Key words: values, ethics, beliefs, morals, duties, attitudes, knowledge, equality, equity, personal, professional, conflict

https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/documents/sppreview/e559543e-1db7-4154-b7c4-d843861603ad

The cohort seminar on Sustainability was an opportunity for me to reflect on and discuss my positionality and to listen to my peers’ views, which I found very interesting and revealing. We were asked to look at UAL policy on sustainability and consider what values inform the way we teach in relation to the policy. I learnt that values can be tacit and/or articulated. My group’s discussion centred around the fact of ‘sustainability’ being used as a broad term that encompasses climate and social justice issues. For me it seemed ‘unjust’ that these two pressing issues are addressed in one policy document, as if they can be approached from one perspective. To me ‘climate crisis’ and social justice/anti-racism/decolonisation are two very separate issues that I believe should be addressed from different angles, although poilitcally, socially and culturally they overlap.

I believe it is important for there to be policies in place to protect staff, students and the interests of the university as a whole. However, through discussion I found that protecting and including these three bodies do not always align in practice. It is ‘utopian thinking’ to think that they do align because conflicts will always arise due to differences in the human experience, positionality, politics and culture of the people who make up the UAL community.