Crafting a shared vision for equality, piece by piece

What does an equal future look like to you? This was the question pondered by UTS staff and students in a unique arts collaboration eliciting an exhilarating vision for gender equity in STEMM.

The project – a partnership between UTS ART and the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion under UTS’s Athena SWAN Equal Futures program – saw 20 staff and students come together for a series of collage-making workshops in October last year, led by acclaimed Australian artist Deborah Kelly.

Kelly is renowned for her playful, political and strikingly beautiful collage-based works that challenge preconceptions of race, culture and gender. The celebrated artist was a natural choice to guide participants through the immersive process, in which they traversed notions of identity, dreams, technology, science and the more-than-human world.

“My practice is concerned with justice and the countless ways that justice and injustice play out in our culture and society, explored through diverse media to produce different experiences and objects,” Kelly explains.

“In designing the workshops with UTS, I aimed to create a rich and pleasurable experience that was artistically rigorous, but at the same time enabled participants to create a real artwork quickly.”

Participants were expected to attend a minimum of two workshops, first learning about cutting tools and techniques and cutting and reflecting on their selections before assembling their creations. Kelly provided a challenging array of texts for them to draw on, including antiquated domestic and popular science books reflecting outdated – often racist and misogynist – viewpoints.

And as they worked, Kelly and others read aloud influential texts from seminal feminist authors, among them Donna Haraway, Leonora Carrington and Ursula Le Guin.

“The texts inflect what they choose to cut; it’s fascinating to see how the readings seep into the works,” Kelly says.

The results are visually and conceptually stunning. According to participant Dr Susan Hansen, Human Centred Design Stream Lead in ITD’s LX Transformation Program and a recent PhD graduate in FEIT, the group was surprised and delighted by what they had created.

“The process was quite meditative and reflective, and although we were creating individual pieces, there was a genuine sense of organic collaboration and shared experience,” Dr Hansen recalls.

“It made me think more explicitly about my experiences as a STEMM woman, both as a student and a staff member. The process has refuelled and reignited my desire to engage in the STEMM equity space, actively and proactively.”

UTS Athena SWAN Program Manager, Alicia Pearce, said that the project contributed to a compelling collective vision and voice in the drive for STEMM gender equity across the university, and in the higher education sector more broadly.

“Visibility is a crucial issue for all of our STEMM women, one of the things that women feel is that if they can't see it, they can't be it – if you can’t imagine an equal future, then you can’t move towards it,” Pearce explains.

“We wanted to empower people to use their creativity to bring the vision to life in a way that is tangible, cohesive and inspiring, and we are hoping to use these images to make our program communication more effective,”

The UTS Equal Futures program is supporting UTS as it works towards a four-year target of 40 per cent female academics in STEMM. Just two years in, Pearce says the university has already surpassed interim targets.

“UTS has been putting new processes in place, and reviewing existing processes to ensure they're more equitable and provide the space to support, recruit and retain women. The big piece now moving forward is how we can support faculties to build a gender best practice environment.”

UTS Tower Foyer will play host to the exquisite works produced through the project, beginning with a special International Women’s Day Celebration from 11am-2pm on 9 March, where students, staff and the wider community contributed to a collective artwork, with their creativity fuelled by free ice cream courtesy of the Respect.Now.Always gelato cart and caffeine from the Step into FEIT coffee cart.

The UTS ART Live: Deborah Kelly exhibition will remain on display in the UTS Tower Foyer until 19 March.