Dr Rowan Bailey, Director of Graduate Education in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield reports on an exciting new collaborative project developed alongside Arts Council Collection's latest Touring Exhibition, In My Shoes, aimed at developing new ways of thinking about audience experience and engagement.
Postgraduate students from the Department of Art and Communication and the Department of Fashion and Textiles have collaborated with the Arts Council Collection team at Longside Gallery as part of a module entitled ‘Creative Innovation and Entrepreneurship’.
The module provides opportunities for students to engage in live briefs, with the aim of bringing their creative design skills to a context outside of a University setting. As creative teams, students are encouraged to showcase innovative ideas and be entrepreneurial as project managers of their own design outcomes.
The students were tasked to come up with ideas for learning resources to accompany the Arts Council Collection Touring Exhibition, In My Shoes: Art & the Self Since the 1990s. The team of students come from a range of MA taught courses including graphic design, digital media, creative pattern cutting and fashion and textiles. These different creative skills sets led to the cross-disciplinary exchange of different working practices.
The students worked with the Arts Council Collection team based at Longside, Yorkshire Sculpture Park to explore the themes of the exhibition. They were asked to consider audiences and interactivity and to propose ways of encouraging engagement with the works on display. The research undertaken would inform design outcomes that would enrich and enhance the overall interpretation of In My Shoes.