Category: News

Rose Sinclair to talk about Dorcas societies at the Victoria and Albert Museum

Goldsmiths Design lecturer Rose Sinclair will hold a talk at the V&A early in the new year, as part of the museum’s Art and Existence series of talks: “Welcome to the Culture Club – Dorcas Societies, crafting textiles in the front room”:

Dorcas, a woman who made garments for the poor (Bible: Acts chapter 9, versus 36-42), gave her name to countless Dorcas societies. These societies and clubs became embedded carriers of knowledge exchange and culture in textiles.  For women migrating from the Caribbean to Britain in the 1950s and 60s they continued to provide a space to share ‘church’ and textile expertise and much more within the front room, a space where these particular textiles were produced. Rose Sinclair presents a curated talk about the hidden history of Dorcas clubs and the contribution of Caribbean women to a British textiles aesthetic through what they describe as the ‘gift’ of textiles.

The talk will take place on Thursday 14th January 2016, between 2-4 pm, and it will be free to attend.

Bookings are now open on the V&A website.

Coming soon: the 2015 MA Interaction Design graduation show

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Work by Simon Rycroft at the 2014 MAID graduation show

Since the MA in Interaction Design course is slightly lengthier than the other MAs, graduates will have the spotlight all to themselves as their 2015 graduation show, for the MAID programme only, will take place on 1-4 December in the St James’s Church building at Hatcham, New Cross. Stay tuned for more information on this year’s exciting exhibition!

(And while you’re getting ready for the 2015 show, perhaps it would be a good moment to re-read our coverage of last year’s event.)

Oliver Blank talked to Goldsmiths Design students about artwork to inspire wonder and design to prevent suffering

Last week, designer and composer Oliver Blank came to Goldsmiths Design to talk about his career path and the milestones that led him to his current commitment to ‘design for the prevention of suffering’. Oliver is currently Senior Designer at Google Life Sciences, and he is an alumnus of Goldsmiths himself (albeit of an MA course in Music).

In his presentation, Oliver took the audience along on a journey through the various cities he has called home, from his native Manchester to Helsinki, New Orleans and San Francisco, and through the experiences that inspired his work. After staying in New Orleans during Hurricane Isaac in 2012, for instance, Oliver helped put together a means of providing information to locals by pairing up the city’s last working means of communication, phone landlines, with an informative Twitter account. And while bedridden in San Francisco after breaking his hip, Oliver reflected on missed opportunities and thought up ‘The one who got away‘, a phone line where callers can leave messages for lost connections from the past.

Oliver shared with Goldsmiths Design students some of the lessons he learned from his successes and failures. Designers should always think beyond building an item- they should consider how it will be used: ‘don’t just design the thing, design for deployment’. It is also important for them to figure out their ‘why’s, what guides them in every step of their activity. Oliver Blank has found his motivation: to create artwork that inspires wonder, and to design for preventing suffering.

Inflatable cinema for the launch of MULTIPLEXER journal

Have you ever seen an inflatable cinema in a church before? This unusual setting is precisely what visitors were able to enjoy at the MULTIPLEXER launch event, last week in the St James church at Hatcham, New Cross. Short films by POI and Lukas Valiauga were projected on an inflatable installation.

The Design department at Goldsmiths and Vehicles for Experimental Practice launched Issue Zero of the book-zine MULTIPLEXER, which brings together contributions from Lucas Bertinotti & Fabio Stefanonni, JODI, Marguerite Humeau, Sarah Kember, Mark D’Inverno, Alexandra Midal, Noam Toran, Jimmy Loizeau, Michael Mouyal, Laura Potter, Stuart Bannocks, El Ultimo Grito, Charcoal, Social Mining Union, Oswald de Andrade, Naho Matsuda & Alicia Simpson. On the same occasion, a call for submissions to Issue One was opened.

You can see more images from the event on our Facebook page.