By Slavi Kaloferov
Positionality
I will speak on this topic not as a formal educator but as a practitioner engaging with learning outside the classroom through informal spaces and activities, leaning on my experience as an international student.
Classroom experience
Last year, I was invited to deliver a workshop for the MA Animation course. Drawing on what my peers and I were less attuned to when we first began—particularly the social dimensions of our practice—I wanted to equip students with the language and frameworks to engage with these issues critically in their creative work.
Within a fictional world, I asked them to design characters and view them intersectionally through Kimberlé Crenshaw’s lens. They created simple stories, exploring how their characters navigated social institutions and the injustices embedded in that world, using Bobby Harro’s cycle of socialisation.
During the contribution time, I observed that many international students remained mostly silent. I would believe that could be contributed to carrying pressures around family expectations, visas and performance in an unfamiliar educational system.
Although the attending lecturer was kind, their role still implied evaluation, and the stakes attached to grades made participation feel either risky or performative. This dynamic also created unspoken comparisons between peers.
I recognise this from personal experience.
Yet, in creative fields especially, grades rarely determined employability for my peers and me, I know.
What change?
Although the course embedded an assessment requirement to address social issues, some responses still felt surface-level or simply admissions of not having engaged with them deeply.
I believe in individual journeys, but was this experience a kind that helps learners see themselves and their place in the world differently or just another system expectation hidden behind co-creation activity?
Third space experience
Later that year, my colleague Saranya Satheesh led the Global South Photobook Collection project (curating our library archive), which changed my view of how an educator should enable learning to happen.
Students from different disciplines and backgrounds kept returning; often, almost the same group was present each session. Facilitated by my colleague, they explored how the materials connected to their own identities and experiences, unpacked language together, and shared stories through reflective, non-judgemental conversations.
All worked toward the shared goal of providing such open access to their peers across the college.
Where is the difference?
Students were given full ownership of the process, which kept them coming back.
They were building something that was used and celebrated by the library for their peers, so their efforts felt purposeful.
Working towards a shared goal rooted in common values, they began to self-organise organically.
No hierarchy or performance pressure. Instead, they were offered a space where they could bring their own backgrounds and experiences, without judgment or imposed standards, and contribute on their own terms.
I can see some of the challenges to this:
- limited staff time
- academic system that is slow and difficult to change
- limited capacity to liaise with external partners and organisations.
Why don’t you trust your learners to self-organise?
You might be surprised by what students are capable of when we give them the chance to act as engaged citizens within the university. Examples exist.
Event context
The talk was part of a practice exchange between LCC Changemakers (London College of Communication, University of the Arts London) and SOAS Student Leaders (SOAS University of London). The event was attended by over 60 university staff and researchers from multiple UK universities.