Five minutes with Monika Gravagno, Climate Justice Curriculum Developer, Central Saint Martins

Can you tell us about your background?

I joined CSM in April 2024. Before this, I had lived in the UK for 10 years, then moved to the Netherlands where I spent two years doing a Masters in Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven. While in the Netherlands I was Associate Lecturer at the Design Academy, Sandberg Institute and University of the Underground, teaching design with a focus on decolonising methodologies and pedagogies.

Prior to this I worked as the Artistic Director of Facciocose, a performance and design studio based in London. I also worked as a theatre-maker and performer.

I am Italian and in my role it’s very interesting to work with ideas of belonging and migration, as my home is London, but it’s a culture that’s also not my own.

And could you talk a bit about your role?

I am here to support course teams in embedding climate, racial and social justice into the curriculum.

One way I do this is by working along with Quality processes, looking at Course Handbooks. We ask Course Leaders to embed principles following a very specific framework, with defined Climate, Racial and Social Justice Principles [PDF, 105KB], and terminology. The purpose is not to be prescriptive but to be consistent and clear, and embed the Principles in the learning outcomes, course aims and unit descriptions.

The framework serves as a tool, guiding Course Leaders on where and how to demonstrate specific values and the language to use. When we address climate justice, it inherently encompasses racial, gender, social, and environmental justice - it’s all interconnected. While my role is titled 'Climate Justice Curriculum Developer', my work takes an intersectional approach, reflecting the complexity of these overlapping issues.

The biggest challenge of my role lies in its broad scope. As I oversee CSM, all three Schools, and all programmes, I engage with a wide variety of courses. My work span from delivering workshops on how to embed Climate, Race and Social Justice in the curriculum, discussing methodologies and pedagogies, to exploring low carbon footprint practices, among other topics.

While I provide guidance across these areas, the role is also focused on academic strategy, ensuring alignment with the Framework for Embedding Climate, Racial and Social Justice [PDF, 528KB], and meeting the milestones outlined in the College’s Operating Plan.

How is it going?

With all of this, we’re working with a slow temporality. In order to make change, it’s often slow. It needs to be deep to confront radical injustices and this takes time.

By 2026, we’re asking all courses to be able to demonstrate they have reached what we call 'shift' level. Once they all reach that level, I’m already working and thinking with the Dean about what is beyond ‘shift’. How do we acknowledge continuous work, how do we speak about climate, racial and social justice, and for whom. So we envisage a next phase, and we will identify what are our priorities, what do we want - and how do we plan for next.

There are 22 courses not yet at shift level at CSM who we will work with over next two years. Right now I’m working with around half of this cohort. It’s easier to bring discussions around climate, racial and social justice to design disciplines and possibly a bit harder to understand how they can surface in art and performance, so I think course teams find it reassuring to know about my background.

You run the Climate Advocates programme at CSM. Can you tell us about this?

I am the Climate Advocate Coordinator for the College. We have one Climate Advocate per programme at CSM, so eight altogether. Our focus is on fostering student partnership in curriculum co-design. Together with Climate Advocates and Programme Directors, we collaborate and co-design projects to embed Climate, Race and Social justice into the curriculum. The Climate Advocates work on handbook review, peer-to-peer research evaluation, curriculum co-design projects.

We are fortunate to collaborate with various departments, including ADAL (Academic Discourse Action Learning), the Quality Team, the Changemakers Programme, as well as staff like Rose Thompson, Social Purpose Evidence and Evaluation Manager and Annabel Crowley, Teaching, Learning, and Attainment Coordinator. These collaborations allow us to share knowledge and ensure we’re working together, leveraging each other’s expertise instead of operating in isolation.

The Climate Advocates undergo comprehensive training that covers the principles of Climate, Race, and Social Justice, the Climate Action Plan, Quality processes, and the Anti-Racism Action Plan. Additionally, students receive training on how to facilitate peer-to-peer focus groups, including evaluation methodologies, ethics, and consent.

After running the peer-to-peer evaluation groups, the Advocates will run curriculum co-design projects, collaborating with Programme Directors. This might be for instance, creating a carbon calculator for film practice or an antiracism workshop to embed in a unit brief. They will also work with the Changemakers and see what cross-pollination comes out from this collaboration.

In addition, Climate Advocates assist courses going through Reapprovals or Modifications, to provide advice and suggestions on how the Principles could be better embedded or articulated in their Course Handbooks.

Have you been meeting lots of staff and students?

I have started to be a curious observer. When it comes to curriculum development, it’s essential to observe and understand how teaching and learning is happening in each course. So, for example, I’ve been attending reviews, like the ones in Spatial Practices, to get a better sense of things. I’m hoping that once all the courses reach a shift level, there will be more time to dive deeper into this kind of observational work.

I also sit on the ADAL (Academic Discourse Action Learning) group: a UAL-wide committee that makes pivotal decisions about embedding climate, racial and social justice into the curriculum. I really enjoy being part of ADAL as it is a collaborative space where we strategize, establish priorities and make sure we’re working in a centralized way. What I also enjoyed about ADAL is its broad membership across many job families - academic staff, students, Deans, technicians across all of UAL.

As part of ADAL, I work in the Curriculum Developers’ Working group – currently developing asynchronous resources in collaboration with UAL Libraries, building a decolonised list of books and materials.

What do you love about working at CSM?

I love that CSM is a making space - the fact that you see students on the bridges making clothes, designing posters, painting on the floor! As a maker and practitioner, myself, I really enjoy being in a space that is all about making and process, and that while you are creating, you meet people and collaborate.

Also there’s something special about how the Street of CSM can be claimed as a “third space” where people connect, dance, have fun and practice art.

In my short time at CSM, I’ve felt grateful to meet people who genuinely care about education. They express this care by being intentional in the way they work and, on a personal level, by wanting to know me beyond my job title—understanding what my mother tongue language is, where I come from, and what inspires me. This creates very good working condition to thrive.