About us

The Decolonising Arts Institute at the University of the Arts London is a space for critical inquiry, creative practice and collective action.

We challenge colonial histories and imperial legacies embedded within the arts, education and cultural institutions, working collaboratively to disrupt inherited ways of seeing, listening, thinking and making. Through this work, we aim to contribute to lasting social, cultural and institutional change.

Core Themes

Our work is organised around three interconnected areas that guide our research, programming and partnerships:

• Transformative imaginaries of global and social justice: We support creative visions that imagine equitable futures rooted in justice, solidarity and plural knowledges.
• Reimagining the university through praxes and pedagogies: We cultivate anti-colonial pedagogical practices that rethink teaching, learning and institutional structures from the ground up.
• Transforming archives and collections: We interrogate how archives and collections are formed, classified and narrated, surfacing patterns of bias and opening up new interpretive possibilities and understandings of cultural histories and heritages.

Our Work in Practice

The Institute pursues its mission by building on the learnings derived from a range of interdisciplinary practice-research initiatives, including:

• Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage, a major research programme that addressed systemic bias and structural inequality in UK art collections.
• 20/20, a national commissioning and network project that supported 20 emerging and mid-career artists of colour in partnership with public collections, resulting in new commissions and permanent acquisitions.
• All That Glitters: Investigating Hierarchies of Preciousness and Beauty in Gem and Jewellery Collections, a 3-year AHRC Catalyst project in partnership with Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection and Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
• Addressing Global Majority and Global South asymmetries through critical perspectives on the cultural and creative economy and arts-based practice.
• Collaborations, pedagogical resources, tools and interventions which disrupt and invoke other, new, and critical ways of thinking and doing.
• Public events, podcasts, publications and collaborations that engage wider communities in critical dialogue and practice.

A Space for Collaboration and Change

We work collaboratively with individuals, collectives and organisations across the arts, education and heritage sectors.

The Institute is both a catalyst and a convenor shaping critical conversations, supporting new ways of making and thinking, and foregrounding transformative cultural practice.