Category: Staff

Visiting lecturer Liam Healy: “I love being part of the open test-space of ideas that education allows”

Today, an interview with freelance designer Liam Healy, who got his BA in Design at Goldsmiths in 2009 and now teaches on the course:

Q: How was your own time as a Design student at Goldsmiths? What did you expect when you first started out and what do you think you got out of it in the end?

A: I wanted to study fine art during my foundation and found the design course after deciding that fine art wasn’t for me. My main expectation was the unknown! I found the course challenged any notion that I had of design before I joined, and it continues to do so now. I think the most important thing I took away from the course was a design process.

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The Birds wearable experience from Sets & Props workshop

Q: How did you find opportunities after you graduated, and what would you say are the pros and cons of carving your own path, as you did by founding Jailmake and freelancing?

A: I think we graduated at a funny time – there was a strange gloomy atmosphere, the recession had hit and there didn’t seem to be many options for us. Post-graduation was a bit of a downer. Jamie (the other founder of Jailmake) and I both discussed how we couldn’t find places to work that made the sort of work we wanted to do, or used a process that we wanted to use. After graduating we worked together at a new start-up in Spain, and that’s when we decided to set up Jailmake. We wanted to use the design processes and collaborative atmosphere of the studio/workshop that we were part of at Goldsmiths to realise projects through a process with making at its core. Setting up alone without much experience wasn’t ideal or easy, but we decided it was a good time, because we had nothing to lose. It was most difficult convincing people to allow us to do work for them – we had to try to win work without a portfolio. Continue reading “Visiting lecturer Liam Healy: “I love being part of the open test-space of ideas that education allows””

Ruby Hoette to run summer school workshop in Sofia, Bulgaria

The programme leader for our MA in Fashion, Ruby Hoette, will be running a workshop in Sofia, Bulgaria, this summer, as part of the Know-How/Show-How Summer School. Ruby will tutor the MODUS workshop between 6-10 July 2015 alongside Amsterdam-based artist and researcher Elisa van Joolen. The session will be “an analysis of contemporary dress codes such as that manifest themselves in the streets of Sofia”.

You can sign up until 22 May 2015 on the website of the Know-How/Show-How Summer School. The program  “is meant to support the development of young emerging designers and creatives interested in working in interdisciplinary manner with international professionals, educators and experts from the european’s creative and educational community.” Tuition fee for the summer school is 200 euros, not including travel and accommodation costs.

Dr Mathilda Tham spoke on gender and design at Whitechapel Gallery

Gender Identity and Design at Whitechapel Gallery

What gender have designed objects, design disciplines or even design itself? How can we open up for a design and a world that is less gender polarised? These were questions Dr Mathilda Tham, co-convenor of MA Design Futures and Metadesign and PhD supervisor, explored in her talk during an event chaired by acclaimed design critic Alice Rawsthorne, author of Hello World. Gabriel Ann Maher, of Eindhoven Academy, shared her insights and work in the remit of gender identity and design and transgender.

“Routledge Handbook for Sustainability and Fashion”: new book from Dr Mathilda Tham

Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion

Routledge Handbook for Sustainability and Fashion, which Dr Mathilda Tham, co-convenor of MA Design Futures and Metadesign and PhD supervisor, has co-edited with Kate Fletcher, is now out. With the bold ambition of setting the research agenda for fashion and sustainability for the next ten years, the book comprises chapters from a broad range of key scholars and practitioners in the field of sustainability/fashion, including John Thackara, John Ehrenfeldt, Lynda Grose, Ann Thorpe, Otto von Busch and Joanne Entwistle. Mathilda Tham’s chapter “Futures of futures studies in fashion” draws on a framework for peace building to explore new pathways for sustainability endeavours in fashion.

‘Sustainable Fashion has in the past often seemed gestural, borrowing from the discourse of Sustainable Design to only ever slightly lessen a massive problem. This selection proves that Sustainable Fashion Design is now a conceptually mature field with much to teach other disciplines of design.’ –Cameron Tonkinwise, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

‘Containing the work of leading thinkers and activists, this Handbook is a much-needed volume, which broadens and deepens our understanding of the complexities of the conjoining of sustainability and fashion. A truly collaborative initiative, in its content and method it provides guidance, challenges, but also a positive way forward for sustainability and fashion to co-exist, despite what sometimes seem to be overwhelming odds.’ –Hazel Clark, Parsons The New School for Design, USA