‘There’s a natural influence of culture simply through being in a certain region for most of my life, but I grew up in a global family and worked with people from everywhere through adult life, so I have become adaptable.’ (LCC student, 2025)
I have worked in education and as an interior designer for over 16 years. My positionality is that I am a woman of colour and I am a first generation to study at HE level. My parents are from the Caribbean, however I was born and raised in England. (https://gsmith.myblog.arts.ac.uk/ link to my introduction blog). The student’s comment resonated with me. Cultural identity is complex.
As an Academic Support (AS) lecturer, I have observed within workshops, tutorials and feedback from course lectures that students find working collaboratively with their peers can be sometimes a challenge. One of the contributory factors that has been revealed is the unknown ways of working, cultural and language misunderstandings.
‘It is important for others to understand about my ways of working so that it is easy to collaborate.’ (LCC Student, 2025)
Students are working in diverse cultural environments as seen from the UAL dashboard. (UAL, n.d)
Fig.1. UAL Dashboard for Ethnicity (UAL,n.d).
In some cases, the ways of working of a student can be influenced by their cultural identities. Generating a holistic approach and developing an understanding of the whole person brings about purpose and healthy collaborative experiences. This idea is also shared by Economides (2008, p.1), they highlight that students should be supported. As an AS lecturer our main goal is to support students.
The challenges in terms of ways of working and the understanding of cultural identities is not only with our international students but also with our home students.
‘I feel isolated in my class and find it a challenge to work in a group’ (UAL home student 2025))
In the library at LCC there is a whiteboard where students can mark make collaboratively irrespective of their differences. This was an inspiration to my project for creating a space where students can work together to generate a masterpiece of ideas and expressions effortlessly.
Fig 2. LCC library whiteboard. (Smith, 2025)
Students can also collaborate in the LCC café area where they can express their thoughts.
Fig.3. LCC Collaborative Black Board. (Smith, 2025)
Fig 4. LCC Collaborative Blackboard. (Smith, 2025)
Fig.5.LCC Collaborative Blackboard. (Smith, 2025)
Fig.6. LCC Collaborative Blackboard. (Smith, 2025)
My ARP is a natural progression from my TTP project where I was intrigued by Crenshaw (2013) and intersectionality. The many different layers of a person and how that interplays into their way of life. This then weaved its way into my inclusive Practice project where I began to research further into the idea of collaboration. I then began to investigate, receive feedback from students and evaluate the process by creating collaborative working cards that support conversations about their cultural identity.
There are several researchers that have devised cards to support collaboration for students. One of which is the cultural collaborative project deck by Bao et.al. (2025). This was a tool kit to support students with creative thinking and problem – solving.
Fig7. Cultural collaborative Project Deck by Bao et.al. (2025)
Fig.8. Quantitative statistics of design ideas generated by each group under three design conditions. (Bao et.al. 2025)
The findings highlighted that both the interaction rule and the toolkit can improve the ideas for team outputs. (Bao et.al. 2025)
They looked at three options to gain more in-depth analysis of its success. This enabled me to think about other areas for future development for my ARP that could consist of three stages.
References
Bao, D., Jia, C., Ying, J., Liu, G., Yu, Y. and Shen, D., 2025. Cultural creative processes supported by collaborative stimulation: A card-based toolkit for team interaction rules incorporation. Thinking Skills and Creativity, p.101921.
Crenshaw, K.W., 2013. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of colour. In The public nature of private violence. Routledge.
LCC Student. (2025) Written, November
Smith,G. (2025) LCC Collaborative Blackboard [Photograph]
Smith,G. (2025) Library Whiteboard [Photograph]
UAL Dashboard for Ethnicity (UAL, n.d)
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Images References
Fig.1. UAL Dashboard for Ethnicity (UAL,n.d).
Fig 2. LCC library whiteboard. (Smith, 2025)
Fig.3. LCC Collaborative Black Board. (Smith, 2025)
Fig 4. LCC Collaborative Blackboard. (Smith, 2025)
Fig.5.LCC Collaborative Blackboard. (Smith, 2025)
Fig.6. LCC Collaborative Blackboard. (Smith, 2025)
Fig.8. Quantitative statistics of design ideas generated by each group under three design conditions. (Bao et.al. 2025)