Summary:
This case study explores how a six‑week LCF teaching unit empowered fashion students to critically interrogate artificial intelligence through a decolonising lens, fostering agency, ethical awareness, and creative confidence.
Watch the recording of Kate and Ami talking about their case study.
Introduction
In response to growing student anxieties around AI image-making and its implications for creative industries, Kate Greenslade (Lecturer in Experimental imaging and Illustration) at LCF designed a six‑week, experimental teaching unit titled “Decolonising in the Age of AI.” Kate collaborated with Ami Podrebarac (Technician Digital Media) in week 2 of the unit to develop the ‘Power & Prompts’ workshop. Delivered in line with LCF’s Autumn 2025 Programme, a collaboration with the Decolonising Arts Institute, the unit culminated in a public exhibition at the Wolfson Gallery. The project aimed to help students critically examine the AI lifecycle, its environmental footprint, labour practices, embedded biases, and colonial tendencies, while exploring how AI could be used responsibly within creative practice.
The unit responded not only to students’ concerns but also to the tutor’s own unease around institutional ambiguity, inconsistent AI policies, and the pressure to integrate AI meaningfully within a curriculum grounded in social, racial, and environmental justice. Through structured stages, Concept, Context, Cultivate, Create, and Conclude, students engaged in lectures, workshops, site visits, manifesto writing, and experimental making that encouraged critical thinking, ethical reflection, and hands‑on interrogation of AI systems.
Background & Rationale
Students expressed concern about the rise of AI image-making, its influence on creative labour, and whether tutors might encourage or normalise its use. These fears were compounded by “unclear” university policies and broader industry nervousness. The tutor aimed to create a space where AI could be understood, questioned, and contextualised, rather than feared.
Unit Design: “Decolonising in the Age of AI”
Developed as part of a LCF programme, the unit centred on the question;
“How is the critical work of decolonisation impacted by the colonial inclinations of the AI lifecycle?”
Students were invited to explore:
- Environmental impacts
- Labour models and exploitation
- AI’s global power structures
- Deepfakes, authenticity, and misinformation
- Western dominance in training data
- Creative and ethical implications
They had the freedom to use AI as a tool, analyse it critically, or avoid the software entirely while still engaging with its socio‑technical context.
Week-by-Week Learning Journey
Week 1: Situating AI Historically and Ethically
Students explored:
- Histories of automata and human fascination with intelligent machines
- AI’s roots in symbolic vs. connectionist models
- The race toward AGI and its environmental and labour costs
- Social impacts ranging from creativity to scams and deepfakes
Students also drafted their first personal AI ethics manifesto, structured around context, values, boundaries, and actions.
Week 2: Off‑Site Visits & “Power and Prompts” Workshop
Visits focused on:
- Freshwater usage in tech infrastructures
- Decolonising perspectives on fashion and materiality
The hands‑on workshop “Power and Prompts” revealed – developed in collaboration Ami Podrebarac (Tecnician Digital Media) :
- How labels in datasets embed cultural and gender biases
- How stereotypes emerge in image models
- How multilingual prompting exposes cultural difference
- How feeding personal imagery into models can reclaim creative agency
Week 3: Cultivating Themes & Character Design
In this creative phase, students:
- Analysed technological symbolism in runway shows
- Developed speculative characters representing protective future figures
- Considered future materials, skills, bodies, and aesthetics
- Confronted beauty standards, racial profiling, and cultural bias through design
Week 4–5: Creation, Refinement, and Class Manifesto
Students evolved their manifestos weekly based on new insights and experiments.
A final collective manifesto was produced, with key principles such as:
- AI should enhance human life without diminishing agency
- AI lacks lived experience and cannot replace creativity
- Ethical, intentional, non‑“sloppy” use of AI must be prioritised
Final Exhibition. Students presented: Fashion artefacts, AI‑generated investigations, Bias analyses, Character designs, 3D outcomes such as anti‑surveillance headgear
A final showreel captured the diversity and depth of their work.
Early Outcomes – students reported:
- Increased critical awareness of authorship and originality
- Confidence in interrogating AI rather than fearing it
- Greater understanding of ethical design practice
- A sense of agency through deliberate, value-driven AI use
This case study was presented to the UAL AI Network meeting by Kate and Ami – using slides that contain further information and resources
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