Unit 2: Inclusive Practices – Blog Post 3: Race
Teaching on MA Design for Social Innovation and Sustainable Futures has made me increasingly aware that diversity within a cohort does not automatically lead to diversity of encounter. Students bring a wide range of experiences into the room, yet the opportunities to encounter genuinely different perspectives can still feel surprisingly limited. Throughout this unit, I found myself returning to questions about how race shapes not only students’ experiences once they arrive at university, but also the ways institutions imagine who belongs there in the first place.
The current cohort on MA Design for Social Innovation and Sustainable Futures consists of 31 students, with only one Home student (3%) and 97% classified as Overseas students (UAL, 2025). This creates an highly international learning environment, bringing together students from different countries, cultures and educational backgrounds. At the same time, it has prompted conversations within the teaching team about who the course is reaching, who may feel encouraged to apply, and whose experiences are less visible within the learning community. These are not questions that can be answered through demographics alone, but the data provides an important starting point for reflection.
One of the ideas that stayed with me was that representation cannot be understood purely as a question of numbers. Wong et al. (2021) argue that universities are often assumed to be diverse simply because they recruit students from a range of backgrounds. Their research demonstrates, however, that experiences of racism, exclusion and belonging continue to shape students’ experiences within higher education. This echoed something I had already been reflecting on through both my own educational experiences and my teaching practice. Representation matters, yet numbers alone cannot tell us how an institution is experienced. The quality of relationships, whose knowledge is recognised and the opportunities students have to encounter different perspectives all shape whether diversity becomes something that is lived rather than simply measured.
As someone who has spent much of my education navigating predominantly white institutions, questions of race, representation and belonging are not new to me. Throughout my education I often found myself looking for people whose experiences reflected my own, whether through race, class or cultural background. What this unit offered was a richer theoretical language for making sense of experiences I had often understood intuitively. Reading Frankenberg (1993) and DiAngelo (2018) alongside the workshop discussions helped me connect those lived experiences to broader institutional structures, making it easier to recognise how racialised norms can become embedded within everyday educational practices without ever needing to announce themselves. Those experiences continue to shape the questions I bring into my teaching, whilst also reminding me that my own perspective is only one among many.
We also discussed the awarding gap and the role of institutional data in understanding racial inequality. Whilst quantitative data is essential for identifying patterns of inequity, I am reminded that it can only ever tell part of the story. Statistics cannot fully capture students’ experiences of belonging, the subtle ways institutional culture is encountered, or the relationships that shape whether someone feels recognised within a learning environment. Students’ reflections, conversations and lived experiences are equally important forms of knowledge to recognise if we are serious about understanding educational equity.
What I have taken from this workshop is a renewed appreciation that anti-racist practice cannot be separated from the everyday cultures of an institution. It is shaped through the questions we ask, whose knowledge is recognised, who is invited into conversations and who has opportunities to influence the future direction of a course. This has reinforced my belief that students should play an active role in shaping those conditions. Rather than approaching anti-racist practice as a fixed set of actions or outcomes, I see it as an ongoing commitment to listening, questioning and remaining attentive to the ways institutions can reproduce exclusion. These reflections ultimately became the foundation for my intervention proposal, which centres graduating students’ voices within the revalidation of the course, creating space for their experiences, observations and ideas to meaningfully inform its future development.
References
Crenshaw, K. (1990) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review, 43(6), pp. 1241–1299.
DiAngelo, R. (2018) White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Boston: Beacon Press.
Frankenberg, R. (1993) White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. New York: Routledge.
Garrett, R. (2024) ‘Racism shapes careers: Career trajectories and imagined futures of racialised minority PhDs in UK higher education’, Globalisation, Societies and Education, pp. 1–15.
University of the Arts London (2025) Student Profiles – Summary Grids: MA Design for Social Innovation and Sustainable Futures, 2025/26. Internal student profile dashboard. Accessed 10 July 2026.
Wong, B., ElMorally, R., Copsey-Blake, M., Highwood, E. and Singarayer, J. (2021) ‘Is race still relevant? Student perceptions and experiences of racism in higher education’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 51(3), pp. 359–375.