Jazmin Morris has always had an outsider’s perspective on the creative industries – from choosing to study fine art at Chelsea College of Arts through to entering the tech space via her work as a creative computing artist. “Being a Black woman that was raised in poverty was extremely challenging,” she says. “The privilege involved in a fine arts degree – I wasn’t aware of it and just did it anyway. I think that’s why I’ve carved my own path, but I didn’t want to carve my own path – it just really didn’t exist.”

Since graduating in 2018, Morris has tried her hand at everything from creative and tech consultancy through to university lecturing. In her personal practice, she explores representation and inclusivity in technology through self-initiated projects such as Braided Networks, which saw her use hair braiding as a medium to criticise the hierarchy behind AI development. But she’s arguably best known as the founder of Tech Yard, a free creative computing club providing introductory workshops to a broad range of creative technologies, which she launched as part of her work with UAL’s Creative Computing Institute.

Motivated by her own experience of the education and tech worlds, where she was often the only Black woman in the room, Morris had already been running workshops with local organisations, schools and charities when UAL first approached her in 2020. “I figured the more people I could inspire to use creative computing to make things, slowly the more diverse the scene would get,” she says. The university subsequently created an official teaching role for her and gave her the funding to formalise Tech Yard as part of the CCI’s wider work. “They gave me full reins, but I then named it, created a bit of a brand for it and ran everything under that name.”