Accessing Access – Different and Conflicting Things
“I frequently have difficulty sorting out how to think about a number of issues in my life. The problem is not so much that I do not know what I think and feel. Instead, it is that I think and feel many different and conflicting things and I do not have the capacity to simply sort them out.” john a powell (1996-7)
Neoliberal managerial higher education: Is there no alternative?
On the surface, simply “sorting out” the “different and conflicting things” seems to be the task. The love and fury for higher education, the desire to deliver the best possible teaching whilst developing liberatory practices, daring ourselves and students to transgress. The state of managerialism[1] and funding of higher education, not to mention the chilling resurgence of censorship we’re witnessing in universities in the United States.
I’m inspired by the enthusiasm for this course amongst peers, the commitment to progressive inclusive pedagogies, and the richness of discussions between tutors and students.
In my conversations with peers on the PgCert and working elsewhere in higher education the questions that repeatedly surface are around scarcity of time and the depersonalisation of relationships with students[2]. Large group sizes are normalised, short tutorials are commonplace, studio spaces evaporate[3]. How we teach art and design incrementally transforms[4].
Students engaged in a workshop discussion during an event at Flat Time House, Peckham, 2019
Neurodiverse time
As a neurodiverse person I often experience the indecision–the competing voices–that powell describes above. This would have been a good place to begin a series of reflective texts: sorting things out inside my brain, in the specific chronos of my concentration, around the distortions of esteem I experience, through the restlessness that can define chunks of my days, and the periods of anxiety, confusion and exhaustion that I periodically experience.
UAL has robust guidance and supports training around accessibility[5]. There are contradictions here too, the entry points to the institutional support are slow and hyper-bureaucratic[6]. My suspicion is that neoliberal education finds neurodiversity a lumpy inconvenience to be managed away[7].
I want to explore the underlying reasons for this and to work with experts such as Carys Kennedy and other neurodiverse allies to develop my understanding.
I’m conscious of how well behaved much of this submission has been, how I’ve tended towards norms whilst often feeling something else entirely. Perhaps my neurodiverse brain needed this time to process the code and practice moving around with it, perhaps I’m doing something neurodiverse people are reported to do called masking[8].
The assigned space for these reflections on teaching and learning is slender. The pace of delivery, to me at least, feels lightning fast[9]. It absolutely doesn’t correlate with what artist Becky Beasley refers to as ‘neurodivergent time’[10].
I want to use this space to remind myself that alternatives are available, and that bringing them to the space of learning and teaching in the university isn’t impossible[11]. Learning can be more equitable; it can be more accessible.
Morley, borrowing from Habermas’ concepts[12] of ‘lifeworld’ and ‘systems’ describes the current trajectory as follows: “While the system and lifeworld can co-exist, in the university context, if systemic logic undermines the legitimate terrain of the lifeworld in facilitating ethical learning, discourses, and outcomes, the result will be a higher education system that produces students, academics, graduates, practitioners, and citizens who only think in strategic terms (i.e., neoliberal subjects).” (Morley, 2023, p. 583). That’s what I want to resist.
References
Barnes, C. (2012) “The Social Model of Disability: Valuable or Irrelevant?” in Watson, N. Roulstone, A. and Thomas, C.: The Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 12-29
Damiani, L. (2018). “On the Spectrum in Art and Design Academic Practice”, Spark: UAL Creative Learning and Teaching Journal Vol. 3/Issue 1 pp. 16-25
Morley, C. (2024) ‘The systemic neoliberal colonisation of higher education: a critical analysis of the obliteration of academic practice’. Aust. Educ. Res. 51, 571–586. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-023-00613-z
Noonan-Ganley, J. (2024) The Cesspool of Rapture, London: MA BIBLIOTHEQUE
Orr, S and Shreeve, A. (2017) Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum. London: Routledge
Powell, John A. (1997) “The Multiple Self: Exploring between and beyond Modernity and Postmodernity”. Minnesota Law Review. 1669.
https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/1669
Podcasts
The Blindboy. ‘How I navigate my mental health using Turkish arse lozenges’. The Blindboy Podcast, 4th December 2024
Zahedi, A. ‘How life’s challenges helped neurodivergent artist Abbas Zahedi find his creative voice’. Interviewed by Samuel Robinson, Working to Work, 20th March 2025
Websites
Camden Arts Centre (2019) Available at: https://camdenartcentre.org/whats-on/radical-read-in-with-eileen-myles-and-caconrad (Accessed 29th March 2025)
Camden Arts Centre (2024) Available at: https://camdenartcentre.org/whats-on/public-knowledge-meeting-grounds-essay-as-event (Accessed 29th March 2025)
Forma (2023) Available at: https://forma.org.uk/projects/book-launch-eva-wilson-abbas-zahedi/ (Accessed 29th March 2025)
Kunstverein München (2024) Available at: https://www.kunstverein-muenchen.de/en/programm/veranstaltungen/2024/26-10-u-buchprsentation-und-open-reading-adam-gibbons-eva-wilson-abbas-zahedi-u (Accessed 29th March 2025)
[1] The resulting crisis from pursuing the current trajectory is set out by Christine Morley in her brutally titled essay, The systemic neoliberal colonisation of higher education: a critical analysis of the obliteration of academic practice, where she describes the perpetual efforts of “Management Newsspeak”, which she defines as: “Within the context of the neoliberal university, managerial Newspeak seeks to erase academic thought, freedom, and practices by ensuring that they are only talked about in terms of management and neoliberal discourses, which then begins to pervert their meaning and occlude their existence.” (Morley, p. 576)
[2] Artist and educator Joseph Noonan-Ganley describes the radical trust enacted as a form of compassionate open-endedness to genuinely support students, as a withholding of judgement, “beginning a one-to-one tutorial genuinely not knowing what I want or what my role is in relationship to the student.” and “not trying to fence them in out of your anxiety that there’s no work there; to resist the formulas that pen students in, as well as ourselves; to resist producing a dynamic motivated by our anxiety which can be self-fulfilling.” (Noonan-Ganley, 2024, p. 74)
[3] Some of the assertions the Orr and Shreeve make in their chapter “Teaching Practices for creative practitioners” already appear to relate to an idealised past version of creative education settings. They suggest, “Ideally the studio is an active, busy and social place where learning is visible and open to discussion through active participation.” (Orr and Shreeve, 2017, p. 90) In my experience, space is at such a premium in the university I regularly have to move between non-specialist rooms during a single session, and there is rarely any space available to meet with students privately.
[4] As Morely describes in detail, with hegemonic neoliberal values and managerialism human-centred pedagogic practices which include hard to quantify characteristics are required to transform into a mutable, digestible menu with little regard for specificity, personality and community.
[5] I attended an excellent training session convened by Kevin Brazant and run by Carys Kennedy in 2024 which I’ve mentioned elsewhere. I must also state that the individual support I’ve received from Linda Aloysius, Rachel Clarke, Carys Kennedy, and Richard Tomlin sits in stark contrast to the “machine” that sits between the student and the people. Material support in the form of an Independent Student Agreement and a pair of noise cancelling headphones have been invaluable.
[6] It took over three months from my first email requesting support until a disability adviser replied to me directly. We had a constructive exchange and agreed on a limited set of agreements to support my learning. At this point I was told I wasn’t eligible for any material support and a mentor would be assigned by an outside agency. A further three months and many emails later I am still awaiting this support to be confirmed.
[7] In the podcast Working to Work artist Abbas Zahedi identifies the managerial tendency at work here, describing it as a “machine structure”. He says, “You often do need (the paperwork and the labels) because we’re dealing with machine structure, and we have to give it machine language.”
[8] Masking is the term used for neurodiverse people who attempt to appear neurotypical. One cause for this may be the lack of support available and the obstacles to receiving it. In the essay “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t: Disclosure versus Masking in the Workplace” (Kidwell, Clancy, and Fisher, 2023) the figures tell the story: “Though accommodations can be beneficial, in a survey of 500 college graduates with learning disabilities (i.e., neurodivergent workers), only 55% reported self-disclosing at work, and only 12% pursued formal accommodations (Madaus,
Reference Madaus 2008). This substantive incongruence between rates of disclosure and rates of accommodation seeking highlights an area ripe for future research. Namely, what prevents workers from seeking formal accommodations?”.
[9] Taking place as it does alongside the competing demands of a full teaching timetable, unit planning, assessments, tutorials, research funding applications and re-applications, studio practice, and social and domestic responsibilities.
[10] In the chapter “Learning to Teach” in Joseph Noonan-Ganley’s book The Cesspool of Rapture (2024) Claire Makhlouf Carter recalls a conversation with artist Becky Beasley where Beasley described the role time plays in learning processes for neurodiverse people, Carter says: “She helped me think about time as key to learning, pointing out that neurodivergent time is not ‘extra’ time, as if time can’t be managed. It’s about a different way of being in time. Monochronic and polychronic work patterns might need different approaches. Figuring out the student’s methods together allows dead ends not to be perceived as waste of time or failures, but as an integral part of exploring process.” (Noonan-Ganley, 2024, p. 75)
[11] Together with colleagues and allies I’ve been doing it undercover for years through projects discussed in my other Blog Posts and Case Studies, where students get to experiment with formats and structures in exhibitions and publications, discussions, and feedback sessions. In writing about reading practices I describe my ambition to “decentre emphasis away from the tutor”. This brings to mind liberatory practices I’ve been privileged to instigate or participate in including Paul Bailey’s Meeting Grounds (2024), Eileen Myles and CA Conrad’s Radical Read-In (2019), both at Camden Arts Centre, London, Abbas Zahedi and “ ”’s Open Reading at Forma (2023) and Kunstverein München (2024) amongst many others.
[12] In describing these concepts Morley states: “Habermas argued that every society has at least two domains: one that is systemic, which operates according to a strategic rationality (i.e., markets, bureaucracy, rationality (i.e., instrumental rationality)). The other domain or logic is that of the lifeworld (i.e., lived experience), which depends on shared values and communication, and non-strategic, communicative discourse and ethics. In contemporary (neoliberal) capitalist contexts, these two modes of logic have become increasingly separated, causing significant problems.” (Morley, 2023, p. 583)