BIG THINGS

Join us in January for workshops and talks on staying critical and connected amid sector challenges and seismic shifts in technology.

At the last GDEN event Small Things, we explored the everyday steps and interventions that help us care for ourselves and our students: from shaping learning environments to self-reflective diagramming, community soup-making, and establishing micro-boundaries.

Now, as pressures across UK Higher Education continue to intensify, we’re turning our attention to the BIG THINGS that are impacting and reshaping graphic design education. Join us in January for a day of workshops and talks to ask: can we stay critical, connected, and hopeful in the face of substantial challenges across the sector, and seismic shifts in technology?

Please get in touch with us via email if you want to come but cannot pay for your travel costs: graphicdesigneducatorsnetwork@gmail.com.

Schedule

11:00–11:30
ARRIVAL
Enter the Lowry building and take the lift to Floor 6. There will be registration, tea and coffee on arrival.

The day is organised into the 3 sections below. The first 2 will consist of short presentations followed by group discussions and the last will be a workshop.

11:30–13:00
SECTION 1 : TOOLS & TECHNOLOGIES

AI and Automation. Technology’s ethical, environmental, and pedagogical implications. Who controls the tools, what are their impacts and what gets left behind?

• Jack Clarke and amy etherington Graphic Designers and Lecturers in Graphic Design Theory and Practice, Camberwell College of Art
  In two short provocations, Jack & amy profess their interrelated positions of resistance to AI. First, that AI further restructures the means of graphic design production (and education) around access to tools rather than ownership of tools. Second, that AI acts as a driver towards the related conditions of total alienation and human obsolescence.
• Rifke Sadleir Creative Technologist and Associate Lecturer in Graphic Design, UX/UI and Product Design, Ravensbourne
  Rifke will be discussing how AI removes friction and how friction is a crucial part of the process of learning. Her talk will explore the ways in which this is already impacting learning environments and questioning if, and how, we can remedy it.
• JP Hartnett Graphic Designer, Writer and Senior Lecturer in Contextual and Theoretical Studies, London College of Communication.
  JP's talk Thirteen ‘A’s to think about AI, teaching & writing (with thanks – and apologies – to Jennifer Walshe) will follow up his article Baked In (Eye 107, 2025) with some alphabetically organised reflections on teaching after AI.
  

13:00–14:00
LUNCH

Lunch will be communal and collaborative, think pot-luck style. Please bring a dish to share, or a packed lunch with a little extra if you are able. We will provide labels to state dietary requirements and any allergens, so everyone can enjoy safely.

14:00–15:30
SECTION 2: SYSTEMS & SECTORS

Policy shifts and precarity in design education, national representation and sector health. Where does graphic design education sit in the wider landscape of HE and the ‘creative industries’?

• Kevin Biderman Community Organiser, Trade Unionist and Lecturer in Contextual and Theoretical Studies, London College of Communication
  Kevin’s presentation explores the colonial history of the art school through an examination of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and its role in the development of the Royal College of Art. It will consider how these histories were countered and subverted in 2020 as part of a campaign by trade unionists to de-casualise the RCA. Prompting attendees to consider how they might sabotage exploitative and oppressive systems of control at their own institution or workplace.
  
• Hannah Ellis Graphic Designer, Writer and Teaching Fellow in Graphic Design, Coventry University
  Hannah will reflect on grief, losing yourself, and re-navigating graphic design education through meaning-making.
  
• Layla Gharib Designer, Thinker, and Lecturer in Graphic Design, Art Direction and Illustration, Manchester Metropolitan University
  Layla’s talk draws on her doctoral research, Decolonising Design Education: Assembling Caring Futures, which explored how speculative workshops with students and educators of colour created spaces where critique and imagination could coexist, revealing the pressures shaping design education while opening possibilities for alternative curricula, pedagogies, and futures to be imagined beyond Eurocentric frameworks.
  

15:30–16:30
SECTION 3: HOPE

What opportunities for active hope or positive transition exist, despite (or because of) these conditions? How might we define our hopes for the future, and work towards them together, within/across/against our different institutions?

• Darren Raven Graphic Designer, Senior Lecturer on MA Design and Course Leader of MA Illustration, Manchester Metropolitan University
  Hope is not a mood or attitude. It is something educators do, test, withhold, share, or struggle to sustain. Darren’s workshop will help educators identify where hope already exists in our teaching. It will be:
  – a language for hope
  – a spectrum, not a binary
  – a collective reflective method, not therapy or motivation
  Participants will leave with a recalibrated sense of what counts as meaningful pedagogic work.

16:30–17:30
BOOKS AND SOCIAL

To conclude our day together we’re encouraging attendees to bring a book to swap with someone as a way of sharing current readings and knowledge. The following publications will also be available to purchase at the end of the day:

• Tendencies Bulletin is a printed socialist zine exploring poetry, art, football, fashion, politics, people, and place. Issue 7 was shaped by a visit from 17 members and collaborators to the MayDay Rooms Archive, used as a living resource to envision the future.
• Font Pro: The Irreducible Practice of Robert Schenk is No Hype Type’s first publication, co-run by Ayşe Köklü and Chris Lacy, celebrating the prolific work of the “amateur” type designer.

*Please note these publications are separate from the book exchange.