The Hidden Histories project, facilitated through the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Teaching & Learning Innovation Fund 2023/24, aimed to explore the ways in which decolonising the curriculum can become a pedagogical project co-created by students and staff and how such projects could be integrated within a programme. The focus was for students to identify and address gaps in decolonizing the curriculum on existing programmes in the School.
The project combined text based and practical approaches to investigate ‘world knowledge’, currently absent from the curricula, to enrich student learning. The participants chose a module or a couple of sessions within a module and analysed its learning outcomes, objectives, contents and reading list. They were also encouraged to research artistic practices or practitioners from the diaspora community within Britain or across the globe and make recommendations on integrating this material into the module via an exhibition of their findings. School staff were involved in supervisory roles to help students develop their approaches and methodologies.
As an example, two students from the BA (Hons) Creative Writing programme, Immy Parish and Libby Price, focused on a poetic form originating from outside Western countries to highlight style, history and cultural provenance that is different from ‘conventional’ English literature. They explored poetry currently not taught in the programme such as Ghazals (Persia), Hainteny poems (Polynesia), and Aboriginal poetry (Australia). Aboriginal poems were particularly interesting for the students because they acted as a voice of frustration from the community for losing their land and traditions to colonialism.
The project was important in the way it added new elements to the Creative Writing curriculum. A recommendation was made to add non-Western poetry within the programme to further enrich the creative writing curriculum.
An exhibition was held on 16 April 2024 and was attended by students and staff from across the School. Visitors learned about the work undertaken by students, listening to presentations and visual displays.