I teach on the Diploma in Professional Studies (DPS) at London College of Communication. It’s a sandwich year out in industry, open to students across seven design disciplines – from UX to spatial design. Our students bring a huge range of backgrounds, experiences, and levels of industry confidence. Many also navigate financial pressures, caring responsibilities, or feel underrepresented in the creative sector.
One challenge I keep returning to is: how do we make sure all our students feel like DPS is for them? This really came to the surface after feedback on a 2-minute student video we’d used in our “Intro to Year 2” session. It was meant to inspire, but one student pointed out that it didn’t reflect the reality of working-class students. That feedback really stuck with me. It reminded me of the work I was involved in at venturethree, especially Creative Shift, a collaboration with UAL that aimed to break down barriers for underrepresented students entering the industry (venturethree, 2023). The feedback showed me we weren’t doing enough of that in our own materials and messaging.
That feedback from a working-class student made it clear we had work to do. They felt that DPS was aimed at a more privileged group, and weren’t sure they belonged on the programme in Year 3. In response, I shared my own working-class background and spoke openly about how I navigated DPS and industry. I also reshaped our “Intro to Year 2” lecture to include more varied and authentic student stories – real examples from Year 3 students who had come through the programme with different levels of access, support, and confidence.
To follow through, I committed to a timed action plan. We created a broader range of 2-minute video examples, better representing different lived experiences. We also introduced both in-person and online peer sessions, where students could upload and review their video drafts on Padlet. This gave students the chance to see how varied the responses could be, and to support one another without pressure to produce a slick, finished product straight away.
We also made our course handbook more visible and pointed students to specific examples of support for those from underrepresented backgrounds. One useful framework came from the Royal College of Art’s Working Class Students Advocacy Alliance (RCA, 2022), which has helped shape how we talk about class and access in our own context.
This experience made me reflect on how representation works at every level of teaching. The content we choose, the stories we tell, the examples we show – they all shape whether a student feels like they belong. From now on, I’ll be thinking much more critically and intentionally about how we reflect all of our students in the materials we share.
I’ve since learned a lot more about this on the IPU PG Cert which has been really helpful and incisive.
Bibliography
Royal College of Art (2022) Working Class Students Advocacy Alliance (WCSAA). Available at: https://rca.ac.uk (Accessed: 30 July 2025).
venturethree (2023) Tackling Diversity in the Creative Industries: Creative Shift. Available at: https://venturethree.com/thinking/tackling-diversity-in-creative-industries (Accessed: 30 July 2025).
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