Letting them cook: Expressing who we are by spotlighting our community on social media
- Written byBrand and Strategy
- Published date 02 April 2026
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Whatever our students study at UAL, they all share 1 thing in common: as soon as they join, they become part of a diverse community that will shape them and their practice while studying with us.
“It’s important for prospective students to understand the atmosphere of each College and whether they will feel themselves reflected,” says Sophia Ghonim, Social Media Executive in our Social Media and Digital Communications team.
“It's about demystifying what UAL is all about and showing that we are an open and welcoming community.”
Reflecting our tone of voice principles to ‘bring everyone in’, positive, people-centred storytelling formed the bedrock of the social-first ‘Let Them Cook’ series. First piloted as a collaborative post between the UAL and London College of Fashion (LCF) Instagram accounts as part of last year’s Welcome campaign, it features chefs from across our Colleges, celebrating our staff working behind the scenes.
The series gives others a look into who we are and what it’s like to join one of our 6 Colleges with their unique histories and identities, putting our messaging pillar ‘Our Colleges‘ into practice: Who better to tell this story than our own people?
Here’s how the Social Media and Digital Communications team express the UAL brand on social media:
The brief
'Let Them Cook’ kicked off alongside our Welcome campaign, targeted at incoming domestic and international students as they settled into university life.
The purpose of the series is to give students an intimate sneak peek into the kitchens across UAL through 3 short-form social-first reels to:
- Celebrate the creativity, skills and personality of our canteen chefs.
- Encourage students to eat at UAL canteens and discover the menus.
- Share simplified or alternate versions of recipes they can try in halls.
- Provide cooking tips for students preparing meals for themselves for the first time after leaving home.
“We wanted something that was episodic so it could activate brand recall, earn an engaged and tuned-in audience and was authentic in storytelling,” explains Sophia. “It's something that has scalability — even though it was attached to the Welcome campaign, it’s an evergreen idea that we can continue developing."
Working with the brand
Leveraging our staff as brand advocates
Working closely with our catering team at BaxterStorey, who helped with the casting and logistics of the production, the team selected chefs who had been at UAL for the longest. They understand the University very well and embodied the tone of our brand in an organic way.
“The chefs have very interesting, strong personalities, which I thought would make them a perfect fit to be in front of the camera,” explains Sophia.
BaxterStorey decided to create bespoke dishes for the series which students could try. Inclusivity being a key factor of our brand, the team accounted for diverse tastes, preferences and backgrounds by presenting both vegan and meat-based options.
By focusing on meals rather than recipes, the dishes served as a vehicle to spotlight the people making it.
“Obviously, we have to be very thoughtful around how we express our College identities as each have their own personality, social media channel strategies and objectives for how they want to be perceived,” explains Sophia.
“Their personalities are something we can show off through the people working at each College. To ensure there is a through line across the series, the pilot at LCF helped us set the tone and understand what style to match throughout.”
Reflecting our diversity through our community
We attract talent from across the world — our global network is an essential part of what shapes our experiences at UAL and makes us who we are.
“It's great that our chefs featured so far come from the UK, Ecuador, Madeira and Mexico. It's a reflection of our international community, which in turn helps our students see themselves in the people who work here,” says Sophia. “It was nice for the content to reflect that.”
Spotlighting how different worlds collide across our Colleges, including our canteens, is one of many ways we can express the diversity and creativity of our international community and brand.
Flexing the brand on social media
Social media is constantly changing — and no platform is the same. To ensure we’re reaching our audiences, the team continuously tests content formats based on channel and audience insights. This often allows for more flexibility with how we express the brand to create content which is optimised for each platform.
“The tone and style of editing was an exercise in building something that was native to our platforms, reflected our audiences and showed how we can flex the brand when needed,” explains Sophia.
The team achieved this by editing the videos in a way that matched the buzz of a kitchen and filming them through a passive, documentary-style approach for an intimate feel. They also heavily leaned into humour, using bloopers, unexpected moments and sound and visual effects, while staying consistent with brand elements such as our captions, branded logo sequence and tone of voice.
“We should be digital leaders in this area since universities still have a relatively small presence on social media,” argues Sophia. “We need to create content that is not formulaic and 'disrupts the scroll', grabbing attention in a saturated timeline while helping us differentiate ourselves from other universities.”
Music is an important consideration when creating content to reflect our brand. Besides ensuring accessibility, checking the lyrics and vetting the musicians, the content always influences the type of music the team chooses, allowing us to show off different sides of our personality.
“We can be serious and do these really meaningful, purpose-driven projects, like with our recent video capturing the Beyond the Visual exhibition, but we also have a community that doesn’t take itself too seriously at the same time,” explains Sophia.
The result
The series generated high levels of engagement and positive sentiment, providing a useful example for how we can keep up to speed with a fast-paced online environment. It also showed how we can successfully experiment on social media, while ensuring that our content, from the music we choose to the people we feature, consistently reflects our brand.
Social media is often the first place people encounter our brand — whether they belong to our existing audiences or are discovering UAL, seeing our staff become micro-celebrities created a positive impact on how our audiences perceive us.
“There's a lot of support and really nice comments from their own networks, which is quite nice to see,” says Sophia.
"You can see that the chefs’ friends and families were cheering them on and the students might know them from seeing them in their canteens, so they’re kind of legends for them.”
Team credits
Social Media and Digital Communications
- Sophia Ghonim, Social Media Executive
- Alicia Dolz, Digital Ambassador
- Jahjay James, Social Media Executive
- Lubna Hussain, Social Media Executive
- Elijah Serumaga, Social Media Coordinator
Using our brand consistently helps us connect with our audiences, building awareness and understanding. Research has consistently shown that our strong brand and reputation is the number one reason students apply to UAL.
To learn more about how our brand helps tell the story of who we are and what we want to achieve, get in touch at brand@arts.ac.uk.
