As I write this post UAL’s lead banner on Canvas is promoting Earth Day on April 22 and our Climate Emergency Network’s #Appetite4Justice. The GDTD course which I lead is underpinned by a core awareness of what it means to be a responsible designer in the 21st century with a focus on environmentally sustainable and ethical design thinking with ‘sustainable and ethical considerations’ being written into the Unit Learning Outcomes.
On March 04, 2022 it was announced that UAL was partnering with other UK institutions in a ‘ground-breaking project to tackle curriculum greenwashing in Higher Education’ (UAL, 2022). Having worked in the textile and fashion industry, one of the largest environmental global polluters, I have a genuine commitment to high quality teaching for sustainable textile design and the fundamentality of ‘designing and delivering creative education that foregrounds human and planetary health’ (UAL, 2022).
In acknowledging as Mezirow describes as an adult learner I am ‘caught in (my) own history and re-living it’ (Wyse, 2016, p.334) consequently my ‘Frames of reference’ come from my professional knowledge from industry aswell as my interactions with others, experiences etc. I design the curriculum to enable students to critically engage with what it means to be a socially and sustainably responsible designer who makes things that exist as an inherent part of a complex ecology, acting upon the urgency of the current global ecological crisis and intertwined inequality crisis.
I work with a largely international cohort of students, a number of whom come from mainland China, they often tell me that they have had no previous experience of thinking about sustainable design. Therefore, the course applies, as mapped to Marton and Saljö’s categories ‘a concept-focused strategy with the intention of developing the student’s own response and ideas in relation to the project, ultimately a search for intrinsic personal meaning’ (Fry, 2009, p.349), thus developing their own understanding of sustainability and how they relate to it as a human and as a designer.
Fry, H (ed), Ketteridge, S (ed) & Marshall, (ed). (2009) A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Enhancing Academic Practice, Third edition. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group: London.
UAL Communications (2022) UAL joins University of Gloucestershire in ground-breaking project to tackle curriculum greenwashing in Higher Education [online] [Accessed 25 March 2022] Available from: https://www.arts.ac.uk/business-partnerships/stories/ual-joins-university-of-gloucestershire-in-ground-breaking-project-to-tackle-higher-education-curriculum-greenwash
Wyse, D. (ed),Hayward, L. (ed), Pandya, J. (ed) (2016) The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Sage: London.