"Shattering" allyship: Affect, fragmentation, and the remaking of pride in schools

Berry-Downs, Huw 2026. "Shattering" allyship: Affect, fragmentation, and the remaking of pride in schools. Social Sciences 15 (5) , 296. 10.3390/socsci15050296

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Abstract

This article examines how LGBTQ+ allyship is made, felt, and negotiated within a secondary school workshop using creative, participatory methods. Drawing on affect theory (see Sara Ahmed) and feminist new materialist scholarship (see Barad, Renold, among others), the paper analyses a collaborative collage activity centered on Pride flags and symbolic materials. Rather than treating allyship as a fixed identity or a knowledge-based achievement, the study explores how it emerges relationally through encounters with materials, symbols, bodies, and digital technologies. Through close analysis of moments of uncertainty, affective attachment, cutting and shattering of symbols, and the collective naming of the final artwork, the article traces how not-knowing, pleasure, confusion, and togetherness function as generative forces for allyship. The workshop is framed as a propositional research-creation space in which phones, Google searches, bunting, scissors, and book references intra-act with young peoples’ lived experiences, redistributing epistemic authority and unsettling school-based expectations of correct knowledge. The findings contribute to existing research on LGBTQ+ inclusion and allyship in schools by shifting focus from identity labels and institutional frameworks toward the affective, material, and speculative processes through which allyship is assembled in the moment. In doing so, the paper offers an alternative conceptualisation of allyship as relational practice rather than static position, with implications for creative pedagogy and inclusive educational research.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Publisher:	MDPI
ISSN:	2076-0760
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	13 May 2026
Date of Acceptance:	29 April 2026
Last Modified:	04 Aug 2026 22:34
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/186966

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