RCA College of Design to allegedly let go of associate lecturers, students launch petition

The College of Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London, one of the leading art and design schools around the world, is allegedly cutting the jobs of the majority of its Associate Lecturers (ALs), industry professionals that give lectures at higher education institutions in the UK.

The students and staff of the fashion department at the RCA have launched an open letter entitled ‘Stop the redundancies at RCA’.

The call for signatures for the petition was launched via the instagram account ‘RCA fashion’ yesterday evening. A post reads: “Whilst the RCA masters exhibitions were on last week the RCA was quietly making all associate lecturers on the fashion course and other school of design courses redundant.”

The statement continued: “28 associate lecturers jobs are being cut. All people that contributed to the RCA’s reputation of excellence for years. The practitioner/lecturer model is being erased.”

“One of the most fundamental teaching qualities of the RCA completely wiped out. A wealth of industry and practitioner experience gone. Please add your name to the petition to fight this and support all practitioner academics,” the statement posted to the Instagram account concludes.

In a written statement to FashionUnited a spokesperson from Royal College of Art said: "The College is ending 21 Fixed Term part time contracts in the School of Design on their expected end date, as set out in the original letters of engagement. These roles are equivalent to 2.9 full time staff, with some contracts being as small as under one day a month. Permanent roles equivalent to 9.8 full time staff in the School of Design are currently being advertised."