Tag: Inclusive Practices

Intervention Proposal: Inclusive Toolkit for Photography Workshops

Intervention Proposal: Inclusive Toolkit for Photography Workshops

My role as a specialist technician in photography at LCF involves delivering varied workshops—from analogue and darkroom to digital, studio, and post-production. In my intervention, I aim to develop a toolkit to embed inclusive practice into the structure and culture of technical learning within my workshops and my team. This study will focus on improving access and engagement for students with diverse needs, identities, and learning styles.

The practice of professional photography, especially within the fashion industry, assumes physical ability, sometimes neurotypical processing, and prior familiarity with technical language or equipment. These assumptions can create barriers for disabled, neurodivergent, multilingual, or otherwise marginalised students. My aim is to shift from reactive accommodation to proactive, inclusive design – something I have been thinking about quite a lot recently, and I’m up for the challenge of exploring avenues and solutions to better my practice, with the hope of implementing it in my technical department.

This intervention will take the form of an Inclusive Teaching Toolkit. I will be looking into:

  • Flexible task adaptations for technical processes.
  • Revising asynchronous materials to be screen-reader friendly and available in multiple formats.
  • Access reflection prompts embedded in pre-briefs.
  • Diversifying my reference list, centring underrepresented photographers and artists.
  • Optional, inclusive crit formats; and finally
  • Developing a short workshop or discussion session – exploring how access, identity, and belief shape photographic practice.

I plan to pilot these changes in at least one workshop (to be confirmed) and collect informal student feedback to refine the toolkit. The aim is to create something sustainable, shareable, and adaptable across different technical contexts.

My approach is grounded in critical pedagogy and a belief that access must be designed into the learning environment – not added as a response, but embedded as a shared responsibility. The goal isn’t to redesign the curriculum overnight, but to take small, intentional steps that can shift how inclusion is understood and embedded in technical learning.

* “Toolkit” refers to the modular, adaptable nature of these resources – designed for ongoing development, use, and co-creation in technical teaching.

Reflection: Belief, Discomfort & Politics of Inclusion

In our last workshop on faith, religion and belief, and through conversations with peers, I came to realise how institutional norms continue to shape – and often restrict – how belief and identity are recognised in education. Our discussions around positionality made me reflect more critically on how technical teaching, too, is embedded within these structures. It is not neutral. In adapting to students’ needs, I now recognise my adaptability not only as a teaching strategy but as a political act, one that challenges normative expectations and seeks to centre difference as a pedagogical resource.

This realisation is also reflected in Ramadan’s (2021) article, where they explore how hijab-wearing Muslim women academics are subject to gendered Islamophobia, with their beliefs pathologised and rendered incompatible with institutional norms. Similarly, McKeown and Dunn (2021) argue that ethical vegans must often prove the seriousness of their convictions in legal settings – a process that delegitimises belief systems that fall outside dominant worldviews. Both readings speak to bell hooks’ concept of marginality as a site of resistance, as discussed in Fitts (2011), which challenges us to embrace discomfort as a site of possibility, not failure.

Our conversations also touched on institutional data, with questions about who is included, how information is gathered, and how flawed data can misrepresent lived experience. As one peer put it, institutions can be transformed by one student—but only if systems are built to listen. Kozleski (2016) reminds us that social justice education is not just about changing people; it’s about challenging the systems that reify inequality. This also relates with the call by Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly (2021) for education to go beyond awareness and actively inspire students to be part of change. Jawad (2022) offers a practical application of this in sport, urging institutional reform to create spaces where visibly Muslim women are welcomed, not merely accommodated.

These reflections are also prompting me to think more critically about faith and religion. Having grown up in a religious-oriented education that led me to distance myself from organised belief, I’ve tended to hold religion at arm’s length. Yet, as an educator, I’m beginning to recognise the importance of stepping beyond that discomfort.

Embracing belief in educational spaces enables the fostering of inclusive and daring learning spaces. It invites a shift: to hold space where faith, religion, and belief are not just tolerated, but recognised as vital dimensions through which transformation can begin. A crucial part of existing collaboratively and co-creating spaces of justice, where discomfort, belief, and identity are not viewed as obstacles, but as entry points for meaningful change.

References:

Fitts, S. (2011) ‘Theorizing transformative and revolutionary praxis through the lens of bell hooks’, Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 11(2), pp. 71–88.

Jawad, H. (2022) ‘Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women’, LSE Religion and Global Society, 22 September. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2022/09/islam-women-and-sport-the-case-of-visible-muslim-women/.

Joseph-Salisbury, R. and Connelly, L. (2021) Anti-Racist Scholar-Activism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 150–155.

Kozleski, E.B. (2016) ‘Reifying categories: Measurement in search of understanding’, DisCrit: Critical Conversations across Race, Class, & Dis/ability’, Teachers College Press, pp. 101-115. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308787505_Reifying_categories_Measurement_in_search_of_understanding

McKeown, P. and Dunn, R.A. (2021) ‘A ‘Life-Style Choice’ or a Philosophical Belief?: The Argument for Veganism and Vegetarianism to be a Protected Philosophical Belief and the Position in England and Wales’, Liverpool Law Review, 42(2), pp. 207–240.

Ramadan, I. (2021) ‘When Faith Intersects with Gender: The Challenges and Successes in the Experiences of Muslim Women Academics’, Gender and Education, 34(1), pp. 34–36.

Additional readings:

https://tns-gssi.newschool.org/2022/02/23/how-to-radically-transform-society-with-bell-hooks

Reflection: on Intersectionality, Disability, and Structural Change in the UK

Recent conversations and interviews have underlined an important truth: Access is not an individual privilege – it is a collective responsibility. As educators, artists and citizens, the choices we make about inclusion are deeply political and personal. Whether in learning environments or cultural spaces, we must stop framing accessibility as a favour or accommodation. Instead, it is a prerequisite for equality and equity

In our group tutorial, we reflected on how inclusion starts with ourselves – how we engage, listen and build relationships. We discussed the challenge of intersectionality and the importance of recognising that people fall into multiple, intersecting systems of oppression. Our teaching spaces need to respond to this – not by ticking boxes, but by being radically open to structural rethinking.

This was made clear in the interview with Chay Brown (@TransActual), who highlighted the real-life barriers faced by disabled LGBTQ+ people – lack of accessible toilets, venues without step-free access, events that exclude neurodivergent people through noise, chaos and an alcohol-centric culture. Chay reminded us that accessibility isn’t just about ramps and elevators – it’s about asking people what they need, budgeting for accessibility and being prepared to be told, “You could have done better.”

What resonated deeply was Chay’s statement that it’s not enough to just listen – we need to take notes and implement change. This is access as collective responsibility. However, if we look at the wider societal context, we can see how far we are from this ethos.

The UK in 2025 is a difficult place for disabled and marginalised people. Recent Supreme Court rulings have curtailed workers’ rights, protections under the Equality Act are under threat, and benefit cuts have left thousands of people with disabilities in financial and housing precarity. The erosion of public health and social care funding means that many are being pushed out of their homes, education or jobs.

This is not happening in isolation. The rise of fascist rhetoric, increasingly hostile immigration policies and the suppression of protest and activism through legislation such as the Public Order Act amendments in 2023, are part of the same systemic architecture. These mechanisms exacerbate instability for those already at the intersections of oppression – disabled people, migrants, trans people, racialised communities. Institutional structures not only ignore these problems, but actively contribute to causing harm.

This political landscape stands in stark contrast to Christine Sun Kim’s reflections on Berlin — a city she describes as providing support, language and resources that give her and her family stability. In the UK, this support feels increasingly out of reach. And yet, as Kim says, “If you don’t see us, we have no place to be.”  Her experience highlights the urgent need for visibility – not just in representation, but also in design, language and policy.

In my teaching practice, I experience that some workshops remain inaccessible, and adaptations are often reactive. There is an urgent need to shift the notion of disability from individual need to systemic design failure. Our conversations about intersectionality reminded me that we cannot separate disability from ethnicity, class, gender or immigration status – these are interwoven, lived realities.

What kind of society do we want to build, and what kind of educators do we want to be? If access is everyone’s responsibility, then silence and inaction is complicity.

Inclusion must be embedded, practiced and fought for — not just in our classrooms, but in every corner of the institutions to which we belong.

References:

Adepitan, A. and Webborn, N. (2020). Nick Webborn interviews Ade Adepitan. ParalympicsGB Legends [Online]. Youtube. 27 August.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnRjdol_j0c

Brown, C. (2023) Interview with ParaPride. Intersectionality in Focus: Empowering Voices during UK Disability History Month [Online]. Youtube. 13 December.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yID8_s5tjc

Sun, C. (2024). Christine Sun Kim in ‘Friends & Strangers’ – Season 11 | Art21. [online] YouTube.

https://youtu.be/2NpRaEDlLsI

Additional Reading:

Walker, P. (2025) ‘Ill and disabled people will be made “invisible” by UK benefit cuts’, The Guardian, 8 April. 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/08/ill-disabled-people-uk-benefit-cuts-policy-in-practice [Accessed 26 April 2025].

Walker, P. and Butler, P. (2025) ‘Equality Act under threat from new UK Supreme Court interpretation’, The Guardian, 15 April. 

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/apr/15/equality-act-under-threat-uk-supreme-court-ruling[Accessed 26 April 2025].

Syal, R. (2025) ‘Sadiq Khan warns democracy at risk from rise in fascism’, The Guardian, 18 January. 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/18/sadiq-khan-warns-western-democracy-at-risk-from-resurgent-fascism-ahead-of-trump-inauguration [Accessed 27 April 2025].