Guest post by Camara Dick, Seniz Husseyin, Malaika Johnson, Martha Macri and Jeanne-Louise Moys (Department of Typography & Graphic Communication)

‘I am, we are…different by design’ is a student and staff partnership project within the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication. The project began in October 2017 to explore new ways to embed diversity in the BA Graphic Communication curriculum and evolve a stronger sense of community in the Department.

In 2017–8, our team secured funding from the University’s Partnerships in Learning and Teaching (PLanT) scheme for a diversity campaign. For the campaign, our team decided to create a zine. This has been the most fulfilling part of our initiative so far.

Our ‘I am, we are…different by design’ zine was made with the intention of creating awareness of and celebrating diversity in our discipline. As a team, we are passionate about wanting to counterbalance the dominant western canon in our discipline and encourage students to move beyond our ‘cultural comfort zones’. We agreed that making a zine was the most effective way to start because it would enable us to share a range of perspectives and take advantage of our Graphic Communication skills.

The process of making the zine started with our team discussing who we wanted to feature in the zine and why. We wanted to include work by people who were engaging with diversity in their practice or research. Martha notes that it was ‘difficult to identify people who were creating something with the idea of diversity/culture behind it’.

In particular, we wanted to showcase projects from across the School of Arts and Communication Design. We interviewed current students from all three departments in the School (Art; Film, Theatre and Television; and Typography & Graphic Communication), researchers and graduates, as well as other practitioners with links to the University. This entailed us having to do extensive research, get ethics approval, conduct interviews and communicate in a professional and respectful way.

We used these interviews to write articles showcasing a range of inspiring projects and research that explores issues of diversity, identity and inclusion. Some of these articles included artwork by Joshua Obeng-Boateng on representing equality in visual art and work by BMJ designer Will Stahl-Timmins on helping medical staff understand gender dysphoria through design.

The design of issue one of the zine features camera lenses to represent looking from different perspectives and capturing something new. We wanted to include a range of colours to reflect inclusion but also give a vibrant feel to the zine. Within the zine we also included photos ofour team in action as we felt that this was a good way to showcase what we were doing to inspire other students to follow our footsteps.

As a team, we worked hard and were very dedicated to creating something that would inspire others. Overall, we are very proud of our outcome and of the ability to share it not just in the University but on a wider scale. Malaika reflects that ‘considering the time we had, it was amazing to see the outcome and how well it was received’.

We were very pleased with all the positive feedback we received about the zine such as one of our School’s diversity leads Lisa Woynarski saying: ‘we are very inspired by the whole project and how we can expand it to other departments. The zine turned out so well!’

This has encouraged our team to continue the project, recruit new team members (Liselot Van Veen, Labiba Haque and Charlotte Prince have also joined our team) and begin planning a 2019 issue. We’re delighted to have been awarded funding from the University’s Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives Fund to support the production costs of our next issue. We’re extending opportunities for students and staff across the School of Arts and Communication Design to collaborate in this project and also plan to publish an online version.

In addition to the zine, some of our achievements include:

• leading a very well-received creative workshop with members of the public at the Tate Exchange as part of the School of Arts and Communication Design’s Reading Assembly in 2019
• co-creating a new part three module called ‘Design for Change’ that ran for the first time in the Autumn term
• engaging with Graphic Communication applicants on portfolio visit days to develop awareness and a sense of community and
• presenting our initiatives at the RUSU Teaching and Learning Celebration last year and at Typography’s ‘Baseline shift’ programme in the Autumn term.

Our project represents students recognising that working towards greater equality and inclusion in the creative sector is important and is our way of coming together to start a snowball effect of change. We understand that there is still so much work to be done for our industry to be where we think it should be, however this motivates us to carry on spreading awareness. We’re hopeful that when people from all backgrounds come across our zine our message inspires and encourages others to celebrate and explore diversity across different professional sectors. We look forward to collaborating with our peers across the School and sharing the next edition of our zine in the summer.