Date Friday 03 October 2025
Location SU Project Space, High Holborn
Overview
Returning to Trust Alternative Crit with Ariel Collier
WHEN: Friday 3rd October 2025, 3pm - 5pm
WHERE: CRITS HUB, UAL, 272 High Holborn, London, WC1V 7EY (CRITS HUB is on the ground floor at UAL High Holborn, if you have any access requirements please email artsprogramme@su.arts.ac.uk)
This workshop is for Black and Global Majority Queer and Trans students only.
Join us for a workshop designed to help you overcome creative doubt and build confidence in sharing your work. Through guided exercises and supportive peer feedback, we'll explore how trust can transform your relationship with critique and strengthen your creative practice.
During the workshop participants will...
- Tackle burn out, imposter syndrome and doubt within our work by building trust within ourselves and others.
- We will begin with introductions and then move to a writing exercise that will challenge us to reflect on our relationship with our work. We will then share that writing with one person to be witnessed and mirrored back.
- Lastly we will share our art with the larger group to receive constructive feedback.
By the end of this workshop participants will have...
- Explored personal and collective trust as essential resources in their creative practice.
- Making space for vulnerability in a supportive, & affirming environment
- Reconnected with their creative voices, particularly when they feel blocked or depleted.
- Reframed their approaches to critique and feedback, seeing it as a tool for trust-building rather than a hurdle.
About Ariel Collier
Ariel Collier (she/they/we/our) is an accomplished international conceptual artist, writer, researcher and curator currently based in London.
Collier’s work challenges alienation and estrangement, using multiple mediums (such as tufting, poetry and photography) and socially engaged practices to shift global understandings of black queer culture towards our inner worlds, reflections and interconnections.
Collier is the founder of Home Studio, a nomadic space dedicated to the promotion, empowerment and development of queer and trans global majority artists by hosting workshops, CRITS, making sessions and exhibitions.
About CRITS HUB
Open from Friday 27th June - Friday 12th December 2025
10am - 6pm Mon - Fri
Emerging from Arts SU’s research into the often-intimidating experiences of critique culture at UAL, Crits Hub seeks to reclaim this process as a supportive space for artistic development by reimagining feedback sharing practices.
Traditional critiques can often feel like a “firing squad,” which disproportionately impacts student well-being and reinforces power imbalances. Crits Hub challenges this perspective, viewing critiques instead as a collaborative testing ground for new ideas. By proposing an alternative, horizontal approach to feedback, critiques can become safer and more accessible spaces for experimentation and authentic dialogue.
Students are invited to book this space and make use of the resource library, learning materials and ‘Crit Kit’ zine: a student-made pocket-sized guide proposing frameworks and methodologies towards diversifying the crit and accommodating a variety of learning styles. These tools can be used to design critique sessions that are bespoke to the unique needs of each peer-learning group.
It is hoped that by offering a dynamic and responsive peer-learning space, Crit Hub will encourage an institutional shift in how critique is practised at UAL. It envisions a compassionate crit culture rooted in equity, where lived experience is valued and individual voices are celebrated.
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Crits Hub came out of Arts SU's research into Crits & Inclusive Learning at UAL. You can read the full report written by Calum Sherwood here.
Crits Hub is open from Monday - Friday, 10am - 6pm.
To book out the space for a group crit, please email artsprogramme@su.arts.ac.uk with your preferred date and time.
Crits Hub was curated by Evie Harman & Aisling Ward with support from the Arts Programme Team at Arts SU.
Zine designed by Radhika Chaudhary.
Posters designed by Charis Dalpra.
