Key points
- UAL, the world's largest specialist creative-arts university, publishes an institution-wide position on AI in teaching and learning.
- The statement favours critical, ethical and creative engagement with AI over prohibition, explicitly recognising resistance to AI as a legitimate response.
- The statement grounds its AI values in eco-social commitment, decolonial practice and sustainability by design, informed by the Russell Group 2023 principles.
Summary
UAL's position statement on AI in teaching and learning, first published April 2024 and substantially updated in May 2026, sets out the institution's values-led approach to generative AI across its six colleges. The statement foregrounds critical and ethical engagement over prohibition while recognising that resistance to AI use is also a legitimate response for students and staff. Its grounding in eco-social commitment and decolonial practice gives it a distinctive character among UK university AI policies and makes it a primary reference for animation and creative-arts educators assessing their own institutional positions.
Implications for animation education
Animation educators at UAL and at peer institutions will find in this statement a worked example of how a specialist creative-arts university frames AI without a blanket prohibition. The explicit recognition that resisting AI is a legitimate response gives course teams and individual tutors cover to design studio environments where not using AI tools is a defensible pedagogical choice. The eco-social and decolonial framing is speculative as an industry-wide template but is operationally significant for any program that wishes to connect AI practice to broader values curricula, ethical production frameworks, or sustainability-by-design modules.
Related items
- Principles on the Use of Generative AI Tools in Education
- What UK university AI policies actually do: a study of 96 institutions (HEPI Policy Note 71)
- ArtCenter College of Design: Position and Policy on Generative AI
Source
Source: University of the Arts London ↗ (Policy Text)
Primary document: arts.ac.uk/about-ual/learning-and-teaching/digital-learning/ai-and-education/ai-position-statement ↗
Cite this item
University of the Arts London (2024). ‘UAL position statement on AI in teaching and learning’, University of the Arts London. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/about-ual/learning-and-teaching/digital-learning/ai-and-education/ai-position-statement
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