Education offers routes to knowing. In fashion and craft, these routes to knowledge are pathways to careers, occupations, aspirations and even survival in the creative economy. But, access to education, let alone formal fashion or design education, has long been the preserve of the privileged. In an era where greater access to education is called for, new knowledge structures of the decolonial kind offer much-needed alternatives.

Some learn through doing, and others learn through studying

If education is the process whereby individuals acquire or impart knowledge, then considering where and how these exchanges happen is key. Some designers and makers learn from their grandmothers. Others learn from their uncles. Some learn through doing, and others learn through studying. Some can afford the formal route that is certified, stamped and official. Others need to move through opportunities, online tutorials, and ad hoc learning invitations.

The start of the 2024 academic year has been marked by administrative issues and defunding problems. The decision by the Department of Higher Education and Training in March 2024 to deregister Educor’s institutions (including Damelin, City Varsity and Intec) generated additional concerns about the state of an already ailing South African educational landscape. According to the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, this impacted over 13 000 registered students  – predominantly those from working-class families – who cannot afford universities.

Colleges and universities are also faced by cumbersome structures with complicated bureaucracies that are not adept at transformation. Systemic problems persist such as lack of access, equity and diversity or unchanged curricula. Is this a hopeless situation? What are some viable alternatives to these slow-moving, rigid or untransformed structures that are largely cold in their responses to the plight of creative learners?

Twyg’s Emerging Designer Winner 2023, Khumo Morojele is one such learner who is treading an alternative pathway. As a self-taught designer and aspiring creative director, Khumo bought a sewing machine right after high school and began his career by accessing online educational opportunities and resources, partaking in competitions and seeking out mentorships in order to pave his learning journey.

We propose some complimentary solutions of the decolonial kind.

Bark cloth and papermaking creative workshop with African Fashion Research Institute’s Pan-African Research Residency and students from the Durban University of Technology’s Fashion and Textile, and Jewellery and Fine Arts Departments. Photo: Bongani Tau

The concept of ‘doing informed by thinking’ – also referred to as praxis – was largely popularised by the Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire. In his day, Paulo worked with working-class citizens promoting educational programs that would take place in non-formal settings. Paulo’s ideas have been embedded into a wide range of disciplines, and in South Africa, their revolutionary tenets were popular in various activist projects such as The Community Arts Projects, the Vakalisa Art Associates and the District Six Homecoming Centre. His ideas seeped into the strategies of many organisations, evident in the workings of anti-Apartheid resistance groups and grassroots organisations, some of which are still active today.

While community arts organisations and non-formal creative hubs are a less common form of educational structure today, their activities provide us with insight into why decentralised forms of education can legitimately complement, and, at times even offer viable alternatives to formal education. In the realm of design and fashion education for example, non-formal spaces such as the African Fashion Research Institute, or Cape Town’s Craft & Design Institute, or CASA93, a social project based in Paris, provide access to design education programmes that offer alternate learning opportunities to those excluded from accessing formal (and often more expensive) routes to knowledge.

In addition to questions of access, calls for decolonising education since the #Rhodes Must Fall Movement in 2014, continue to reverberate. The historical legacies of dominant forms of knowledge in many text books and classrooms that favour certain cultures, communities or countries over others still need redressing. For local design education institutions, this means interrogating and decolonising the dominating concepts that remain unchallenged. Here, lessons from Paulo Freire’s concept of praxis (where practice is underpinned by thinking) is helpful in developing decolonial strategies.

Many of these dominating concepts persist, remain unchallenged, and need undoing.

New Patterns is a three-year decolonial research project created by the African Fashion Research Institute illustrating the potential of praxis. The project is a response to the ongoing conditions and challenges of seeking fashion education of a decolonial kind. As a creative research project, New Patterns explores alternate ways of teaching, both in and beyond the formal classroom.

One of the ways of doing so, is through the development of intersectional workshops to create temporary  micro-communities that allow for engaging with the diverse knowledges that are found there. The workshops-as-research take shape as collaborations within formal classroom contexts or within non-formal creative communities. The workshops are led by informed praxis (doing informed by theory) as a means to distil a range of concepts and questions into collective learning moments.

When education moves beyond the classroom, access and impact is multiplied

Another route the project considers is through lessons learnt during COVID-19. Without nullifying the destruction and loss that the pandemic had on society, the extended lockdowns taught us valuable lessons about how online education can reach across historical and geographical divides, and can provide accepted structures for education. Online platforms act as conduits for diverse points of access either as synchronous or asynchronous, individually or with others. When education moves beyond the classroom, access and impact is multiplied.

Garment design-sprint at Muti wa Vatsonga Museum AFRI’s Mapungubwe prototype group workshop with Bongani Tau and Lomeo Mongwe. Workshop facilitator, Scott Williams, doubles as a mannequin. Photo: Bongani Tau

The New Patterns project also explores these decolonial opportunities, or so-called digital affordances, of online platforms for education. Coupled with the practical applications of the research workshops, the online space provides educational environments where large or diverse topics can be condensed and made accessible in the form of “micro-university” moments of learning. The micro-university offers alternate routes to knowledge that overcome conventional institutional barriers. Considering how and where people learn suggests that these decentred educational moments lean into alternatives of a decolonial kind.

The concept of kindness is not twee

The Education Officer at the District Six Homecoming Centre, Mandy Sanger emphasised the importance of kindness in the way we deal with those we educate. The concept of kindness is not twee. It is a deliberate choice that motivates the educator in their engagement. So, in online platforms and immersive workshops where brevity and urgency are often highlighted, can we create alternate forms of education that care? Can design education adapt and adopt new patterns of knowledge exchange within our contemporary environment? Especially, in South Africa that still needs so much more care?

• AFRI’s New Patterns workshop at the Rhoo Hlatshwayo Art Centre in Daveyton. Photo: Erica de Greef

About

Scott Williams, a recent Master’s graduate from the University of Stellenbosch, has worked as a Cultural Producer and Educator in non-formal spaces. Erica de Greef brings many years of teaching and mentorship spanning private and public institutions and non-formal spaces in South Africa, on the continent and internationally. Two educators from two different pathways explore new knowledge routes of the decolonial kind.

Links

• African Fashion Research Institute
• Pillay, V. (2024) Irate students both past and present share their thoughts on the deregistration of Educor Institutions, Independent Online
• Statista. (n.d.). South Africa: unemployment rate by age group 2020
• The Mail & Guardian. (2024). Educor qualifications are valid, says department
• Damons, B.M. (2023). NSFAS budget cuts could leave more than 87,000 students without funding in 2024. 
• www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Praxis 10/13: The Undercommons. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQIlDbC-Hy4 [Accessed 4 Apr. 2024].
• Moten, F., Harney, S. and Fizzle, S. (2016). A poetics of the undercommons. Butte, Mont. ; New York: Sputnik & Fizzle.
• Williams, S. (2023). Drawing from the past to plot the future: Freirean Methodologies for Socially Engaged Youth Arts Education in South Africa