What aspects of diversity do you want the students to consider and why?

My artefact is a group project with the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The students will collaborate with five displaced fashion creators from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Together, they will use fashion as a common language to communicate with each other intently and attentively, and thus develop their own research based on respect, sensitivity, and reciprocity.

How does it link to your course curriculum?

BA Fashion History and Theory is undergoing a process of pluralisation, in which we are addressing the issues with the current curriculum that focuses on a Eurocentric and linear perspective of fashion history (singular). We are also challenging the notion that History is the development of facts, but rather comprises stories usually told by privileged and white researchers, historians, and curators.

As Stage One leader, and a white, Brazilian fashion historian and curator, I am constantly thinking how to include/approach marginalised stories to my lectures and projects. With Multaka, I’m using Freire’s concept of co-creation.

When would it be most useful to deliver or implement?

On the summer term, when students are comfortable with each other and with me. Trust and respect are essential elements to this project. Moreover, it was important that it happens in the first year, while they are still experimenting with research methodologies and creating the foundations of their practices.

What do students think about the artefact?

Firstly, the students felt anxious and lost because of the brief’s vagueness. During our first tutorial, we all shared our honest impressions. I then explained my aims and theoretical inspirations. This enabled a wider discussion about co-creation, and how current academic structures (brief, assessment, tutor-student relationship, resources, methodologies, essays, language) promote dynamics of power based on colonial systems of oppression. At the end, we were genuinely excited.

How do you intend to evaluate and critique its implications, success and impact?

Like the initial tutorial, I intend to ask for honest feedback during presentations. Success will be evaluated based on:

• How well they collaborated with each other and the refugees.
• How they negotiated their positionalities.
• The application of critical thinking in the outcomes.

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