Maureen Salmon, Staff
Culture and education are the most powerful weapons for social and economic change in the world and it just so happens to be our core business. As a leading art and design education institution in the UK, we should be in pole position to effect significant change not just in our institution but the wider society by reimagining a new humanity for UAL. With a proliferation of ‘decolonising’ projects across the six colleges and in establishing the UAL Decolonising Art Institute we have made a good start to creating new futures. As we acknowledge and celebrate these initiatives and milestones, we must ensure the contextualisation and sustainability of this work as integral to UAL Strategy for transformative education and related Academic, People, Learning and Enhancement strategies.
We need resilience, strengths and power to engage with ‘decolonisation’ beyond the art and culture on a much wider societal level, by challenging the political, intellectual and structural legacies of colonization and racism.
We need to create a new culture of decolonized mindset, governance and leadership that measure and evidence the social, cultural and economic impact and outcomes for our students, staff, the University, industry and the wider society nationally and internationally to create sustainable futures.
The value I bring is to lead the change I want in the world.
“Inspired by the traditional art of the Bini people of Edo State (Nigeria) I use
our beliefs, cultural knowledge and traditional values in my work as a way
of articulating in the contemporary world my values and ideas of resilience,
strength and power.”
Favour Jonathan
Widening Participation Ambassador
CSM Graduate 2019
This article was originally written and published in Decolonising the Arts Curriculum: Perspectives on Higher Education Zine 2 (2019).