Still up today on the “Anti-racism strategy” page of UAL is the 2021 Anti-racism action plan, published after a university-wide consultation with staff, students, Arts SU and all EDI Networks (no technicians?*). It is a serious document, with real objectives, targets and “measurable commitments”. I would love to focus on the importance and of an institution like UAL to have guidelines for subjects like racism, and demonstrate commitment to interventions anti-racist environment and principles. However I feel I would need more research and more than 500 words for it. Instead, I would like to focus on an acronym.
One month before UAL anti-racism action plan was published, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (2021) had recommended the government stop using the term BAME because it emphasises ethic minority groups while excluding others, can mask disparities and can create misleading data interpretation (Race Disparity Unit, 2024). I don’t point this out as a “gotcha” but the timeline was interesting to me. It only highlights the complexity of the topic, and how frameworks age, things change not only through time, in response to events (like the BLM movement), but also according to the observer. This is because racialization is contextual.
I can use myself as an example: As a Latin American immigrant woman, I am racialized differently depending on “who”(or which country) is looking. And my level of literacy in racial discussions, and my perspective on the topic has a lot to do with Brazil being the most racially diverse country in the world (Pérez Ortega, 2025). So it is intuitive to think that students coming from less diverse countries may find out here that the were put in a box, a category, that they are now “people of colour” for example, when they were never “painted” like this before. And bureaucratically, the “gaze of the country” will establish it as an imposed fact to the person.
Bradbury (2020) describes a similar thing when discussing “EAL”. What could be a mere tick a parent wrote on a form, could carry material effects for the child wearing the label. These categories that can appear neutral and harmless ignore context, nuance, and can quietly reproduce loud and impactful inequalities.
Obviously, the issue is too big for this blog post, or to be focused merely on language and acronyms. There are more palpable opportunities for intervention and thoughts: awarding gaps, representation, curriculum, community engagement. This is not to say that the action plan is pointless and out of date. Sure, it deserves some reflections and updates! That is because since racialization shifts with context, time and events, good and frequent revisions are part of an effective anti-racist framework itself.
This might be the biggest lesion on how I can incorporate it to my day to day practice: keeping my own language and knowledge under revision, update myself, and staying alert to what the current framework doesn’t see and address (yet).
*PS1: one group the action plan doesn’t mention at all: technicians. We teach, support and shape student experience daily, but I have already written about this before.
**PS2: in the beginning of writing this post, my idea was to compare the 2021 Anti-racism action plan with the Race Equality Charter information from 2024, but the second is not available on the website’s hyperlink and. I couldn’t find it easily online.
References
Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (2021) The report of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-report-of-the-commission-on-race-and-ethnic-disparities (Accessed: 13 July 2026).
Pérez Ortega, R. (2025) ‘Massive DNA sequencing effort reveals how colonization shaped Brazil’s genetic diversity’, Science, 15 May. Available at: https://www.science.org/content/article/massive-dna-sequencing-effort-reveals-how-colonization-shaped-brazil-s-genetic (Accessed: 13 July 2026).
Bradbury, A. (2020) ‘A critical race theory framework for education policy analysis: the case of bilingual learners and assessment policy in England’, Race Ethnicity and Education, 23(2), pp. 241–260.
Race Disparity Unit (2024) Writing about ethnicity. Available at: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-guide/writing-about-ethnicity/ (Accessed: 13 July 2026).
UAL (2021) UAL Anti-racism action plan summary. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/296537/UAL-Anti-racism-action-plan-summary-2021.pdf (Accessed: 13 July 2026).