Yesterday, I taught a day of workshops in a secondary school in Whitechapel on making comics. During the day I taught in seven different year 9 classes, and oversaw the creation of comics that ran the gamut from interstellar battles to fashion school rivalries to a manifesto against gentrification. All of the girls in these classes were wearing hijabs – and yet in the over 100 different student comics I read over the course of the day, not one contained a character wearing a hijab. Even when making up their own stories, these teenagers did not imagine themselves or their faith into their stories.
As an educator both in schools and on the Camberwell Illustration course, I think often about how to diversify character design. There is a balance to be found between representation as a vital way of sparking student imaginations yet simultaneously not nearly enough by itself to create inclusion. My students are often afraid of creating contextless tokenised characters, which can create even more alienation, and so often revert to what they have been taught to see as a “neutral” whiteness. This fear and discomfort is something useful to challenge white students to grapple with, but when it came to these muslim teenagers, I wasn’t sure if it would have been appropriate for me in my position as a white educator to question the homogeneity of their characters. Although if I had had more time with the students, and the space to build a trusting relationship, it is definitely something I would have broached. It made me think about how many, if any, of these students might end up in my classes at Camberwell and how creative inclusion needs to start long before students enter the doors of the university.
Ibtihal Ramadan argues that “British Muslim women, are more likely to experience a ‘triple penalty’, where religion, gender and colour intertwine (Berthoud and Blekesaune 2007)” and “Ahmad’s research (2011) emphasizes how British Muslim women pursuing higher education are becoming well-prepared to weather the ‘pathologizing’ storm allegedly attributed to adhering to a ‘restrictive’ religion and ‘restraining’ cultures.”
Jacklyn Rekis discusses how the veil makes muslim women both hypervisible and invisible, as it is assumed as a mark of “restrictive religion” thus stripping her of her agency. This “pathologising storm” is created by an islamophobic society1 where not a day goes by without negative news coverage, micro aggressions towards muslims in the public eye, and violence on the streets of muslim neighbourhoods. Over the last three years in particular the way that Gaza has been covered in the media, where blame is often obfuscated, Israel apologised for and death tolls questioned – shows the lack of value the UK media and political class places on Muslim lives.
This may seem external to the institution, but the context of palestine is extremely relevant to students at UAL. The protests of staff and students and the silence of the institution shows students that no matter what social justice measures UAL may espouse, they are exposed as just words, when genocide is not condemned and students friends and families are presented as acceptable collateral for Israeli “safety”.
How can I as a white jewish educator living in this context create a safe (enough) space for my muslim students to thrive as themselves at Camberwell ?
- Be visibly and loudly supportive of Palestine at work: whether that is wearing a keffiyeh, showing up at protests, bringing it up where relevant in lectures and tutorials, or backing up students and staff who are being targeted by the institution.
- Become more informed about the illustration contexts of my muslim students, learn about the illustrators they love and bring them into my lecture slides and tutorials.
- Research strong well informed representation of hijabi characters by hijabi artists.
Ibtihal Ramadan (2022) When faith intersects with gender: the challenges
and successes in the experiences of Muslim women academics, Gender and Education, 34:1,
33-48, DOI: 10.1080/09540253.2021.1893664
Rekis J (2023). Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account.
Hypatia 38, 779–800. https://doi.org/10.1017/hyp.2023.86
- Rawnsley, J. (2025) Anti-Muslim hate at record level in UK, charity says. BBC News. 19 February. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyjlx2e4l8o (Accessed: 14 July 2026). ↩︎