in a middle-class, white community. At the time, diversity was not spoken about and the hair and makeup industry mainly focusing on straight ‘European’ hair and white skin. Learning to work with textured hair and darker skin tones was referred to as ‘specialist skills’ and the accessibility to train on diverse models or training heads didn’t exist.
When I was 19 (21 years ago) I worked for a hairdresser in Sweden and I had my first textured hair model / client in the chair, and I was terrified. I had no idea how to manage and style their hair. Even though naive at the time and not fully understanding the extent of the diversity issue, I understood something wasn’t right and I spent many years self-training, seeking to become a more competent practitioner applying my skills to any hair and skin.
I also worked as a teacher and practitioner in East Asia for 4 years where again, the lack of diverse skills among the hair and makeup practitioners were evident. Here, not only referring to lack of skills covering textured hair and darker skin, but also typically fine hair and paler skin. I also noticed a lack in using correct, delicate, and professional language surrounding diverse bodies. Not only regarding ethnicities, but also how to refer to disabilities, skin conditions, body imperfections, age and gender. This was also something I never learnt during my own training and had to form a professional understanding around it during my professional career. This made me realise how important it is to also teach the correct language and terminologies referring to diverse bodies.

In my role as the Course Leader for BA (Hons) Hair, Makeup and Prosthetics for Performance, I have found the main issue is the lack of diverse bodies in the classroom. Firstly, this does not represent an inclusive environment and secondly, the students mainly practice on each other and therefore, does not get enough hands-on experience working on diverse performers. When we have had students with ‘specific’ diverse features suitable for demonstrating on, we have noticed that these students have felt rather targeted and have not wanted to model for demonstrations.

In the past and unfortunately still, in most education sectors, this issue has been dealt with by offering ‘master classes’ added on-top of the usual hair and makeup lessons, demonstrating makeup and hair techniques for specific diverse bodies etc. This has temporarily improved the issue, but I personally feel this is not inclusive practice, rather the opposite as all hair, types, skin types, gender, ages and disabilities need to be part of the everyday practices to be inclusive. Therefore, I don’t believe in ‘added’ master classes. Instead, the system need to change and skills needed for all hair types and bodies must be included in the everyday delivery of the course.

‘A social justice discourse in inclusive education policy and practice necessitates “changing systems that perpetuate racism, power, and exclusion” (Mullen and Jones 2008:331); and it involves questioning the ways in which schools valorize certain student identities while devaluing others (Harwood & Humphy 2008; Graham, 2005; Youdell, 2006)’ (Liasidou (2012).

The artifact / model bank is already up and running and has been trialled by the main academic and technical team from February to June 2022. The models are booked via ArtsTemp and we have aimed to have around 20 models to choose from. It is important to highlight the diverse models are not only representing ethnicities (as this blog might suggest and centred around), but also age, gender and disabilities for a more inclusive representation of bodies.

‘The diverse model bank is supported by School resources as Cecilia spearheaded and presented this project as a clear way to truly embed inclusivity and diversity into the curriculum and into the course pedagogical practices. As Cecilia’s line manager I fully support her genuine interest this area of teaching coupled with the aim of producing industry-ready students who can work on hair, make-up and prosthetics for any performer or model who sits in front of them’. (Nadia Malik, Programme Director for Performance).

As this was the first year of trialling the model bank, it hasn’t been perfect and need some improvements, but overall it has been a great step towards a necessary and positive change.

Two weeks ago, I had a meeting with Hayley Spicer, Internal Recruitment Manager for ArtsTemp who said it was one of their most successful new projects in 2022 and is keen to continue to develop and improve the resource.

The main issues I found were:

• Having to push and remind staff to book the models, sometimes spending time myself to book models for staff, especially Hourly Paid Lecturers.
• Difficult to find diverse enough models, especially around age and disability.
• Time management as this project sits on top of all other Course Leader responsibilities and tasks – review models applications, booking models, time sheets and creating a model portfolio with models contact details etc.

As the project develops some issues will be resolved and improved by being more familiarised with the processes involved. I hope it will become a second nature for staff to plan and book the models in advance. To improve the visuals of the contact/picture portfolio I will recruit an ArtsTemp to create the booking portfolio next year as this was something I found too time consuming, and it require someone with more graphic designer skills.
Working with ArtsTemp, they will try to reach out to a broader age group via the short courses who already use mature models to improve the age difference for our models.

Overall, I feel his project have been successful and has the potential to develop into something that will change the education systems that currently perpetuate racism and exclusion within our specialism and will produce highly skilled graduates who will change the performance industry and the current issue of under skilled practitioners.

I would like to acknowledge, that during the feedback sessions I was asked ‘why does your course not recruit more diverse students’? This is an important question, and the answer is slightly out of my reach and surrounding pre-course and reach out issues. I feel this topic is too short to discuss here as I want to focus on the artefact. However, I have acknowledged that this is an important question, and it wasn’t ignored. This question needs further unpacking and working with a broader team improving the UAL Anti-racism objective: Increase the proportion of BAME students.

The feedback sessions also highlighted questions around communication with students and the models around this topic to ensure the environment is comfortable and the language is inclusive. This is also an important question and highlights the need to not only have visible diverse bodies represented but also to use the right language and terminology.
Adding to this discussion, the importance of consent was also brought up. As a hair and makeup practitioner you are working in a personal and often intimate environment as touching the performer is inevitable and part of the job. Therefore, learning personal space and how to approach diverse bodies in a delicate and professional manner is also necessary to become a fully inclusive practitioner.

Alongside the diverse model bank, I have also improved the inclusive environment on the course by purchasing different types of hair training heads. The students will now have split 50/50 straight hair and curly hair training heads. As part of the students essential kit, half the class will receive straight hair training heads, and the other half curly/ textured afro hair training heads. This is to help ‘normalise’ curly and textured hair and for students to be able to work on any hair that is in front of them, mirroring industry practice. We have also purchased diverse silicone heads to use training purposes.

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Silicone heads from MFX Warehouse specifically developed for prosthetics training.

Additional note:
Referring to the UAL resource around attainment gaps and case studies #CLOSINGTHEGAP our course BA (Hons) Hair, Makeup and Prosthetics for Performance was previously taking part in the Academic Enhancement Model (AEM) which refers to UAL’s strategic approach to reduce attainment differentials and improving student retention and experience. This helped our course to close the attainment gap. I feel there is not enough space in this blog to reflect on this, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Liasidou, A. (2012) ‘Inclusive education and critical pedagogy at the intersections of disability, race, gender and class’, Inclusive Education, Politics and Policymaking, Roehampton University, London, UK: Continuum, 169.

UAL (2021) UAL Anti-Racism Action Plan and Objectives. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/296537/UAL-Anti-racism-action-plan-summary-2021.pdf (Accessed: 01/06/2022).

UAL (2019) Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Student Attainment at UK Universities: Case Studies. Available at: https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/sites/default/files/field/downloads/2021-09/bame-student-attainment-uk-universities-case-studies.pdf (Accessed: 04/07/2022).

UAL (2019) UAL Attainment Gap Report. Available at: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/62935733/artssu-attainment-gap-report-14nov (Accessed: 04/08/2022).

UAL (2021) Shades of Noir. Available at: https://shadesofnoir.org.uk/ (Accessed: 10/07/2022).

Simion, A (2019) Black Actors Are Getting Huge Roles In Hollywood, But Still Doing Their Own Hair. Available at: https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2019/07/238968/black-hairstylist-diversity-issue-hollywood-2019 (Accessed: 01/06/2022).

PICTURE
Photo of silicone heads. Sold and available at: https://www.mfxwarehouse.co.uk/product/silicone-edu-headz/

Shades of Noir (SoN)

There is soo much juicy information and resources here! I had a chat with my colleague a few weeks ago and we discussed to contact SoN to see how we can work with them for our course specifically. Yet again, a brutal reminder… our everyday tasks and deadlines take over and it’s hard to find the time to reach out and networking… even within resources available at UAL so haven’t got around to it yet. It also reminded me we had a wonderful girl from TW (teaching within) taking part in our assessments a few years back. I will investigate if our course/programme can work with teaching within again.

As there is so much to explore here, the one thing I’d like to explore on top of teaching within, is the reading recommendation which can be useful to decolonising the curriculum as we often work from texts to create narratives for our students work which creating hair and makeup for characters within performance.

Hahn Tapper (2013) ‘A pedagogy of social justice education: social identity, theory and intersectionality’

One thing that caught my attention was the mentioning of power dynamics between students and staff and the first thing that came to my mind was confidence. I’m not sure why, but I feel that a teacher that is confident in themselves and in their role, don’t have the same need to be the superior.
The below quote is a great example of how I feel the dynamic in a classroom should be.
‘A teacher needs to create experiences with, and not for, students, integrating their experiences and voices into the educational experience itself’ (Freire 2006). ‘Teachers’ and students’ identities are thus tied to one another in an interlocked relationship’ (Rozas 2007).
I believe this is a great way of building community and for students to feel valued but most important to thrive and build confidence in creative thinking and practice.

‘Each team was then given a task and instructed to defeat the other team in the assignment. Once they began this pursuit, relations between the two subgroups exacerbated. When the two subgroups were instead given a common chore that necessitated their cooperation, their relations improved dramatically’ (Tapper 2013).

The discussion around the change of dynamics if the teams were either to defeat each other in an assignment or, given a common chore was interesting and could easily be used psychologically when thinking around assessments. Are we asking our students to compete against each other? Or, are we asking them to create collectively?

Ted talk video “Witness Unconscious Bias”

Here, Josephine Kwhal talks briefly about conscious and unconscious bias, and how, conscious bias needs to be recognised to make a difference.
My question is, do we do enough to recognise biases and breaking it? (I believe we don’t). I think one of the reasons are that we consciously withdraw from difficult conversations. I have experienced this myself as well as having had these conversations with other staff members who have expressed their worries bringing up discussions around race and other biases (related to staff and students) with the worry of saying the wrong thing, so instead remaining silent.

On our course, we have quite a small number of BAME students (in comparison to other courses), and therefore, our teaching staff has highlighted the worries having conversations around racial biases with students for fear of making the minority student group feel uncomfortable and perhaps targeted around the discussion.

So, my brief conclusion here, is to highlight a need for further training for all staff around difficult conversations in the classroom. The UAL breaking bias mandatory training is a start and attempt to make the biases conscious. However, I think there is a stronger need to build confidence around difficult conversations for staff. With confidence to talk, the unconscious will become conscious.

‘Retention and attainment in the disciplines: Art and Design’ Finnigan and Richards 2016.

As a Course Leader I have experience with the attainment data and have been through the processes of improving and closing attainment gaps.
One thing I learnt before reading this document is to fully understand the retention and attainment gaps the need to unpack and investigate deep into a specific course, year group or unit or is fundamental.

A brief introduction to my own case studies:
1. A few years ago, our attainment for BAME students was low and way under the benchmark and we were (as a course) flagged and needed to evidence what are we doing to improve the attainment gap? We were working closely with Terry Finnigan who was a great support to help unpack and understand the reasons. So, when unpacking the data, it showed that this specific year we only had 2x BAME students graduating. Meaning, one student had attained a first or upper second, the other student below. So, based on only one students achievement, the courses overall attainment was low. I found this very interesting.

2. Another hands-on experience I had with attainment gap was last year where there was a specific unit in the 2^nd year that was flagged as it scored low in comparison to all other units on the course. So again, trying to unpack the reasons what it was in this unit that increased the attainment gap.
This was a highly practical unit delivered during the worst time of the pandemic where we were in isolation and most students have travelled back home. All delivery had moved online, and students and staff struggled getting their heads around delivering a practical unit online.
The assessment was modified to suit online hand-in so we believed there was a fair delivery wherever the students were in the world.
However, we learnt that students abroad, mainly in China struggled to get hold of specialist materials during Covid (needed for our course, mainly prosthetics materials) and therefore couldn’t practice the skills we were delivering online. There were also network challenges where some students couldn’t participate in the online delivery, tutorials or formative feedback sessions. All possible reasons to why those international students attained lower in the assessment.
Specific for this year as well, we had a higher number of international and Chinese students so again, the numbers of international students played a big role here.
Of course this specific case can be linked directly to Covid but I find it interesting how important the unpacking of the data is.

My question / provocation linking my own experiences and the ‘gaps and area for future research’ which is mentioned on page 18;
‘There are a number of gaps within this research which warrant further development. Going forward there needs to be:

a further review of the raw data of students by ethnicity in Art and Design subjects to understand more about the differentials’

How much in-depth unpacking is really done in courses and units and how many factors are we considering outside the obvious inclusive practices?

Read the terms of reference from SoN around Race and choose an article to reflect on.

I chose the article on Teaching Within as I have mentioned it earlier in my blog. It was great to get further insight of the programme.
I was quite shocked to read there’s over 18,000 professors in British Universities. Less than a quarter are women, 1.7% BME women and only 0.6% are black.

As mentioned earlier I would like to work with TW on our course to offer placement and support.
I learnt that there are four communities that are eligible to access the programme:
1. Shades of Noir Graduates

2. Tell Us About It – a programme that embraces, affirms and present high achieving UAL students of colour voices through the creation of artifacts, where they reflect on their learning across their degrees.

3. Group for the Equality of Minority Staff

4. BAME talent day

I’m especially interested in learning more about Tell Us About It, as this is something we can encourage our own students to participate in.

Religion, Belief and Faith identities UAL website

So far religion, belief and faith have not been a specific embedded discussion point or a compulsory topic in any of our projects or units. However, it has been suggested as a starting point for our 3^rd year students choosing an area of interest to research and develop their project idea around. I feel sometimes as a topic religion or belief gets shadowed by larger focused areas such as inclusion, race, gender, and disability, or maybe is a part of them all?
Therefore, I personally feel that this area is more linked to a broader discussion around culture. As a tutor and project designer I know we are trying to cover this topic maybe less directly by embedding non-Eurocentric references in our practices and research. As previously mentioned in my Blog 1, we have based projects around Chinese, African and Japanese texts or references which then, as part of the cultural research, naturally touches on the religion, belief and faith around the culture.

Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education.’ Stimulus paper (Modood & Calhoun, 2015)

‘The place of religion in the public sphere is an issue for universities because they run public programmes. It is an issue because it shapes the relations of students to each other. It is an issue because many students make religion important to their personal lives and wellbeing on campuses. It is an issue because it either is or isn’t well-represented in what we teach’.

I have learnt that this might be a big issue for religious students (and staff) and that it is clearly linked to students wellbeing. We have a strong mental health support network offered through the student support, however maybe some of these issues being brought to the general mental health team, could be reduced by offering a better religious community and support network.

Kwame Anthony Appiah Reith lecture on Creed

I must admit I found the talk quite long and often got myself lost in the topic. However, I found it interesting he wasn’t shy to talk about contradictive religious interpretations and used a broad example of religions. I found this inspiring listening to someone talking openly religious beliefs and interpretations.

Having lived in Hong Kong myself as a Westerner atheist, I found it fascinating being surrounded by a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, and atheism and referring to what Kwame touched on, started to create my own little bubble of interpretations and religious traditions that I found drawn to such as Chinese zodiac signs, visiting Buddhist and Taoist temples and festivals and food / eating traditions. Some that we have brought back here to the UK and is part of my daughters upbringing. Latest small notice was this weekend at the Jubilee celebration where she wanted to buy a snake soft toy, as she knew this was her Chinese zodiac animal.

Interview with Rahul Patel

There are two quotes below that I choose to reflect on as they felt linked to my own thinking, practice or questioning. The first one;
‘No I’m an Atheist. But what I understand is the importance that religion plays in peoples lives. It cannot be disregarded or ignored or to be distorted.’
I strongly felt I could relate to this comment as being an atheist myself, I have often come across a bias perception that I might not be caring for or understanding someone that is religious not being religious myself. However, I have always thought myself as the opposite, by not being attached to a specific belief or religion, that I was more open and understanding to anyone. I have just realised, this might be just my own perception and even though I ‘understand is the importance that religion plays in peoples lives’ maybe other people don’t think I don’t. Interesting…
The second quote;
‘It’s odd that one of the most internationally renowned universities, University of the Arts London, it is not talked about. It is not debated, it is not theorised, it is not understood in any shape and form.’

Referring to a safe space where students (and staff) can be in a spiritual environment and the lack of these environments within the UAL. I am aware of Chaplains being available through the student support. However, I never really thought about it before, this is a very one-way Christianity support offered, and there are actually no other spaces, environments or, mentoring support for any other religions within UAL… or is there?

Film by Christine Sun Kim

What I really enjoyed about watching this video was how CK found her own meaningful practice and practitioner identity, rather enhanced by her disability. She mentioned her work within a performance context, which related to our course core concept – always considering the audience.

This specific video example reminded me of a project I did with my students in Hong Kong around 2013-2014, which wasn’t specifically related to disabilities but to what CK mentioned in the video ‘a loose transition of sound to another form’. We took inspiration from Wellas Hair Trend Vision 2013 – The Sound of Colour. Where my students created hair and make-up looks transforming sounds into something physical.

You can watch Wellas Trend vision 2013 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaccMiQ76S0

I am now quite inspired to do a project based around this again, taking into consideration a more diverse approach around disabilities and social responsibilities. Maybe as an immersive workshop drawing or sculpting, creating by sound or in CKs example, using the motion of sound as the inspiration. Food for thought…

UAL Disability Service Webpages

I believe this is a great website and honestly believe we have a great support network within the UAL. However, I don’t always believe this translate into the everyday running of a course, working with individual student needs.

For example, we have a great disability team supporting our programme and course. Where I think there might be a lack in the support is when a student struggle with their disability in more severe, invisible disabilities or, maybe unusual disabilities falling outside the more common disabilities.
I have had many conversations with our teaching staff (academic and technical) who feel they are not trained or confident knowing how to support some students and therefore reaching out to the disability team who is always great in communication and quick in responding to the student needs and in most cases the student receives the support they need and there are ongoing conversations with the course team and disability team to insure the support is there.

However, I have experienced a repetitive pattern, where the staff are sending the student to the disability team as they feel there is nothing more they can do after already offered extra support and then, the disability team are sending the student back to the course teaching team for the extra support as the difficulties the student experience might be more related to the practical course elements or the unit handbook and assessments which the disability team might not be involved enough or have the course specialist knowledge to support the students need. This creates a huge stress on the student as they feel they are just being pushed back and forth between the two, but never receiving the support they actually need. Therefore, I feel there is a gap in the disability support system with UAL, our school and programme.

My question and concerns are, to what level do the university supporting disabled students (and staff) and how is this communicated? Do the student know how much support they can get before ethe enrol? What happens when the student need support beyond the standard support offered? This is a grey area and I haven’t found answers to this yet. I understand the UAL does not have a fit to study policy, so when do we as a university admit that we can’t support a student? Is this acceptable (I don’t think so)? Is this after the student have failed continuously 3 years in a row and won’t be allowed to re-take any units and the University has charged the students for 3 years of study? Is this a morally, right?
Is it fair to ask the teaching staff who is possibly not trained, experienced or confident enough and usually pushed with their own time and need to offer the extra support and tutorials outside their working hours? For example, we have had a student who always want to go through the class content 30 min before (when the tutor is setting up and preparing for the lesson), and to stay 30min after the class to again, go through their individual development. This specific example is from a class of 30-60 students, so how do the tutor keep parity in always allowing this one student to receive the extra support (which the student need), but saying that, there are other students in that group that also need extra support so how can this one tutor support this additional time for all students. This practice only backfires with over-worked and stressed staff. Therefore, again I think there need to be a better support in individual cases and on the every day experience for the students.

One example of good practice here was when I worked in Hong Kong we had a hearing impaired student. She got support from the university by having a disability mentor always attending the lessons taking the notes for her and / or translating in sign language.

#DisabilityTooWhite article/interview with Vilissa Thompson

The topic closely relates to the general lack of representation of diverse bodies in the performance industry and within the casting process of performers. This is something we discuss with our students early on due to the nature of our specialism (hair, makeup and prosthetics for performance) working closely with performers creating characters that might have physical differences, being non-fictional ‘real’ characters to fantasy monsters and villains. We have previously used examples in our sessions debating films where actors have been casted for a disabled role, not being disable themselves, and how this has created an unfair position for disabled actors. This debate is really important, especially for our prosthetics student who might be asked to create prosthetics make-up enhancing or hiding a disability and the moral questions around it.

The interesting debate this article brings up for me, is not just about the too white / disabled discrimination – maybe more about the ‘double discrimination combination’ (not sure how to word it…) can also relate to other minority groups.

‘Deaf Accessibility for Spoonies: Lessons from Touring Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee’ by Khairani Barokka (accessible via Moodle).

This reading highlights the difficulties of invisible disabilities and the lack of sensitivity towards it. In her performance, I liked how she represented her pain and made it visible to the audience by using blue paint “throughout the show, I pour and rub in blue ‘divine coffee’ paint all over the right side of my body and chest. I wanted to make an ‘invisible disability’ visible, through refusing to stand up to perform, and through the paint’s visualisation of my pain”

The artice highlights the need for a greater sensitivity towards invisible disability which I feel is needed within the university as I already mentioned above in previous section about UAL disability website, to support the students (and staff) who falls outside the standard disability support.

Something I didn’t know and learnt from the article is “…disabled people being, however, the largest minority in the world”. This small but impactful sentence gave me a greater understanding of the scale, and how many students we might have on our programmes that suffer in silence or struggle to achieve due to their disabilities where the support system both within the UAL and externally is failing.

Read the Terms of Reference Journal from Shades of Noir (SoN) around Disability and choose an article to reflect on.

I am running out of time as found this task taking way longer than expected. So rather than again, reading another article to reflect on (as getting a bit tedious… even though I enjoy the topics it is too repetitive doing it 5 times in the same blog). I thought I’d briefly reflect on some practical objectives and strategies we are already working on within our programme and what might need improvement, listed in the attached images above:

• Student attainment differentials: This is part of our ACMR (Academic Course Monitoring Report) for BAME and international students. However, as far as I know, there is no monitoring on disabled students attainment.
• Student experience differentials: I don’t know how this is monitored?
• Whitewash curriculums: We are working towards a non-Eurocentric content and have used global texts and references embedded in our projects such as My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a novel by Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, Monkey, a Chinese novel published during the Ming dynasty by Wu Ch’eng-en (Author), Arthur Waley (Translator) and Of Love and Other Demons, by Columbian writer Garcia Marques.
  We have also for our 2^nd years collaboration unit used influences from the Studio Ghibli collection for their performance outcome bringing in Japanese culture and history.
• Inclusive pedagogy: This is a too big area to briefly discuss, but to give one example, we have worked on to make a more inclusive environment by preparing students working on a broad range of performers including gender, age, ethnicity, skin conditions and disabilities.
• History/history erasure: This is discussed in the Cultural and Historical delivery by the CHS team.
• Staff recruitment: Last two years we have recruited two new staff members supported by the ADF (Academic Development Fund) within the minority groups – disability and / or BAME.
• Staff progression: Need improvement
• Staff development: Need improvement
• Staff experience: Need improvement