Storytelling for Visualising Racial and Social Justice. An Activity System for Visualising Justice in Higher Education

This paper documents and reflects upon Storytelling for Visualising Racial and Social Justice, a student partnership knowledge exchange initiative developed through the LCC Changemakers programme at the London College of Communication. The project invites students, graduates, and institutional partners to explore the question: “What does racial and social justice look like through your creative lens?”

Through artistic responses, collaborative workshops, and cross-institutional dialogue, the initiative examines how creative practice can function as a mechanism for visualising, narrating, and interrogating experiences of racial and social justice within higher education.

Drawing upon principles from student partnership theory, critical race-informed pedagogy, and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, the project positions creative storytelling as both a research method and a form of institutional intervention. In doing so, it extends the Disrupt the Discourse framework by demonstrating how student-led creative outputs can function as knowledge exchange artefacts, curriculum interventions, and reflective tools for institutional learning.

The paper reflects on the project’s conceptual foundations, collaborative structures, and emergent themes, arguing that creative co-production enables universities to move beyond symbolic inclusion towards structurally embedded practices of equity and social justice.