Ethical Making @ The Glasgow School of Art
The Glasgow School of Art has been an Ethical Making Pledge signatory since 2018. We spoke with GSA Ambassadors Karen Hannigan and Mary Wignall Strachan to find out what they have been working on over the last year.
Within your workshop, what collective efforts towards more ethical/sustainable/responsible practice have been made this year?
Continuing the good practice implemented by the previous Ethical ambassadors, we are using tea towels, glass jars, collecting lemel and ensuring that we are using recycled metals as well as using each other’s scraps.
Our 4th year students used the waste streams from various departments to create their ‘Work in Progress’ show.
As we all now have access to the studio, we can have ethical/sustainable/responsible conversations in a friendly welcoming space, sharing advice and information in an informal way. We are conscious of water usage and single use materials.
How has your course integrated themes of ethical making into the curriculum?
We have had various visiting tutors this year:
Stephanie Cheong, who uses recycled and fairtrade metals. She also makes her own rocks from waste streams such as e-waste, plastics, glass and ceramics.
Alkesh Parmer, a pioneer in the use of local waste material, working with materials such as orange peel.
Both workshop explored themes of ethical making, sustainability and responsibility. We engaged with waste streams collected from various departments of GSA, creating new materials. We also considered the value of waste and how we can incorporate it in our work.
Dr Karen Westland and our first year students were involved with the Ethical and Materials workshop that ran during ‘Collab 1’.
Have you (or any of your classmates’) addressed themes of ethical making within your creative practice?
Materiality was the theme for the ‘Design Domain’ project for 2nd and 3rd year students. We questioned what materiality means to us and how our choice of materials informs what we do, how and why? We considered experimentation, play, life cycle, sustainability, value, environment and ethicality. Using waste streams from home and within GSA, we explored further use of the waste and the possibility of creating new material. The outcomes of the experimentation were enlightening. The ability to create new material from waste and the conversation that developed gave the students a new outlook on how a sustainable practice could evolve. Some students focused on recycling plastic materials whilst others worked on creating bioplastics.
Karen: As part of our course, each student presents a PechaKucha (a storytelling format of 20 slides for 20 seconds of commentary each) on a subject of their choice. I used the opportunity to talk about Ethical Making, using the resources from ethicalmaking.org. At the end of the presentation, I was able to engage with the students with some questions;
Are you considering an ethical approach to 4th year and your graduation work?
Do you already have an ethical approach to your work?
For those who take commissions or make for friend and family……have you been requested to use Fairtrade, Fairmined or recycled materials?
Are there any ethical practices you would implement within the department?
Mary: After attending the ‘ChangeMaking’ symposium with the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust in 2022, I was very inspired to research more about mining and workers rights. This topic was also related to our lessons in Design History and Theory which helped to open a discussion in class, making us all more aware of ethical practice and sources.
What progress do you envision your course making over the coming year?
Our progress will be that we continue with the sustainable practices we have currently, and we will ensure that these practices are implemented by our new students. We will continue to assess our practices and what we can do to make them more sustainable.
How has being an Ethical Making Ambassador changed your learning and practice?
Karen: The workshop with Ute Decker and Lisa Rothwell Young was very informative. It was interesting to have an insight into the work of two ethical makers and how they deal with the issues of being an ethical maker. Both talks were informative and introduced me to issues of which I was unaware.
Becoming informed on these issues and having access to the resources on the website has given me confidence to engage with students and staff and have conversations about ethical making. The EM badge has also been an opportunity to raise awareness as people want to know what it represents.
Mary: The Ethical Making website has been invaluable in providing information about sustainable making, allowing us to pass this on to other students who are interested in implementing sustainability making into their practice.