Category: News

First year student wins climate change-focused art competition

Nicholas Bennett, a first year BA Design student at Goldsmiths, is the winner of the #CreateCOP25 competition launched by artist management agency Art Partner. The contest invited young creatives to submit artistic proposals that engage with contemporary issues around climate change.

Nicholas’s winning entry is a waterproof formal suit for people to wear during flooded commutes:

I created this work a year ago, whilst exploring the ways people use objects to protect themselves from environmental forces. I started creating solutions for flooding with the everyday objects that surrounded me. This issue is becoming increasingly prevalent, since I’ve completed this work the news has been constantly filled with people living in floods such as recently in the UK and Venice, I used temporary waterproofs as a solution. It also fascinated me how we attempt to face climate consequences. I wanted to continue to understand the lengths people will go to, to carry on with ‘life’.

More information about the competition and the winners can be found on the Art Partner website.

“Women of Walthamstow: Cloth, Activism and Empathy” – talk with Rose Sinclair

When: 5 October 2019, 14:30 – 15:30

Where: William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, London

Free, drop-in

Goldsmiths Design lecturer Rose Sinclair discusses the presence of Dorcas Societies – charitable textile-making clubs – in and around Walthamstow, exploring how women used crafting practices to initiate social change.

Rose has authored several textile books, her most recent being Textiles and Fashion, Materials, Design and Technology (2015). Her current research focuses on black British women their crafting practices, and aesthetics. She uses installations and crafting workshops to discuss issues of gender, authenticity, identity, migration and settlement.

A key element in her research is the study of Dorcas Clubs and Societies and their used as a catalyst for black women to navigate safe textiles making spaces. Her research reflects on how the history of the Dorcas Clubs and Societies can influence contemporary textiles networks and practices.

MA student work at City Co-Labs Hack exhibition

MA students Jheel Kankaria and Tajwar Aziz participated in the the City Co-Labs Hack at Makerversity this summer, facilitated by Goldsmiths Design Associate Lecturer (and alumnus) Hefin Jones. They will be presenting the ideas that they developed as part of London Design Festival. Their proposal explores how public space can acknowledge the work of unpaid carers and their accessibility needs on public transport.

Makerversity’s Civic Hacks address the big social issues of our time. Fostering collaboration between makers and the public, they explore design’s role in creating radical solutions to the problems we face.

The exhibition will be on at Somerset House from September 16th -22nd; further details can be found here.

Resilient Alliances #2: Heretic Ecologies

Resilient Alliances is a series of events set up against the dominant narrative of managerial and commodified present. We offer competing stories and collective tools to face up to the traumas to come.

In the second lecture-workshop of the series, Heretic Ecologies, Most Dismal Swamp curator Dane Sutherland and Dr Daniel Rourke will explore the resilience of the ontological category of the “human” vis-a-vis challenges posed by temporal and species hybridity. Continue reading “Resilient Alliances #2: Heretic Ecologies”