About Shades of Noir

In 2009 Shades of Noir (SoN) was created by Aisha Richards. Shades of Noir as of September 2020 joined the University of The Arts London as a Knowledge Exchange Center. The centre's full title is Shades of Noir: The Centre for Race & Practice-Based Social Justice, University of the Arts London (UAL). This transition is important for the sustainability of the concentrated evolving practises supporting cultural change and embeddedness across this institution.

Shades of Noir’s more than a decade of delivery continues to evolve thinking, support conscious intentions and cultivate expertise within organisations or institutions.

Additionally, this centre continues to develop, deconstruct and reconstruct practices that inform policy, develop people and evolve practices towards intersectional social justice.

Shades of Noir's approach is rooted in cultural change, which means not doing anything the way it was done before, but instead, picking practises apart to support different outcomes.

The Shades of Noir recruitment drive is primarily based on 3 key components: 1. what people know, what is it that they do 3. demonstration of thoughtfulness. This nurtures and creates the conditions for building a high-performance culture of genuine change-making.

The ability to create innovative and adaptable approaches is why Shades of Noir continues to be the specialist for practice-based social justice in the UK and why our delivery is constantly described as uniquely meaningful, purposeful and transformational.

SoN is one of the few international programmes that have physical and virtual platforms dedicated to pedagogies of social justice through the lens of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991). SoN reaches over 1 million people globally each year and continuously delivers cutting edge modes of transformation through Richard’s leadership and vision. SoN cohesively embeds identity and belonging as one of the most important aspects of creative education that is meaningful and relevant to students' engagement, progression, and personal development. Shades of Noir has developed physical ‘safer’ spaces through trust-building that offer opportunities to have critical and interdisciplinary discussions about the world around us and one's positionality as we navigate it. It should be noted that safe and safety in this context means space to build capacities to share, consider and develop understandings towards anti-racism work that can be a practice and praxis of intersectional social justice. In many ways, Shades of Noir can feel unsafe in the first instance, however, through continuous dialogic engagement, the exploration of contested key terms and undertaking of problem-solving activities; inspires a level of trust which is built for the safety of all.

The interventions that SoN has developed and continues to design, inform policy, develop people, and evolve practices in the widest sense. These innovations support purposeful delivery for the SoN team of students and creative academics to learn and build on. As well as providing a variety of engagements that affect a wider community. SoN is now established as a leading programme, which centres anti-racism towards intersectional social justice. Shades of Noir has worked with institutions and organisations including Higher Education Academy, Craft Council UK, Portsmouth University, and the British Broadcast Corporation.

The work external to the University of the Arts London has included consultancy and delivering support of curriculum design, policy reviews as well as recruitment, retention and attainment processes and practices. Richards has built a recognisable brand with integrity through her impactful leadership globally and is supported by many contributors.

All Shades of Noir ‘work’ is significant and multifaceted. We centre all activities for marginalised groups to fulfil their need for safer spaces. To articulate self-determination and liberate their struggles from oppressive structures in education and society at large. Additionally, we present spaces for all communities actively working towards antiracism as a practice.

Our Streams of Work

Shades of Noir’s ‘Streams of Work’ are broad-reaching and multifaceted, supporting the purposeful transformation of people, policy and process.

As a community, we centre the voices and lived experiences of students and staff of colour within the focus of social justice. We offer accessible knowledge and visible testimonies that we hope will further inform the evolutions of cultures and practices across the sector (and beyond).

For over a decade, the programme has reached huge success thanks to our intersectional team of award-winning staff, which includes students. With the contributions from students, we shape our proactive interventions rooted in purpose, relevance and effectiveness. As creatives, we take an inherently intersectional and holistic approach, aligning everything that we deliver within the framework of policy, people and process.

The above diagram contextualises some of our endeavours. Each line represents the intersection between activities and collective responsibilities, which support meaningful change towards anti-racism as a practice that requires neverending work.