Access for All. Support for All. RCA for All.
I am a current student and soon to be graduate on the Contemporary Art Practice Programme at the RCA, where I have a been an outspoken and proactive member of the RCA SU acting as a student trustee. Before studying at RCA, I completed my BA in Fine Art at Central St Martins School of Art where my dissertation and my current practice focuses upon neurodiversity, based on my experiences of having autism, in film and media, and lectured at Oxford University, Wadham College, regarding biopolitics and implementation of support of being neurodivergent in larger art institutions. This was informed by my individual experiences working at galleries and museums, such as the Tate, National Portrait Gallery and V&A, as well as supporting students with communication and access barriers in my role as a Student Representative for three years.
As a student representative at Central St Martins School of Art from 2018-2019, I was also part of the 2% of students from a council-house and low-income background at UAL which motivated my advocacy for international, low-income and marginalised voices within the student body. I negotiated alternative solutions for housing contracts, more closely to accommodate Erasmus exchange students, and increased student access to studio space and library opening hours within regular board meetings at UAL. I also contributed towards the successful campaign to stop the increase of tuition fees for current UAL students in 2018, preventing the increase of fees from 9,000 to 9,250 for home students who were already currently studying, which was implemented across UAL and LSE and was agreed through parliament. You can see that this increase was only implemented for students starting in 2018, as opposed to the pre-agreed increase of tuition fees from students halfway through their studies, such as 2015, 2016 and 2017, which was the case for universities across the rest of the UK. find more about this here: https://www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/fees-and-funding/tuition-fees/undergraduate-tuition-fees
In my role as a Student Trustee, I have attended and contributed to Board meetings, and with Student Reps and Sabbatical officers to ensure that student concerns are heard and met with constructive solutions. My intentions and opens to embrace on the Vice-President role would be to advocate for implementation and support of inclusion plans, improve packability across the campus, as well as encourage a wider discussion from the socio-economical perspective of the student body and membership at the SU of the RCA.