How ONELAB is giving a voice to SEND learners through design

Tucked away in a quiet corner of Tower Hamlets sits ONELAB College, a small but radical organisation reshaping what SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) education can be. Established in 2018, ONELAB gives young adult learners a pathway into the creative industries through a curriculum rooted in design. As co-founder Miles Dunphy puts it, “design is a powerful vehicle — it incorporates everything, from Art to Maths and English, to emotion and communication.”

ONELAB grew organically from the collaboration between RCA Fashion alumni Miles Dunphy and Elsa Ellies, who discovered a shared belief in design as a tool for empowerment during their final year at the college. They developed a clothing brand called One by Me — where all garments are engineered from one piece of cloth — and became the first fashion brand to be accepted into Innovation RCA.

While One by Me was deep in the cycle of preparing for Fashion Weeks, a charity supporting adults with profound learning disabilities asked the pair to run workshops on how to make a T-shirt. Following the success of that initiative, they were asked to design a foundation programme for a local sixth form’s art and design students with SEND. “We didn’t have experience working with those clients, but they were amazing,” says Ellies. “Fearless with colour and mark-making.”

These early projects revealed an untapped depth of creative potential among people who had long been excluded from formal art and design education. And as designers living and working in Tower Hamlets, Ellies and Dunphy were acutely aware of the social and economic inequalities faced by many families in the borough, which has the highest rates of child poverty in London. Recognising the transformative impact of their work, the Local Authority encouraged them to establish an independent college and offered support to do so.

Today, ONELAB holds a Department for Education number and teaches lessons five days a week from a set of large, well-equipped classrooms. Each learner follows a path tailored to their abilities, interests, and creative goals. As Ellies puts it, the college takes a “genuinely learner-centred approach,” helping students build real skills and confidence as they work through University of the Arts London and Pearson qualifications. The curriculum is powered by a multidisciplinary team of educators and designers — many from RCA and CSM — who are committed to social impact and inclusive innovation.

One such instructor is Fatih Butev, an RCA alumnus who now teaches the Fashion, Business and Retail Level Two Diploma. Butev works with the team to shape the UAL curriculum in ways that feel engaging and accessible, often finding on-the-spot solutions. “The learning curve is incredible,” he says. “In the months I’ve been here, I’ve seen learners go from not very talkative or confident to being able to ask for help and then finish tasks independently. They also learn to communicate really well with each other. In my opinion, one of the key points of being a designer is being able to discuss your ideas.”

A project that strongly supports this social development is ONELAB’s growing programme of public-facing markets and showcases. Learners take their work out into the world, running stalls at spaces including Lock Studios, Broadway Market, Whitechapel Market and Roman Road, where they meet customers and explain their designs face-to-face. These experiences, Ellies says, are vital to learners for building confidence, developing communication skills and understanding their work as part of a wider creative community. One learner, Muaaz Ahmed — who hopes to work in customer service at JD Sports when he graduates — designed custom hoodies printed with the words “Never Stop Chasing Your Dreams.” He sold out every piece in a single day on Roman Road.

These successes show not only that SEND learners gain hugely from developing design skills, but that there is a real audience eager to buy the products they create. And the newly opened ONE Make Space — located on the same site as the rest of the college — allows them to experiment, build and produce their designs to a high commercial standard. Equipped with laser cutters, 3D printers, 3D scanners, computerised embroidery machines and direct-to-garment printers, the space gives learners access to industry-standard tools and the means to bring their ideas to life.

A big part of ONELAB’s impact comes from the way SEND learners use design to express themselves in ways that might otherwise be difficult for them, resulting in work that is distinctive, personal and genuinely sellable. “Our first pop-up shop was incredible — the learners sold out within a week. It proved that people with special needs can create commercial products and earn money from their creativity,” says Dunphy. “And that’s the heart of it: not just teaching skills, but helping them turn those skills into a business so they can be earners, be out in the world, and take up space. At the RCA, you learn design, but you don’t necessarily learn how to build a livelihood from it — and that’s what we’re trying to give our learners.”

ONELAB’s influence is also beginning to ripple outward through partnerships with the RCA’s Community Engagement team and Wandsworth Council. Together, they have co-commissioned projects that place SEND learners’ voices firmly in the public eye. For the 2024 Wandsworth Arts Fringe, ONELAB artists collaborated with students at Garratt Park School to create artworks exploring Wandsworth & the World, later transformed into banners lining the front of Wandsworth Town Hall. The work continues into the London Borough of Culture 2025, where ONELAB has worked with five schools to produce a series of bold, joyful stickers celebrating creativity and inclusion. These are now on display across five Wandsworth libraries.

With demand for SEND provision in the UK only increasing and the current system of support in crisis, the potential for ONELAB’s model to grow beyond Tower Hamlets is huge. “Many of our learners haven’t really been given a voice before, and traditional subjects like maths and English can feel rigid and limiting for them,” says Butev. “Creativity gives them room to express themselves without hard rules — they can cut, draw, stitch, make marks, and suddenly see their emotions reflected back on paper or textile. What’s beautiful is that they don’t feel the need to conform to society; they’re not trying to squeeze themselves into a shape that doesn’t fit.”