About Inquilab

This polyvocal podcast tells the story so far of Inquilab / Ink-Lab; an alternative reading group based at University of the Arts London. 

Outraged by the brutal murder of George Floyd many individuals within higher education (HE) were incensed, leading to a collective realisation of the imperative for transformative action. In response, Dr. Gurnam Singh, Jheni Arboine, and a small cohort of UAL staff and students made a decisive commitment to establish a distinctive reading group—Inquilab. This group distinguishes itself by embracing an unapologetically radical approach, with its foundation rooted in the principles of decolonisation, anti-racism, and flattened hierarchies. Inquilab's primary objective is to foster an authentic space where UAL staff and students can converge, encouraging the exploration and contemplation of radical pedagogy and practices within a supportive, open, and organic space.

 In this podcast we hear from Inquilab’s founders about the context, values and ideas that were behind its beginnings and how it has since developed into its 3rd year. Participants and contributors tell us what brings them back and how the unique qualities and approaches that Inquilab embraces makes it a very different kind of discursive space. We hear about what it means to be able to bring your true self to a studio setting and how that fundamentally reconfigures hierarchies to create a greater sense of belonging and community for both staff and students.

 Contributors: 
Jheni Arboine 
Nadia Idle 
Deshna Mehta 
Dr Gurnam Singh 
Dr. Manrutt Wongkaew 

Music: 
Thank you to Shaheed Bhai Mewa Singh for allowing us to use their music in this podcast 

Sound recordings credits: 
Tim Kahn for the recordings of a Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, Oregon, 7th June 2020

Production and Editing:
This podcast has been created and edited by Gemma Riggs 

Transcript

About the podcast  0:04  
Welcome to interrogating spaces. A podcast that examines ideas around inclusivity and attainment in higher education. We speak with staff, students and practitioners to explore questions around democratic and decolonize teaching practices.

Gemma Riggs  0:25  
In this episode of interrogating spaces, we hear from the organisers and participants of Inquilab, a reading group with a difference for staff and students at the University of the Arts, London. Now in its third year, we get a sense of the story so far, and what learning we can take into our own teaching practice.

Dr. Gurnam Singh  0:48  
So my name is Gurnam Singh. I'm a visiting fellow in Race and Education at UAL. And my my role was when I was asked to join UAL, was to be a critical friend, to be a kind of a agent-provocateur, but in a nice way. And so each year, I've kind of been doing some similar things, but new things and different things and doing provocations. So this is kind of one of my latest kind of provocations amongst many others.

So the inspiration for Inquilab really comes from a kind of a connection with two moments in history, exactly 100 years apart. So in 2020, we had the murder of the African American George Floyd, by four Minneapolis Police officers, who were later convicted for his murder as well. In fact, that Derek Chauvin was the one that that was on his neck. And the fact that that event was videod, that went viral across the world, it had its own kind of revolutionary impact, I think on people and we had spontaneous protests. And universities also sought to do things. It was almost kind of lying in the sand. So that that was one really important moment that we cannot, things cannot go, as there were in terms of what we teach and how we teach and the core question of social justice. And in fact it sparked off this, this desire for decolonisation of higher education. I mean, the deep, the whole debate about decolonisation is much, much older. But it was the moment that really seemed to push management as well to do something differently. But as I said, exactly 100 years before that, there was a moment in Indian history where there was somebody called Bhagat Singh, he was a young student activist, who was active against the British colonialists. And he was, he was caught up in a conspiracy case, the Lahore conspiracy case, where he was accused of throwing a bomb in Parliament. And this was in 1920, as well. And there was a campaign I mean, he eventually got executed. But there was a campaign that was originally the word was Inquilab Zindabad, which means long live the revolution. And that's... the origins are Persian and Urdu, and there was somebody called Maulana Hasrat Mohani  who actually coined the phrase in 1921, which was to coincide with Bhagat Singh's execution as well. So, you find that although Bhagat Singh was executed much later, you find that this this zeal for revolution coming through.

What's really interesting thing is that, whilst he was in Lahore prison I think, I think for over a year, we're awaiting his trial. And then his execution. He did vast amounts of reading, he was only about 19 or 20 years old. And he used to order books, and he was reading Tolstoy, he was reading lots of revolutionary texts. And he, in fact, he read a phenomenal amount. And, you know, he wrote a lot as well. So there's also that link between his kind of revolutionary zeal and this about reading. And therefore, we were thinking about how can we then how can we respond, and one way to respond was to create a kind of reading group where there was this desire to think about education as revolution. And that's where I said, well Inquiab seems like a good word. And then Jheni, who also has been really instrumental in, you know, nurturing and taking taking the group and really establishing it I think, under really difficult circumstances because we had the COVID lock down, says well, why don't we call it 'ink' as we put the k in, and it was about Ink-lab, so kind of twist on 'Inquilab' became 'Ink-Lab'. And of course that's about ink and about writing and words and lab is about interrogating about researching and taking apart. So that seems like a really perfect way of capturing what we were doing to create this radical revolution reading.

Gemma Riggs  5:39  
Jheni Arboine is a co founder of Inquilab reading group, and an educational developer in the academic enhancement team at UAL as well as a practising artist. 

Jheni Arboine  5:49  
It all started at the very beginning, when we were told that Gurnam would be given hours to work with us, and that Gurnam had an idea for a reading group. He talked about the reading group being called Inquilab. And when I first heard the word, there was something like I'd heard it before, but I couldn't remember the context. But I was aware of it. But I didn't know about the meaning of revolution. And the fact that it was a reading group with the different language was really important as well, I thought it was really good. And because of the phonics or the sound of the word, the ink and lab and then we added the income lab onto it.

Gemma Riggs  6:41  
Nadia Idle is a contributor and regular participant of Inquilab. She is Associate Lecturer at London College of Fashion, as well as a podcaster, broadcaster and writer.

Nadia Idle  6:51  
I definitely can respond to the title because it's the title that got me here, I was searching through canvas, trying to find events to get involved in in UAL and feel less like I'm sitting at home preparing lectures alone. And I think it is such a clear it's so clever a name, that I find it difficult to imagine that it could cross so many different meanings at the same time. So it's attractive to me because I'm an Arabic speaker and the word in Inquilab means to turn over, which is commonly understood as revolution. And I think I think it was going on was somebody who came up with that name, maybe I'll be right, because it might be the same in some other languages, maybe in Urdu or another language. Forgive me if I'm there is another language that I that's not one of the ones that I'm picking. But in Arabic, it definitely means to turn over or revolution, which is very interesting name for a book club. But then this idea of ink and lab together and the fact that they can be all of those things. And then also there's a phonetic possibility of something around in like incubate, which has comes up for me. So I thought it's a very clever name. And I like the I like the imagery of a laboratory. But it feels like quite a relaxing version of a laboratory. You know, is this a lab it's a lab where there's there's different vials of things bubbling away, and you know, there's no kind of pressure to produce something, but they continue to kind of have different coloured vials bubbling different ideas, and I really liked that, it appealed to me.

Dr. Gurnam Singh  8:33  
Just one other interesting fact this is very personal. You know, I come from a Sikh background and Sikhs literally worship text, our holy book which we see as a living Guru, the living saint for the Sikhs, which you'll find positioned in the centre of every Sikh Gurdwara is the The Guru Granth Sahib Ji, which is literally a text and we worship that and there is, there are quite a lot writings in there of the Sufi's and others, radical Sufi saints, but there's one one writing by Guru Nanak who was the founder of the Sikh faith and I'll say the the Punjabi version and then I'll translated it.. the phrase of the poem is (untranslated Punjabi text....... ).  

 praise the container. Praise the pen. Praise the ink, praise the writer. Praise the paper. Praise the writer who writes the truth". So it's it's all a homage to writing, but writing a truth. And it's so graphic the way in which all the different components..  and again that's linked to ink because it talks about praise not only the ink, but the inkwell. And the... the pen as well. And that's a kind of very personal kind of way of thinking about that connection between Inquilab and Ink-Lab

Gemma Riggs  10:12  
Inquilab takes a different approach to a traditional reading group, and invites presenters to bring forward different media and forms of readings. These could be text, film, music, sound, object, or image.

Jheni Arboine  10:24  
The idea of expanding what reading means so that you can be reading an object, a poem, a song, a movement, all sorts of things can happen with how you read something. 

Dr. Gurnam Singh  10:42  
And in that sense, we weren't too hung up about what kind of texts we were using in the reading group. In fact, we've moved away from text, as you will find, we thought that just focusing on text itself on ink, was only giving us one way into people's thoughts, experiences and history. And therefore we then broaden that, particularly with the university like the University of Arts into other media, into physical objects ,into performance, maybe into sounds into any kind of stimulus that enables you to reflect and think whether it's kind of cognitive, affective, affective, and

Jheni Arboine  11:26  
And then it starts to, I don't know, filter into higher education, pedagogy around the arts, because that's what we do. But there's a tendency, when we think about reading, it's just text. So I think it's doing it's doing something that's really important that I think can help us to look at how, what teaching learning does in higher education in an art, in the art sector.

Dr. Gurnam Singh  11:58  
It's become much more of a holistic kind of space. So maybe to call it a reading group.... It started off a reading group, I don't know what it is, now, maybe we need to work on a different way of thinking about what it is.

Gemma Riggs  12:13  
In July 2023, Jheni Arboine ran an lnquilab session as part of UAL's, teaching and learning conference at London College of Communication. She delivered the session a little differently.

Jheni Arboine  12:26  
So today, it's a bit different. So I've asked everyone to bring an object. And obviously an object can be an expanded field - it could be a concept. And what we're going to do, I will sort of do my object first, just to show you, okay, sort of nervous, shy, but I'll show you first. And then we're also going to attempt while people are talking to do some watercolour. We had about 19, maybe 19 people. And it was just going round, everybody introducing themselves and then going round with an object. But I wanted to add another layer in again, as a sort of test to sort of experiment. You know, what happens when you ask people to do a watercolour painting, abstract, literally mark making, while listening to people talk about their objects. And it seemed to work, but I only knew it worked at the end when people said how they felt. And then I thought, oh, yeah, this is something we could do. Again, it doesn't have to be every session that be a bit boring. But it was just another element of how we can use our art pedagogies when we're doing reading group.

It was just wonderful. There was this box, and we didn't know what the box was. And suddenly the box was opened, and it was a record player. And then it was just like, Oh my gosh. And then if that wasn't enough, the actual records were a type of postcard that had the grooves in it, and it was playing a postcard. People coming together, didn't know each other, was just great that I really loved that. And I love the happenstance of it because you just don't know. And the fact that people are willing to try, you know, everybody was just yeah, we'll do this. And the fact that everybody's willing to give me their paintings is even more exciting.

Deshna Mehta  14:49  
Hi, I'm Deshna. I am an Associate Lecturer at the London College of Communication. I am somebody who is quite shy and I find it difficult to have Have a conversation with others very quickly, I'm more of a listener. And that's what I do in most spaces that I'm in. And that's what I thought I would do at Inquilab. And however, I think something shifted, just the way it was conducted with having to listen and mark-make, that that exercise was really powerful. And I realised that in the act of making, it brought me, I mean, in the act of listening to others speak, and then mark making, it made me kind of forget everything else, and brought me to the present very quickly. And there was a sense of belonging, and a sense of comfort, which I would typically struggle to arrive at, or to get to, with a group of about 20 people so quickly. So I thought it was, it was almost, it was almost like a little therapeutic exercise or a solution to how to connect with people in this different way. I think something shifted in me when I attended it. And I thought, even though I'm not somebody who's a very good verbal communicator in front of many people, which I also struggled a bit with my teaching practice, and I'm learning new ways of doing it. But there are other methods and other ways of connecting with people. And this, the Inquilab session was a really powerful one, I felt really calm in that hour. And it was amazing how I could feel that calmness really quickly. And I felt one with myself and one with others around me. So I think it was a really strong experience.

Jheni Arboine  16:46  
I felt really elated by it. And I think I was like in awe of it. Because it was just great, how people were responding. And people kept saying things like,' I feel really relaxed'. So it brings together issues of pedagogy, well-being, inclusivity respect, allowing people just to be. And I think, also, although sometimes I do appear a bit bossy, but allowing people to choose as muh as possible, you don't have to do it, But allowing people to choose and voice - so important so that everybody can have a voice, everybody can say, and everybody's voice is equal. I think that is really, really important in terms of things like group dynamics. And I think that is a learning point for a lot of teams who don't curate a space safely enough to enable everyone to feel that they can speak out and be heard, and everybody will listen.

Dr. Manrutt Wongkaew  18:02  
So my name is Dr. Manrutt Wongkaew, and I call myself Manny and I'm a senior lecturer here, London College of Fashion. So my background is in fashion, dance, performance and art therapy. That's my left brain talking. So I think for me Inquilab It's like a nurturing pod, a collective group of people and voices and ideas that embody experience that been shared on the subject that stems from decolonization and how it kind of grows and expand into lots of directions. And for me, it's about something not entirely external, but away from the course delivery. And for me, I believe that because... I am also a regular participant when I can and also I've been honoured to be asked to read in one of the sessions. And I think it's really important in the pool of nurturing and to get to know each other, more than just 'what is my description that appear on Microsoft Teams?'. So things like today, we hear other people's... their own work, their writing work. Some other weeks, we see other's people artwork that we make in the session. So I think that's really rich. And its comes back to me around, when I fill out on the survey, the staff survey and UAL, we talk about what's the best thing about working here. It's about colleagues for me. So this is a way about getting to know people that I kind of wave to beyond a job description.

Nadia Idle  19:36  
Inquilab for me has been like an amazing space. And that's for several reasons. One is a personal one, which is that I don't get to see groups of colleagues very often as a very part time AL. So it's given me the opportunity to come together and ideate and think and listen and reflect with a group of colleagues from around you as well. So that's been brilliant. I'm kind of personal level. But also, I think, why it's been really good how it has been the kind of the variety of different subjects that we've spoken about, and the various different intellectual tangents that they've taken us both within the meeting, and then afterwards, and the kind of the connections that have been built since then. But I've just really valued all of the discussions that we've had, not just in the realm of kind of teaching, learning and pedagogy, but just in general about some of the major subjects, whether it's around colonialism or the future of AI, and to have that structured in a kind of loose reading group kind of setting. But then spending most of the time either listening to people read their own work, and then having massive discussions, you know, that go on for ages.

Dr. Gurnam Singh  20:57  
In some senses, if we think about the archetypal reading group, it tends to be very much centred on the text itself. And it should be if we're reading a text, then we can't ignore the text, but I think for Inquilab, the text, is almost an excuse to bring yourself into that space. And then in doing so, invite others to bring themselves into that space. I think we probably see the text is a catalyst for that, and it just doesn't really take could be an object, it could be anything as a catalyst for that. And I think that, that in other moments in academic history, or even in some spaces now that would be seen as sacrilegious, that somehow you don't bring yourself to critical intellectual inquiry, you just have to deal with...  Well, I think Inquilab rejects that idea of the separation of the self, from the activity or, you know, I mean, if writing is anything is, is all about the self. And I suppose what we're saying is that, we all need to be more honest about what we produce, and our own kind of personal relationship to that, that doesn't diminish it. In fact, it opens up on new ways of seeing the kind of objects that we produce in the world.

Jheni Arboine  22:18  
It seems to open up something. So it's not just about the readings that are for each session, it opens up a possibility, it enables people to feel at home, safe. Sort of a trusted space.

Dr. Manrutt Wongkaew  22:34  
For me, I really value personal experience, personal identity, personal journey, from your right brain from the embodied experience. Not rather than but as well as the academic kind of journey, which is like the left brain I talk about earlier on that... Here, we end up in the head, and we just talk and finds answers from the analytical thinking. But iI feel like we have a way of accessing the information, and data and experience from others beyond that. So that's why I regularly attend.

Gemma Riggs  23:09  
Dr. Manrutt Wongkaew was a presenter in one of the early online Inquilab sessions in 2021. We hear him reading his chosen text.

Dr. Manrutt Wongkaew  23:17  
Thank you very much, Jheni, Amita and the team for for approaching me and for giving me this opportunity to share something as part of our teaching and learning community. So the book that I connect the called Tuesdays with Morrie and I've got the book with me, and the front cover, it starts to say... 'an old man, a young man, a life's greatest lesson'. And I don't know much about this book beforehand. But I was part of Survivors UK, which is a charitable organisation that supports male victims of sexual abuse. And someone in that forum that I was with, shared that with me. I think that was how I heard about the book. So I ordered it. And as I looked at the table of contents, I cried. I was talking about how to feel how to embrace feelings and emotions. And this dialogue between the real life teacher.. a professor and a student who meet in, in a difficult time in their lives. And yes, I've always drawn to that part around feelings, emotion, personal identity, personal stories. And and I'm certain that in teaching my colleagues and my students will experience grief and loss, or they can relate to it, so if you like this forum, allows me to bring that story. And also to know that there will be people who hear my story without judgement, and they think, it made me think about Tim Stevens my PGCert Supervisor talking around the modelling techniques. It's like taking a modelling in a way that teachers or educators can form a path to show this is how I do it, then the followers... a student can say like, actually, okay, Iunderstand this parameter. So you know, my teacher can do this. So, maybe let's try this way. And see. So I think like the modelling the forming of the path.

Dr. Gurnam Singh  25:31  
Well, this is the interesting thing, because in some senses at one level one might be pompous about claiming the truth. Yeah. Historically, you know, people who claim truths often use that as a way of committing all kinds of violence, genocidal violence. And I suppose what Inquilab was, was as much as, not so much claiming truths. But seeking to confront truths. Yeah. But I think there's something about truth telling. And that comes out of your own experience, I think, you know, everybody's on lived experience is their own truth. Now that now, you know, we can't generalise from the truth, but we can't take people's truths away from them. And often text is a way for you to, for you to navigate your own truth and take it into another space. And I think Inquilab itself becomes this space, a kind of safe space where people can tell their truth, tell their stories, through text. And then we begin to build a collective story within the group itself. And it just becomes this kind of iterative, in a creative process.

Nadia Idle  26:53  
I always feel like I can show up in whatever version of myself there is that day, whether it's, you know, I mean, super intellectual or academic mode, or if I'm kind of, you know, just there to, to listen, or perhaps, you know, I've had a difficult week, and I just want to reflect so. So I think that's a testament to the way it's organised but also the kinds of people who come there's something that's definitely working in that the spaces have always felt easy, and friendly to be in. But or not dumbed down, which I think is really important, this idea that for something to be accessible, it's therefore an intellectual, I think, is a big problem. So I think it remains an intellectual space. But with that kind of freedom

Dr. Manrutt Wongkaew  27:39  
There's something around how the space is beautiful and carefully facilitated. How the space allows different voices to emerge, so everyone's got theopportunity to be seen and heard. So therefore, it creates a safety. And I know that that is, you know, in psychotherapy, that is the first place is to get clients and participants or even students to get to a place of safety first, and then we can explore being vulnerable once they feel held and safe. And I feel like I experienced that here.

Gemma Riggs  28:19  
Inquilab was born from the academic enhancement team's work around decolonialality and the intention to create a pedagogic environment that breaks down the inherited colonial structures within higher education.

Dr. Gurnam Singh  28:31  
I think we're also aware that there is a kind of there is history and you know, there is a historical narrative that we need to become familiar with. And I suppose Inquilab in that sense, it's about uncovering hidden truths, uncovering narratives and stories that have become erased. And I think that's where the other angle of Inquilab is part of the bigger project around decoloniality. Because if you know decoloniality or anticoloniality is about anything, it's about uncovering the voices, the experiences, the stories, narratives, of so many people that have been erased in history.

Jheni Arboine  29:14  
So the whole thing about compassionate pedagogy, that whole thing about caring for people, belonging, making sure people feel that they are welcome, you can come in, doesn't matter if you haven't been before. Really important. I think the work around decolonization comes up within some texts and things that are said. And I think so some of the strands from our academic enhancement model are infused in how we do Inquilab. I think they're part of it. And I think that's really important.

Dr. Gurnam Singh  29:54  
You know, it came out through the academic enhancement team, AEM, and you know, the role of the EAM is to, is to inspire them to enable and to nurture creative pedagogical kind of methods. And, and I think that UAL is in a very interesting space, not just UAL, I think a lot of universities, I think the whole kind of move towards decolonization of the university has now I think, gone into a new space, a really exciting space, which is moving from the gesture from the kind of high high profile event declarations of intent to seeping down into the kind of everyday machinery of what we do and how we do it.

Jheni Arboine  30:36  
And I suppose my ambition going forward, is for it to be a connector that you know, for connecting people across job familie, across the colleges, across the different sort of hierarchies that we have. And it being a space that flattens hierarchies, where you enter, we will enter on the same ground as it were.

Dr. Gurnam Singh  31:02  
And actually, it really kind of regenerateed, it kind of became what we always hoped it would be was a kind of grassroots kind of, where students, academics and non academics are people who don't kind of do that work. All kinds of people, and the whole community of UAL would be part of that space.

Dr. Manrutt Wongkaew  31:22  
What I kind of feel right now is about a nurturing sense of self, and building the community. And I think that is so important in this institution, especially when we have many colleges. And also people, frontliners or people in a different team that come together and share their experience or witness other people's experience.

Deshna Mehta  31:45  
I would definitely love to attend more, to know, because I believe from the little that I've heard from Jheni that each is a very different format, or each emerges in a very different way based on the people who are a part of it. And so I almost see this as ways of learning and ways of teaching. I see Inquilab as being one of those platforms. And it's a space where I would go to maybe learn how to teach.

Dr. Gurnam Singh  32:17  
I'll tell you my hopes. Many years ago, I mean, I didn't get a chance to do philosophy at school. Even at undergraduate level, I'm kind of a bit of an armchair philosopher, I've been self taught. But I came across a book, I can't remember the chap's name, but it was called Socrates cafe. You'll have to look it up but and he was a Cambridge philosophy professor who taught philosophy for many years. And he felt like it didn't really make any difference to anything other than a small group of people who he used to have all these philosophical arguments with. And I think he felt if philosophy is anything it's for everybody. I guess there's a slight harking back to Socrates and his own, kind of public philosophy on the steps of the, in Athens on the temples of Athens, where he would acost to people with a kind of question, like, 'how do you know you exist you exist? So So I was inspired by that, and what he did when he gave up his job, he used to hang out in pubs and cafes. And he'd start a conversation with somebody, I think it was initially pubs, because pubs had regulars, people would come regularly. And he would spend two or three weeks there. And he'd get into everyday dialogue, because what people talk about is everyday issues that affect people. And then he'd inject a kind of philosophical angle to that. And he was amazed as to how fascinating how, how drawn, the people were to that. And then And then, so he kind of did that for three weeks or four weeks. And then you move on. And the and the people would continue that. So he could it was like, and it's called Socrates Cafe, and there is a network of them across the world, in all kinds of spaces. Not in fact, the whole point wasn't to ticket out with those elite spaces. So maybe we could maybe it's a flight of fancy but maybe across UL we would have lots of in clubs. And why don't we have them across the university sector as well in club becomes this invitation to be radical and revolutionary.

Dr. Manrutt Wongkaew  34:31  
Be part of this or even take the seat of inquiry lab and expand and blossom in their own institution. And yeah, she always says a nurturing a cocoon to talk to share to be beyond classroom setting.

Gemma Riggs  34:52  
For more information about inquiry lab, please visit inquiry lab.my blog.arts.ac to UK

Vikki Hill  35:03  
this podcast is brought to you by the teaching & learning exchange University of the Arts London. For more information search for you al teaching & learning exchange