My paper and presentation will focus on a ‘shared learning agreement’. This agreement is intended for shared learning spaces and is intended to be workshopped students and staff. The list of agreements is not exhaustive and can be amended. In investing in a shared learning space, it is our responsibility to create spaces that are welcoming and respectful to everyone. Adhering to these agreements is a collective as well as individual responsibility. The ethics of care in engaging with communities and healing/restorative justice platforms will also be examined – in relation to how the shared learning agreement can foster critical self-reflections. The shared learning agreement is a collaborative document that prompts discussions and helps to build the foundations for a shared learning space or environment. Each group of students who works with it can adapt it, edit it and re-work it as they see fit in order to foster their collective space. The ethos of the agreement is rooted in community- based activism and the language is directly influenced by specific collective agreements. I will introduce the shared learned agreement and provide information on the groups that have inspired it and will discuss ways it can be adapted with groups students and staff. The shared learning agreement has been applied at the Royal College of Art, Ruskin School of Art, Royal Academy of Arts, and Central St Martins.
I am a Lecturer in Design: Race and Intercultural Studies at Central St Martins, University of the Arts London where I also work as a Teaching, Learning and Attainment Co-ordinator. I have a PhD from the Royal College of Art in Critical and Historical Studies and have worked as a managing editor for the Journal of Visual Culture. My most recent book project is an edited collection published with Edinburgh University Press titled Robotic Vision & Virtual Interfacing: Seeing, Sensing, Shaping. I am also working on an essay about fandom and race for Routledge.