In this reflective report, I intend to reflect on an outreach project I led with first year students of the BA Fashion History and Theory (FHT) course at Central Saint Martins. In this intervention, the students (in groups) engaged with five refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, who are fashion practitioners and currently volunteering at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford as part of the Multaka initiative. Using fashion as a common language, the students learnt about the volunteers’ cultures, their fashions and their interpretations of the museum’s collections, through informal conversations held in Oxford. The outcomes comprised 2-min films based on their interactions and presented at CSM.

Context

BA Fashion History and Theory focuses on the history of Western fashion, from Renaissance to present day, and provides students with theoretical framework within which to analyse Fashion. Because of its academic nature and the focus on Western fashion, the course tends to attract mostly White, middle-class, native English-speaking students. The current first year cohort comprises 18 students: 94% white, 88% British.

The course is undergoing a decolonising process, with which I’m directly involved. Firstly, we acknowledge the absences and biases of current Eurocentric canon that is exclusivist and racist. Based on that recognition, we are trying to deconstruct old epistemologies to account for different experiences of Fashion. We are also challenging the notion that History is a linear narrative of progress, but rather comprises a selection of stories told by ‘experts’ (Smyth, 2011, p.136).

The intervention was conceived to propose alternative ways of learning about global fashions and to challenge the idea of ‘expert’. There is common a fear of ‘speaking for’ and of tokenism/essentialism. These are not unfounded as our positionality and methodologies all too often reflect systems of oppression.

I tell my students about the importance of listening, respect and collaboration to promote change. I wanted to use this intervention as an experiment, in which meaningful human relationships were both the methodology and main outcome. By doing so, I wanted to empower the students to partake in our decolonising quest.

Positionality

I am a white female Brazilian fashion historian. I was conditioned by my culture, studies and curatorial experience to think of Fashion as a Western phenomenon. Because I want to expand my praxis of research and teaching, I saw myself as learner here. Indeed, hooks states that engaged pedagogy provides ‘a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process’ (1994, p.21).

Our positionalities were multi-layered and sometimes unclear. I was the teacher, from whom students expected authority. Yet, the position of ‘experts’ was transferred to the volunteers to highlight the role of personal experiences in achieving a ‘richer way of knowing’ (hooks, 1994, p.89). I was project co-lead with the MultakaOxford manager, writing the brief and creating the schedule. Yet I wanted the students and volunteers to be co-creators.

My status as insider/outsider also shifted throughout. At a first glance, my outsider status was obvious – I am neither a refugee nor Middle Eastern. However, most volunteers were woman around my age (30-35). English is my second language and I came from a different culture (Brazil sounded very distant!). I had volunteered in museums earlier in my curatorial career and had been a fashion practitioner in Brazil. Manohar et al. noted that gender, age and shared experience can directly influence research (2017) and indeed they helped me build trust with the volunteers.

For the students, my insider status came from a shared experience as FHT alumna and ‘Western’ researcher. Often, I reminded them that this intervention was also new to me and that I too felt unsure at times. This newcomer position enabled us to build a sense of partnership. Moreover, my informal and personal attitude in the classroom meant they saw me as ‘their older sister’.

Reflection

The brief was firstly written by me, then edited by the volunteers with the Multaka manager and finally presented to the students during the online briefing session. In this sequence, the students were removed from the conceptualising stage, although I intended them to be co-creators. Their learning outcomes were assumed by me. Also, the participants came together for the first time on the briefing. As co-creators, they should have met first, discussed their learning needs and desirable outcomes and then written the brief together.

The students’ introduction to the intervention was characterised by fear. After a flawed briefing, not least because of technical issues, we had an informal talk in the canteen at CSM. I asked each student to voice their reactions and feelings. Then I explained that this was an experiment to challenge learning hierarchies and research methodologies, and that both the brief’s openness and my shifting positionality were intentional. This talk was crucial to their engagement. As hooks puts it, ‘in the transformed classroom there is often a much greater need to explain philosophy, strategy, intent’ (1994, p.42).

After each visit to Oxford, the students and I came together in the classroom for critical reflection (Smyth, 2011, p.140). Each student recounted their experiences and shared ideas. Everyone was encouraged to feedforward. Again, these sessions contributed to the intervention’s success, as we tackled issues such as language hierarchies, museum and coloniality, and how our ‘Western’ positionality influenced our ideas.

However, I should have been more explicit about critical pedagogy of social justice from the outset. For instance, engaging with social identity theory would enable us to understand how our unique individual personalities are shaped by multiple social identities ‘based in relation to ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, and so on’ (Hahn Tapper, 2013, p.422). Because each social identity reflects different power dynamics, ‘all groups, to various degrees, are victims and perpetrators, innocent and guilty. All of us play active and passive roles in the structures of oppression in which we live’ (Hahn Tapper, 2013, p.422).

Moreover, the concept of relational power is also very fitting to the intervention. It ‘draws upon “trust and cooperation between and among people” (Warren, 2005, p. 136) and acknowledges that learning involves “the power to get things done collectively” (p. 138) by confronting, rather than denying, power inequalities’ (Smyth, 2011, p.68). In that sense, it would help us address the power imbalances of working with refugees and to achieve more mutual benefits.

Evaluation

Talking to Aisha about my artefact, she rightly challenged its mutual benefits. I agree that further ‘critical introspection which encompasses “mutual benefit” for all’ was needed. However, I felt upset with what I perceived as her dismissal of the genuineness of the volunteers’ positive feelings towards our encounters. I feel the greatest success of the intervention was the relationships we built. As noted by the course leader of the presentations, ‘it was heart-warming to see so much mutual respect and a genuine, open exchange of ideas.’

I am grateful for the feelings Aisha stirred on me. They enabled me to be more critical and receptive to the volunteers’ feedback. Some of their comments were:

• ‘The students were intelligent and very interested in my culture. That makes me feel special, because my culture was valued. I wished we had spent more time together.’
• ‘Talking about my culture, my clothes, made me feel closer to home. It feels like my culture can exist in their culture.’
• ‘It felt good to teach the students about our traditions. They listened to me and learnt something [laughs]! But I also wanted to learn more about their culture and their experience in university.’
• ‘My English is not good; it was nice to talk to them in my language. They didn’t understand what I said, but they understood me.’
• ‘It was really special visiting their university. I want to go back to my studies, and I hope they [staff] will help me.’

The comments highlight the benefits of sharing their cultural experiences and being listened, as validation and a connection to home. We are also in talks with Insights to assist the volunteer in her academic pursue. However, the sharing and learning was mostly unidirectional. Moreover, the students felt films weren’t the best media for their outcomes.

Based on these comments and my reflections, I propose the following actions:

• Extend the duration of the intervention to accommodate more sessions at CSM (especially during the making process).
• Write the brief together with the students and volunteers and allow them to decide on the outcomes.
• Involve the volunteers in the making process, so they can potentially learn new skills and experience the university.
• Introduce the students to key concepts such as positionality, social identity theory, relational power and critical pedagogy for social justice prior to our first encounter with the volunteers.

Conclusion

I feel this experiment was pivotal to my teaching practice. It successfully demonstrated the power of meaningful relationships as research methodologies and as cultural validation. It also showed how marginalised lived experiences contribute to knowledge. Moving forwards, I need to prioritise mutual benefits by involving all participants in its conceptualisation and overtly address power imbalances. But I feel encouraged to try other experimental interventions, even if they involve risks and flaws.

‘If we really want to create a cultural climate where biases can be challenged and changed, all border crossings must be seen as valid and legitimate. This does not mean that they are not subjected to critique or critical interrogation, or that there will not be many occasions when the crossings of the powerful into the terrains of the powerless will not perpetuate existing structures. This risk is ultimately less threatening than a continued attachment to and support of existing systems of domination, particularly as they affect teaching, how we teach, and what we teach.’ (hooks, 1994, p.131)

Bibliography

French, L. (2019) Refugee Narratives; Oral History and Ethnography; Stories and Silence. [Online] The Oral History Review. 46(2), pp.267-276. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1093/ohr/ohz007> [Accessed 6 June 2022].

Gillborn, D. (2019) Hiding in Plain Sight: Understanding and Addressing Whiteness and Color-Blind Ideology in Education. [Online] Kappa Delta Pi Record. Vol.55(3), pp.112-117. Available at: < https://doi.org/10.1080/00228958.2019.1622376> [Accessed 27 July 2022].

Hahn Tapper, A.J. (2013) A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality and Empowerment. Conflict Resolution Quaterly. 30(4), pp.411-445.

hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Abingdon: Routledge.

Manohar, N. et al. (2017) Researcher Positionality in Cross-Cultural and Sensitive Research. In: Liamputtong, P. (ed.) Handbook of Research Methods in Health Social Sciences. Springer Nature. pp.1-15

Smyth, J. (2011) Critical Pedagogy for Social Justice. [Online]London: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional. Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/reader.action?docID=797502&ppg=5 [Accessed 26 July 2022].

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