Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. (Arundhati Roy)
A Restless Context
I’m crying at my desk again. An old white man told me off for critiquing capitalism and talking about how the university is complicit in economic inequality. He speaks over me sternly: “your anti-capitalist position puts your own job at risk and contravenes the university’s code of conduct.” I wonder … is the purpose of my work to keep my job or to transform the university? Am I able to do both? (journal entry, Gabriel)
So much of oppression is seen as an unquestionable or necessary part of the world (and higher education). At the University of Cape Town (UCT), economic inequality limiting access to and completion of education (Damons, 2022), homophobia and transphobia (Fokazi, 2021; Greyson, 2021), racism (Villette, 2020) and sexual and gender-based violence (Solomons, 2022) are well documented. As people of colour, queer and trans persons, womxn, indigenous people and as migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, we’re taught to accept the violence we experience in higher education (Figure 1), to accept our position on the margins of discourse, to behave and to be respectable (Lorde, 1984).
A problem map created by R.W. a student from Zimbabwe (he/him) during transformLAB. The problem map explores how colonial bureaucracies and hierarchies play out in education.
We, as young and oppressed people on the side-lines of South Africa (and of higher education), still don’t own land in the geographies we call home, struggle financially and aren’t heard in political, social or economic spaces (Xaba, 2017; Bashi, 2019). On one hand, the experience of young and oppressed people is framed by state institutions which gaslight us in speeches and statements—for example, limiting our democratic participation to the act of voting instead of connecting and collaborating with young people as experts on our own experience and change agents of our own communities (Mangera, 2022). On the other hand, we live in a global environment marked by conflict and war (Jack, 2022), a dire climate crisis (Clark, 2022) and a conservative push against progressive changes related to gender and sexuality (McEwen, 2020). In this context, young people are seen as the products of culture, rather than the makers, creators and dreamers that we are.
Despite this, even though as colonial subjects we exist as products of the white imagination, we are not stagnant, we do not only exist as ‘lazy’ social constructs. We have internalized some of these constructs, however, in many different ways we resist and find new ways of reimagining Blackness. (Xaba, 2018)
The wounded flesh, in other words, occupies the precarious (temporal and ontological) threshold separating annihilation from regeneration, the end of the world from a new order of the human. (Omelsky, 2020)
Xaba (2018) and Omelsky (2020) highlight that, as young people, we are framed by colonial, heteropatriarchal and cisnormative structures of power which seek to limit and oppress us, but we also find ways to reimagine, regenerate and resist these structures. In introducing transformLAB and the “Another World: Queer, Decolonial, Feminist and Anti-Racist Dreams for Higher Education” zine (Khan, 2022) which emerged from the project, I invite you to position this creative intervention in opposition and response to, and as a healing balm in protection from, the violence of the world.
The Theoretical and Methodological Roots of TransformLAB
We held space for each other, our common experiences of colonialism and displacement, and our differences. We recognized the power of solidarity and co-creating space. We experienced the limitations of colonial languages and spoke out against white supremacy and capitalist patriarchy. We voiced our fears, anxieties, dreams, and visions for Black futures and called out for social and environmental justice, racial, class, gender, and sexual justice, for radical change and collective care. We honoured the Black Feminisms spaces of reconnection and practicing rootedness with each other, the land, the sea, and the earth. We did the impossible, messy, deliberate, soaked in the armour of Intentional BlackLove. (Nixon, 2017, pp. 6–7)
I got used to these weekly meetups, and, and seeing everybody, and checking in, and seeing how everyone is doing and sharing ideas and sharing thoughts. And co-creating! Um, so now I’m really going to miss that, because I’m not going to have that space. (R.W. (he/him) speaking on his experience of transformLAB)
In an unkind world, there is healing power in creating affirming and safe spaces for oppressed persons. This focus on healing acknowledges that collective and individual resistance to oppression can be empowering and therapeutic, and this praxis of resistance can transform structures which are exclusionary (Volks et al., 2021). Through this resistance networks can emerge which encourage collective care, solidarity and radical love as a healing (albeit temporary) response to feelings of alienation and exclusion (Nixon, 2017).
TransformLAB locates itself in this manner. The methodology used can be traced back to a series of arts-based projects implemented in southern Africa over the last ten years. TransformLAB is a direct offshoot of the Creative Change Laboratory (CCoLAB) methodology (see Khan and Marnell, 2021). CCoLAB experimented with the use of a long-term participatory intervention, which confronted intersecting social themes, and used multiple arts methods. TransformLAB adapted this methodology for use in a COVID-19 context, with sessions held online and participants joining in from their homes.
CCoLAB itself emerged in response to Creative Resistance (Marnell and Khan, 2016), a multiyear art intervention which tested the use of the Creative Resistance methodology in several countries in southern Africa. The research and practice of both Creative Resistance and CCoLAB were rooted in using arts-methods to create community and generate activist responses to inequality. In doing so, it created space for healing and solidarity, and art-making became a catalyst for generating inclusion.
The current student movement is distinct from others in history because art is peculiar to its genesis … Art enters the movement at precisely the moment when shit is thrown at the Rhodes statue and it forms the modality for the movement’s most stinging critiques of South African society and the post-apartheid order. It is important to remember that these aesthetics are loaded with the experiences of many black students and emerge from the feeling of outsiderness on campuses where students were supposed to belong. This is a double rejection if one takes into account that the condition itself is borne out of existing outside the political, social and economic life in a country in which one is supposed to belong. (Fikeni, 2018, p. 3)
I don’t like drawing, I don’t even know how to draw a stick person. I am as bad as that. (Funke (she/her) on the transformLAB process)
I really enjoyed doing art, because I am not really an artistic person, it’s nice to do something I’ve never done before. And I’m actually enjoying it! (Refilwe (she/her) on the transformLAB process)
The relationship between arts-based methods and activism is well documented in the South African context (Fikeni, 2018). This framing of art moves away from that which is seen as high art or valuable art, and appreciates how unconventional creative responses can be categorised as art as well. Creative and arts-based methods challenge us to think outside and beyond that which is seen as unquestionable and necessary parts of ourselves and the world (Khan and Marnell, 2021). It invites us to dream about alternatives and to share our dreams in a different kind of language and format, beyond serving a technical or operational purpose (like a report or policy brief might serve an operational purpose). Rather than a black-text-on-white-paper colonial way of producing knowledge, it offers alternatives through handwriting, sketches, and unconventional ideas not limited by a rigid silencing grammar. See Khan and Marnell (2021) for more on the research and theoretical roots of this work.
This pedagogical and theoretical basis allowed transformLAB to focus on the affect of exclusion and marginalisation on campus, and to position the creative outputs (like the act of shit throwing cited above) as responses to this lived experience. The artworks in the zine offer responses to the university which sit outside that which is seen as respectable, suitable or appropriate by deeply colonial university structures. The artworks (as process and as output) capture the energy and emotion of this approach, and hint at how art can be used to collectively heal and respond to oppression. This energy and emotion are captured in Andile’s picture (Figure 2), which suggest that having a voice and being free to speak one’s home language at UCT could be liberating.
The TransformLAB Journey
Although these current movements/protests are part of a historical continuum of resistance against racism and colonialism on African university campuses, they simultaneously mark a point of departure. They have, unlike earlier student struggles, brought to the fore a clear and powerful feminist challenge to the cisheteronormative patriarchy—in broader society as well as within the student movements. In doing so they have secured their space within South Africa’s dynamic feminist public, which continues to collectively wrestle with the gendered violence of socio-economic precarity, gross violations of bodily integrity and autonomy as well as the pervasiveness of queer and trans antagonisms. (Ndelu et al., 2017, p. 3)
As a pedagogical, art and activist intervention, transformLAB positioned itself at the intersection of struggles. This section will explore the what, why, who and how of the transformLAB process.
TransformLAB was imagined as a creative laboratory space for transformation agents in higher education. Transformers (as participants were referred to) joined 12 online workshop spaces (each three hours long) and completed six asynchronous tasks. The process culminated in the development of a zine for/on transforming higher education. TransformLAB was divided into three components:
(i) Co-think: Transformers used their lived experience to collaboratively generate new analyses of inequality and oppression in higher education so as to collectively identify problems or challenges. The first series of sessions used creative expression to build trust, community and critical consciousness. Sessions for this component were held in September 2021.
(ii) Co-create: Transfomers worked collaboratively to develop creative responses to oppression in higher education. The second series of sessions used creative methods to imagine new solutions to persistent transformation, diversity and inclusion (TDI) challenges in higher education. Sessions for this component were held in October 2021.
(iii) Co-curate: Transformers curated their analysis and prototype solutions in the form of a zine to spark broader conversations on TDI in higher education (Figure 3). The series culminated in the development dissemination of a zine which captured the process and creative outputs. Sessions for this component were held in November and December 2021.
To participate in the process fully and meaningfully, and in acknowledgement of disparities in access to resources and technologies (Khan and Modutle, 2020), participants had creative laboratory equipment delivered to them so that they could fully participate from home. The equipment box included all the materials needed for every exercise plus additional items to encourage their creative process. In addition, each participant was given a stipend of ZAR156 for each session to cover any data or incidental costs for connecting to the sessions.
The TransformLAB Process
TransformLAB was offered as a space for radical, creative and decolonial dreaming in response to a racist, capitalist, colonial and heteropatriarchal higher education environment. In higher education institutions where structural constraints and individual resistance limits real transformational change, transformLAB asked: “what comes after the current transformation status quo?” TransformLAB offered a new platform/space for transformation agents, one which foregrounded creativity and collaboration, which evaded the limited focus on operational priorities and colonial ways of producing knowledge, and aimed to respond to the TDI context through creative responses. In doing so, transformLAB aimed to do things differently with the hope that this would lead to different and (possibly) better outcomes.
TransformLAB sessions were hosted between September and December 2021. Synchronous workshop sessions occurred each week (with a break between each component of the process), with contact also occurring asynchronously on social media. The project relied on a Facebook Group, WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams as platforms to connect, debate and create art.
Transformers joined online sessions where they used arts-based methods (including sketching, drawing, painting and collage) to co-create an analysis of TDI challenges, develop creative responses to their challenges and curate these responses in the form of a zine.
TransformLAB used a participant-led methodology inspired by the work of Friere (1970) and Boal (1979). In doing so, the workshop space was facilitated in a manner which foregrounded the lived experiences of those who participated (rather than inserting theoretical concepts), aimed to neutralise hierarchies of power (related to race, gender, class, etc.) and enabled those who participated to inform the direction of the process. In practical terms, the process was shaped using workshop activities outlined in the Creative Resistance toolkit (Marnell & Khan, 2016).
I am not calling for justice at UCT. I write this to give Hope to LGBTQIAP+ people (my community); to say… just when I thought for sure this system had succeeded in killing me, that I got back up, and they can, too. (Greyson, 2021)
In creating a process like this, it is important to employ a clear ethical approach, especially in relation to group safety. As Greyson described, higher education systems are suffocating for queer and trans persons (among other marginalised groups); therefore the need for safe spaces is not only about meeting generic ethical requirements (such as informed consent, negotiating confidentiality and agency in terms of representation) but also about responding to a social justice need. The process included all the usual ethical steps including: (i) a (digitally signed) informed consent form with a section on how participants would like to refer to themselves (their gender, preferred names and identities); (ii) discussions to negotiate how and what would be shared on social media (including images of artworks or recordings); and (iii) discussions and review processes so that participants could confirm their approval of the zine content, structure and layout. In addition to these steps, the process relied on a social justice or activist ethical frame. In doing so it became important:
- To foreground the affirming and potentially healing aspects of the process over any research or knowledge dissemination goals (Volks et al., 2021);
- To prioritise how the process could support participants to find their voice rather than pushing any institutional transformation agenda;
- And to encourage the agency of participants in relation to how or what content would be shared with wider audiences rather than prioritising the “quality” of the output product/zine.
Using these social justice or activist ethical frames allowed for the process to centre the humanity and dignity of those who participated in contrast to the queer and transphobic, racist, colonial and capitalist realities in higher education (Xaba, 2017).
The zine which emerged from transformLAB curated the process, methodology and art-products into a mobile art exhibition or shareable resource. The zine summarises the transformLAB methodology and shares some of the creative products developed through the process. The zine was publicly shared to encourage alternative visions for furthering TDI in higher education.
The project initially targeted transformation agents from universities in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The term transformation agent or transformer refers to individuals who further TDI in their personal or professional capacity as students, staff members and community members. This includes researchers, teaching and learning staff, student activists or members of community organisations, who are committed to creating more equitable, fair and just access to, participation in and completion of education.
TransformLAB referred to those who participated in the process as transformers rather than participants. This was done to reflect that transformers were already actively working towards TDI within their universities, and the collaborative rather than directed nature of the transformLAB process.
Because queers, women and differently abled bodies are operating outside of White supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal, cisnormative, ableist imagination of what is human, often their intersecting identities are not seen as part of the Black struggle … Erasure and silencing in the movement is the same strategy that White supremacy uses to erase Black pain and maintain colonial violence. (Xaba, 2017, p. 7)
TransformLAB specifically aimed to collaborate with those on the margins of higher education and targeted people of colour; womxn and gender-non-conforming persons; queer and trans persons; migrants, refugees and asylum seekers; and persons with disabilities. The aim of this, echoing the above quote, was to create a space that encouraged the centring, visibility and vision of those who are challenging systems of power within the university.
Sixteen transformation agents signed up for the process, with one person dropping out before the process started. Of the 15 participants who remained: ten were previous or current students or staff members of UCT, one was based at Stellenbosch University, one was based at the University of Pretoria, three others were not currently based at a university. Due to COVID-19 and remote learning, participants were geographically spread across southern Africa. While transformers identified their race, gender, ethnicity or cultural group, and sexuality in complex ways, the following breakdown is shared with the reader to help understand the make-up of the group: 13 identified as black, one as coloured 1 and one as Indian. Two identified as gender-non-conforming, two identified as men and eleven identified as women. Four participants identified as foreign nationals coming from Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. While this breakdown indicates some of the diversity and intersectional identities present, it is also important to appreciate that participants identified as activists, feminists, anti-capitalists, anti-racists and foregrounded other aspects of their self and activism which evade being neatly categorised in this manner.
A plaster for a restless wound
I am not romantic about fires. In fact, having grown up in a township, I have seen many body bags carrying the light remains of loved ones and neighbours whose lives were claimed by shack fires. On the contrary, I have a great fear of fire. I respect fire. Even though I understand that fire can represent a cleansing and a preparation of something new, I maintain that the fire at UCT is a result of our ancestors’ pain and frustration. (Xaba, 2021)
In this restless context, where UCT and other higher education institutions are burnt by racism, sexual and gender-based violence, colonial ways of being and doing, bullying, gaslighting and other persistent examples of inequality, violence and discrimination, transformLAB can be seen as a small, tactical and creative response.
Body-map created by Umairah (she/her) a woman from Mauritius. The body map reflects her embodied experience of transformation, inclusion and diversity.
TransformLAB offered a platform for creative resistance and an affirming space for collective healing. A space where transformation agents, who are often coerced, co-opted and silence, were able to share their analysis, vision and perspective on TDI in higher education without censure (Figure 4).
In shaping and developing transformLAB, it wasn’t intended to replace existing transformation programmes, to produce recommendations or fulfil another operational purpose. Instead, it was imagined as an alternate, complementary and temporary space rooted in principles of collaboration, critical and creative reflection and learning, and most importantly, an environment that encouraged dreaming (Figure 5).
An image created by Rethabile (she/her) from Ficksburg in the Free State province of South Africa.
Rather than focusing on TDI as an operational and programmatic intervention which un/intentionally invisibilises, surveils, codes, quantifies and disciplines those on the margins of higher education (Bell et al., 2019), transformLAB instead focused on the potential of imagining alternatives. These alternatives emerge from stitching or weaving together indigenous and subaltern systems of knowledge, and social justice approaches including culturally inclusive and anti-racist education (Lorenz, 2013). The act of weaving acknowledges the knots or tension points, but appreciates that knots make the overall tapestry (or dream or vision) stronger. Practically, creating a safe workshop space was not about avoiding tension points but rather focused on their potential to connect our shared struggles. This can lead not only to new visions for higher education, but implied new practices that are affirming rather than oppressive. This effort to dream implies building a different kind of relationship with each other, with systems of knowledge, and structures of power. These different relationships don’t happen automatically in oppressive environments, going against the grain of an institution takes effort and interventions like transformLAB need to be both carefully designed and collaborative (Fraser and Usman, 2021). The transformLAB process created space for the lived and embodied experience of the transformers, heritage and culture, and activist praxis, to create new kinds of relationships, dreams and responses to oppression (Todd, 2019).
Academics are trained within academic disciplines, such that in even small ways we tend to reproduce knowledge value systems that maintain our positions (and vice versa). The networks of scholars, their predecessors, and ultimately, their students become norm enforcers, rewarding the epistemic, methodologic, and even substantive standards for what is studied and how it is packaged. (Kessi et al., 2021, p. 6)
I enjoyed expressing myself through art, I’ve never done that before. I’m 24 years old and this was the first time ever. So, there was something totally different which I really, really enjoyed. Because, I was always really fixated with, I don’t know, writing in these boring long legal terms. This was really refreshing. I still got to think and develop ideas and process thoughts. And, do that using art! And not try to be so correct by referencing a case … if you think this, can you justify it. So, it was actually nice to have my guard down for three months or so. And not really be so fixated on perfection. So, I really enjoyed that part. (Khanyisile (she/her) on the transformLAB process)
The transformLAB process attempted to avoid reproducing systems of value and power in higher education. The process worked to disrupt divisions inherent in the university between staff members and students, academic staff members and professional or administrative staff members, and between the university community and the geographic community the university is based in. In doing so, the knowledge and experience of the transformer was central to the process, and university hierarchies were consciously disrupted. This allowed for alternate visions for the functioning of the university to emerge. For example, Viwe (they/them) shared this description for a different university structure, one which centres indigenous practices (Figure 6):
Community Scholaria: INKUNDLA is a council or court made up of people who will ensure we achieve our mandate. ULUNTI is a representative collection of community members who will keep INKUNDLA accountable. ABAKHWETHA are collaborative researchers—knowledge seekers—who inform the curriculum and the pedagogy.
Another World is on the Way
At the heart of the issue is the question of vision. Human rights activists, perhaps understandably, focus on human rights abuses, describing the conduct that we do not want. But spending more time talking about what we do want—even at the level of principles and values—will necessarily require more deliberate articulations about the place for the dominant group in our vision of a just future. That vision can take the form of a detailed political program but might also be a more deliberate, robust, and frequently repeated description of how stated goals such as justice, fairness, equality, and security would apply to the former oppressor, as well. (Bashi, 2019, p. 15)
Viwe (they/them) shares a dream for “community scholaria”, an indigenous alternative to a university
I struggled to write this, because art and dreams don’t easily form in words on paper. Art and dreaming are ethereal and inconstant. An image changes as you rotate the page, it takes on new meaning as it catches the shadows and light. Dreams are unreliable, soon after we wake (or the exercise of dreaming ends) it is hard to capture the fleeting images in our mind. Both art and dreaming sit on the precipice between that which is impossible to capture and understand, and the opportunity or hope for a different kind of world and reality.
TransformLAB as a project is still fresh and new, and research on decolonial dreaming is slowly unravelling. As such this commentary only offers a short introduction into some of the themes and tension points emerging in this work. More research on the opportunities this approach offers (to participants and higher education institutions), challenges related to using digital platforms for such work and a paper on the artworks themselves is needed. This work is not without tension, and moving against systems of power, even momentarily, leads to backlash as oppressive systems realign relational norms. These tensions can help reveal fault lines in our activism and practice.
Even with these challenges, the following can be said in closing.
Processes like transformLAB allow for participants to momentarily dislocate and go against oppressive norms that exist within higher education institutions. This is not only about challenging the status quo of TDI work in higher education (through creative and participant-driven interventions), it also creates a moment in time when oppressive realities cease (or more accurately are neutralised). For a moment transformLAB sessions allowed for a queer, decolonial, feminist and anti-racist higher education space to exist for a small group of people. If a dream space can occur for that short time, why not for longer? Or rather, what would need to happen for that dream to be sustained? With this question in mind, let’s go forth and dream.