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The Meaningless-ness of Protest: An Urban Pseudo-Leisure
Full text linkUsing recent protest actions in London as a case study, this paper argues the demonstration’s over-normalisation produces a paradox in which urban protest becomes increasingly politically inconsequential. When protest is absorbed into the rhythms of everyday urban life, its capacity to generate meaningful political engagement is diminished, and the perceived effectiveness of collective action is weakened. This phenomenon is compounded by widespread public indifference, limited governmental responsiveness, and a growing sense of frustration and exhaustion among activists, which narrows the discourse of protest itself. These dynamics render protests into a form of alienated pseudo-leisure, rather than a politically disruptive practice. As people march down the street, their collective ‘walk’ is not only the physical act of frustration, but also the reflection of the desired leisure that has yet to exist (Songpetchmongkol & Tam, 2026).
The paper highlights a central dilemma: in contexts where protest is restricted or prohibited, collective mobilisation often carries significant political weight; yet in cities where protest is permitted, routinised, and rendered safe, it risks becoming symbolically hollow. Through the lenses of the recent protest by different groups in London on national identity and immigration, this analysis illustrates how activist movements may become unfulfilling, ineffective, and meaningless when urban conditions erode participation and collective agency, interrogating how political expression is shaped by the structural affordances and limitations of urban life. Through the experimental thought exercise, this paper proposes to imagine a new form of socio-spatial urban setting that would allow protests to be routinised but still remain meaningful and impactful–unsettling protests that actually disrupt the urban landscapes. Essentially, if a protest is indeed the ‘walk’ toward the urban pseudo-leisure, does its meaninglessness still matter? This paper critically pencils the insights that may help future activist movements avoid discursive dead-ends and pursue more impactful avenues for social transformation
The Weight of Being: Vulnerability, Resilience, and Mental Health in Art
No full textThe painting Red Flag comes from a memory I have of seeing a Hindu temple desecrated with racist graffiti. I witnessed this as a 14 year old child in the early 1980’s at a time when race-riots where taking place across the UK. I recall enjoying the sublime, misty, wet and mountainous landscape, and how this peaceful and idyllic view was disrupted by an old red-brick dilapidated building covered in racist graffiti. The title Red Flag comes from the flags often seen on top of Hindu temples as red is seen as a sacred colour in Hinduism.
Curated by Angela Thomas, this new exhibition explores artistic expression and mental health. Through depictions of deeply personal and collective experiences, it examines the powerful ways in which artists capture vulnerability, resilience, and their search for solace.
Including the work of a diverse range of twentieth century and contemporary artists and their varying perspectives, The Weight of Being showcases how artists have captured the psychological and emotional impact of societal pressures, resilience in the face of adversity, and existential uncertainty.
Alongside dozens of artworks drawn from galleries and collections across the UK, the portraits, landscapes, and figurative studies of the lesser-known artist John Wilson McCracken (1936–1982) are woven throughout. Denied the opportunity to return to the Slade School of Art following a period of hospitalisation for mental health reasons, McCracken spent much of his career in Hartlepool, producing work that reflects a profound sensitivity to the emotional and social pressures of his time. Shaped by personal and collective struggles, his art offers a deeply human perspective on the exhibition’s themes, revealing how external forces imprint themselves on the mind, body, and creative spirit.
Through the wide range of artists, mediums, and represented demographics, The Weight of Being is intended to spark meaningful conversations about resilience, identity, and emotional well-being, offering a profound reflection on the toll of existence and the strength found in shared experiences, ultimately fostering hope and deepening understanding.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a wide-ranging programme of cultural events for adults and children including talks, conversations, workshops, music and Wednesday Late openings until 9pm, as well as our acclaimed programme for state sector primary schools. Please see our What’s On page for more information.
The Weight of Being is a Two Temple Place exhibition, conceived and curated by Angela Thomas, as part of our cultural programme. Angela Thomas has been curator at Hartlepool Art Gallery for four years, where she leads a varied exhibition programme featuring contemporary art, photography, and the historic collection of Hartlepool Borough Council
Boundaryless Retail: In-store Technologies Shaping Fashion Customer Experience Journeys
Full text linkPurpose: This study explores how young consumers use in-store technologies (ISTs) in fashion retail and their role in shaping the customer experience journey (CXJ), with particular attention to the underexplored integration of ISTs with personal devices across fluid physical and digital channels.
Design/methodology/approach: The study adopts a qualitative, multi-method approach, combining in-store observations and in-depth interviews with young fashion consumers, with data analysed thematically to identify behavioural patterns, motivations, and technology interactions across the CXJ.
Findings: Findings identify two dominant store-visit motivations: planned purchasing following online research and inspiration-led browsing without purchase intent. Smartphones emerged as central across all CXJ stages, revealing the interplay of convenience, interactivity, and integration. The study also uncovers persistent misalignments between retailers’ intended use of ISTs and customers’ actual behaviours, with several technologies perceived as underutilised or poorly aligned with consumer needs.
Originality/value: This study makes three key theoretical contributions: it redefines the role of ISTs in fashion retail, demonstrates how technology interactions shape the CXJ, and highlights the increasing blurring of digital and physical store boundaries.
Practical implications: Retailers are advised to invest strategically in ISTs that are accessible, intuitive, and aligned with customers’ varied intentions, whether purchasing, seeking inspiration, or exploring products, rather than deploying technology as an end in itself.
Social implications: The study highlights the importance of maintaining human warmth amid automation, emphasising the importance of inclusive phygital retail environments that reduce customer anxiety, support diverse needs, and enhance the social experience of in-store visits
SewSimple in Practice: Designing an E-Textile Tutorial for Primary Computing Education
Full text linkWe present a tutorial for teaching e-textiles with BBC micro:bit and the "SewSimple" maker kit aimed at developing computational making skills. We approach instructional design by drawing on the authors' lived experiences as schoolteachers, computing education and HCI scholars, and learning technologists, while engaging with the English national curriculum through an interdisciplinary lens that integrates computing with art and design. This approach facilitates the development of creative and constructing skills essential to e-textile design, while enabling students to apply computing knowledge to create functional artifacts. Our work shows how art and design can be effectively integrated with technical skill development. Furthermore, we demonstrate that "SewSimple" offers both usability and educational affordances necessary to support teaching objectives and achieve English computing curriculum goals
Slippage of Leisure: Walking as a Form of Socio-Political Way of Transforming Civic Experience
No full textThe study sees walking as a critical subject, looking at how walking serves as a revolutionary way to reinverting networking and transform the experience of social life. With the blurred boundary between the discourse of leisure and political functionality, the study posits walking as a participatory radicalisation of a determined and ongoing interest, involved in urban sociological struggles. The chapter employs Bangkok and Hong Kong as two case studies, addressing the discourse of which walking becomes a legitimate cultural force and negotiates with the authorities.
Walking is undeniably different in cities of the Global South with notable cases of Hong Kong and Bangkok demonstrating how the sociological landscape of walking participates in responding to the political injustice and eagerness to express oneself or the collective desire. The practice of walking in Bangkok and Hong Kong marks the discursive change, where revolution against the state power is no longer understood as overthrowing the governing body; but instead, being seen as the creation of bonding and reclaiming the public space - highlighting the sense of space, place, and community across different scales of the urban environment. A walk down the streets connect people and the environment, inhibits the sociopolitical tissues, and questions the temporal void in the civic setting. This paper aims to investigate the relation of walking cities and their collective identity in pursuit of leisure of the ideals
Emphasis and Erasure: Laundering Extractive Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon
No full textIn 1910, on the cusp of the rubber fever that gripped South America, New York photographer Dana Bertran Merrill was hired to document the transnational construction of the Madeira-Mamoré railroad, built deep in the Brazilian Amazon. In his portraits of the North American administrative class, streamlined white suits generated a visible hierarchy of race and rank that positioned their wearers above labour and beyond disease, ensuring that they remained ‘literally but also figuratively enlightened’ (Dyer 1997, p. 101). The absence of dirt and disorder in dress amounted to a considerable presence: of cleanliness and whiteness, order and rationality, speed and progress on the railroad.
Merrill’s camera smoothed over the lived and material realities of white tropical suits, which were easily soiled, difficult to maintain, and required frequent laundering by the Caribbean women who laboured in the Steam Laundry on site. In foregrounding their hidden labour of washing, ironing and starching, this paper responds to anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler’s call to pay attention to ‘the archive’s granular rather than seamless texture’ (2009, p. 53), but also considers the metaphorical sense of laundering with reference to Merrill’s photographs and the written accounts that North American wearers left behind. Merrill laundered the muddy truth behind US extractive capitalism: the monumental loss of human life, environmental devastation, and expropriation of Indigenous land and livelihoods
Scenographic thinking is heterotopic. Possible scenography, heterotopia, and retracing an unruly archive: the intersection of design and scenography in expert theatre practice
No full textThis PhD by Public Works argues for ‘scenographic thinking’ within design methodologies, integrating embodied practice and process. It presents a conceptual framework of ‘heterotopias’, expanding Michel Foucault’s premise, to argue for ‘scenotopia’ as a new and original contribution to the Theatre and Performance lexicon, addressing the current gap in knowledge which exists at the intersections of theatre design and scenography in practice. In examining my process driven practice-as-research I isolate the concept of ‘scenographics’ and ‘scenographic thinking’ as central to my practice, where ‘scenography’ encompasses both a design practice and a discovery method and an investigative analysis of the potential of scenographics.
I draw on my personal archive of thirty years of theatre design scenographic practice, investigating publications containing the works, the published plays, and museum study collections where works are held. Drawing on the work by Joanne Tompkins (20I4) I apply the Foucauldian lens of heterotopias to my practice. The work of Rachel Hann (2019, 2023), Joslin McKinney and Philip Butterworth (2015), Joslin McKinney and Scott Palmer (2017) and theories of theatre, scenography, and design related discourse (Lawson 2004, 2006, 2009; Cross 2023) elucidate the ideas and practices that my work builds on.
I advocate scenographic thinking, as defined by Platform Scenography (ten Bosch, Groot Nibbelink, Mann and Scholts (2013), as connected to thinking-drawing (Burnett 2014; Field 2021). I argue scenographic thinking as the design practice for conceptualizing ‘possible scenography’ and for producing an assemblage that is called a set design. Whereupon the direction, lighting, and sound design join to craft the scenography – as ‘performance scenography’. Thinking scenographics is thinking about possible performance scenography.
This thesis activates scenographic thinking about past practice as strategies for making and reading scenography, as both provocation and a guide for other theatre practitioners, designers in other fields. A lens to read and curate theatre and theatre design and methods to retrace practice through scenographic thinking and design theories
Design School Contextual and Theoretical Studies (CTS): An Anthology of Second Year Essays
No full textThis publication features a selection of essays written by secondary students studying contextual and theoretical studies in 2024/2
Applied Psychology in Fashion: A Research-Informed Approach
No full textThis book offers the most comprehensive and in-depth exploration of applied psychology in fashion to date, drawing on cutting-edge research and theory from across psychology and related disciplines. It examines the relationship between fashion, dress, and the self; the psychological impact of dress and fashion industry practices on consumers and the industry’s workforce; and the role of psychology in understanding fashion consumption, sustainability, and digital innovation.
Bringing together perspectives from areas such as social, personality, cognitive, clinical, occupational, and positive psychology, the authors investigate how fashion influences the self, mental health, and well-being. They also explore how psychological insights can inform inclusive design, ethical marketing, and sustainable fashion practices. The volume highlights the concrete contributions psychologists can make to steer the fashion industry towards a healthier, more inclusive, and environmentally responsible future.
This is an essential resource for students, researchers, and professionals working in fashion psychology, fashion design, marketing, and management. It will also appeal to those interested in the broader cultural and psychological dimensions of fashion
From Institutions to Falchas: Rethinking Cultural Relations through Collective Practice
Full text linkDrawing on the Asia-Europe Cultural Diplomacy Lab and case studies from institutions including Het Nieuwe Instituut, UAL, and the History of Science Museum in Oxford, this essay argues for a shift in international cultural relations from hierarchical diplomacy toward pluriversal, care-based cooperation. Using the falcha, a Newari communal resting space as its central metaphor, the essay proposes that cultural infrastructure (both physical and digital) should function less as a site of transaction and more as a node for collective dreaming, mutual learning, and decolonial world-building