The moments that made Goldsmiths 2019

Frances Corner joined as the new Warden, the first woman to lead Goldsmiths

In August 2019, Professor Frances Corner joined Goldsmiths from the London College of Fashion.

She brings decades of experience in higher education but also, crucially, a career-long commitment to campaigning for the value of creativity and creative education.

Professor Corner joins Goldsmiths at a time of huge challenges – both global and closer to home. In her first letter to staff, she identified the College’s response to climate change, the mental health crisis and how we can improve how we listen to students' concerns as key areas of work for the coming months.

Our students' creative work found new responses to real-world problems

The Degree Show season is one of the most important points in the Goldsmiths calendar. Our students' creativity – whether they study computing or media, education, fine art or any of our programmes – makes Goldsmiths the institution it is.

In 2019, many graduating students used their creative work to respond to big issues faced by our society, providing a clear commentary on the way our students view the world.

Theatre company K’Nall explored mental health and isolation in the BME community; Avril Corroon from the Department of Art made cheese out of mould from sub-standard rental properties; BA Design student Jaspar Rogers spun t-shirts from waste plastic while Alice Parker used her MA in Children’s Illustration to write a book that changes the narrative on the expectations of young girls.

There are of course many more which deserve a mention. See our degree show highlights page.

Students and staff demanded action on racial injustice

A student-led occupation of Deptford Town Hall ran from mid-March until the end of July. The students called out racial injustice at the university and made a series of demands under the name of Goldsmiths Anti-Racist Action (GARA).

The College responded with a number of commitments, including additional funding, mandatory race-awareness training for staff and the creation of new specialist support roles.

The occupation was followed by the publication of Goldsmiths’ Insider Outsider report in October. The report, written by Sofia Akel, featured responses from more than 200 BME Goldsmiths students.

Of those surveyed, 26% reported experiencing racism from other students and staff and 37% felt excluded from participating in university life due to racial discrimination. The report made 18 recommendations for the College and a further 13 for the Students’ Union.

GARA and the Insider Outsider report make the scale of the issue absolutely clear. There is a huge amount of work still to be done to address racial justice, both at Goldsmiths and in the wider higher education sector.

We welcomed 95 new colleagues by bringing our cleaners in house

On 1 May, some 95 cleaners were made Goldsmiths staff and their contracts transferred from ISS, a third-party contractor.

The decision was approved in late 2018 and came after a period of intensive discussions with the Goldsmiths community, including a month-long campaign by staff, students and campus unions.

As Goldsmiths employees, our cleaning team now have better conditions and workplace benefits and improved job security.

In September a plan to bring our security provision in house was also approved. Around 50 new staff positions will be created at Goldsmiths by February 2020, receiving pay, holiday and pensions in line with other College staff.

We promised to show leadership on the climate crisis

Professor Corner marked her arrival in August with a bold raft of measures to tackle the climate emergency. These included a pledge to divest from fossil fuels, to rewild College-owned land and to develop a new module about climate change to be made available to all students.

But it was the so-called campus beef ban that made headlines around the world. Almost every national newspaper covered the story online and in print, and broadcast coverage included the BBC News Channel, ITV London, Channel 4 News and Channel Five News.

As well as imposing changes on the way Goldsmiths functions (yes, that includes burgers), Goldsmiths’ carbon neutral plan shows that large organisations can take decisive action. 

Professor Corner said: "Declaring a climate emergency cannot be empty words. I truly believe we face a defining moment in global history and Goldsmiths now stands shoulder to shoulder with other organisations willing to call the alarm and take urgent action to cut carbon use."

We launched a new academic department to equip students for a challenging world

In September, we welcomed our first cohort of law students.

The Department of Law's LLB Law programme promises to take Goldsmiths’ heritage of social justice, social engagement and social awareness and apply it to 21^st century issues – from Cambridge Analytica to Brexit. 

In their first term, Goldsmiths Law students have put on mock murder trials at the Royal Courts, learnt from leading legal experts and visiting professors and taken part in immersive theatre.

We announced a new enterprise hub for New Cross

In May, we announced we’re working with Lewisham Council, the Mayor of London and others to redevelop a parade of shops on New Cross Road.

We’re building a new workspace to help local businesses, freelancers, social enterprises, students and alumni and connect them with Goldsmiths researchers. We’ve appointed architects, consulted with the local community and the build is planned for early 2020.

Goldsmiths CCA brought world-renowned art to South East London

In its first full calendar year, Goldsmiths CCA was home to four major contemporary art exhibitions. The first, Chicago Imagists, was the first UK exhibition of works by this important group of 20th century artists. It received widespread critical praise.

In June, the CCA hosted the largest solo show to date by Goldsmiths alumnus Issy Wood. Her paintings, showed across four rooms of the gallery, were described by Time Out as bringing “the whole gamut of millennial angst slowly and creepily to life”.

But our research reached much further afield

Professor Lauren Stewart leads the Chime Project looking at how embedded music practices like group singing could be developed to reduce anxiety and depression symptoms in pregnant women in West Africa. 

They've worked with local government agencies and international academic partners and received funding from the Medical Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to co-develop and test the feasibility of the project.

As part of a second related project, two local Gambian musicians have written songs about the importance of partner support during pregnancy, which they will tour around the country.

We added the Booker Prize to our alumni trophy cabinet

Bernardine Evaristo was awarded the Booker Prize for her novel Girl, Woman Other, becoming the first black woman to receive the literary world’s highest honour. She shared the award with Margaret Atwood.

Evaristo was born in Woolwich and graduated from the Department of English and Comparative Literature with a PhD in creative writing in 2013.

Our alumni are no strangers to awards: in December, PhD graduate and Research Fellow with Forensic Architecture Lawrence Abu Hamdan was jointly-awarded the Turner Prize.

In fact, we count nine Turner Prizes among our alumni and staff, alongside an Oscar, the Mercury Music Prize and many more. In 2020 we'll find out if music graduate James Blake will win a Grammy.