On 27 July, we held the first UAL Students as Partners Festival attended by nearly 60 people in-person and over 80 guests via livestream. The Students as Partners Festival was an opportunity to collectively explore the concept of student-staff partnership and what it means to us, at UAL. It brought together some of the key student partners groups from across UAL.

The Festival started with a keynote from the University of Westminster which included an activity of building a play-doh model of a socially-just student-staff partnership, and was followed by the speakers, Kyra Araneta, Jennifer Fraser and Moonisah Usman, sharing their expertise and research in re-thinking student and staff partnerships as decolonial and anti-racist practices. They also introduced the recently launched University of Westminster’s Student Partnership Framework. The keynote was followed by presentations from Digital Champions, Climate and Repair Advocates, and Changemakers and concluded with a student-led Lego workshop which enabled us to further explore the concept of partnership.

To request the Festival recording, please e-mail ccw-digitallearning@arts.ac.uk.

Watch the video below to learn more about the Festival’s aims, overview of the programme and reflections from the day.