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#end_of_empire
No full textPublication collating materials related to the end_of_empire project, a commission by In-Situ and British Textile Biennial
Design Otherwise: Transforming Design Education in the Arab Region
Get PDFHow can we study and teach design in a way that is critical, socially engaged and relevant to place? In this timely book, Danah Abdulla challenges us to imagine a design education and culture that moves beyond blindly borrowing Eurocentric models and frameworks. Drawing on learnings from work with design students, educators and designers in the Arab region, with a particular focus on Jordan and featuring examples from Lebanon, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, Abdulla creates a dialogue with those who have most at stake in education to imagine how we can develop a collaborative, contextually based and socially relevant design education.
By first contextualising higher education and design education in the region, and examining the issues and challenges that are pertinent to the development of curricula and pedagogy, such as power, bureaucracy, language and access, Abdulla considers the purpose and relevance of design education in contemporary postcolonial societies. She explores how regional identities and class divisions shape the development of design cultures, as well as different perceptions of design and its value. Abdulla highlights design's role in society and the models of curricula and pedagogy appropriate for developing contextually situated design education. Outlining skills and strategies for equipping future designers, she proposes new possibilities for forms of practice and an actionable framework for developing design education
Scoping innovative retail product returns pathways
Get PDFPurpose
Product returns in omnichannel retail are wasteful and generate significant financial and environmental impact. Returns systems often suffer from low efficiency and effectiveness. Innovative technology and service solutions are proposed by an increasing number of startups, with many enabling new more effective and sustainable pathways for returned products to be sold again whilst conserving product value.
Design/methodology/approach
By adopting an engaged research approach involving close dialogue with retailers as well as technology and returns service providers, this paper explores the implications of adopting these innovations and the outcomes for retailers and suppliers, employees, and consumers. Using the lens of the retail technology adoption framework by Shankar et al. (2021), this paper investigates how innovation in technology and process can enable alternative pathways for consumer product returns. Some offer added value to consumers, and many reduce waste and allow retailers to conserve the value of returned products.
Findings
Retailers increasingly take control of secondary markets to increase the retained value of returned products, shorten pathways to resale, and increase resale rates. Peer-to-peer returns, “trying whilst the courier waits,” and the returns ecosystem approach all optimize returns management, impacting both the forward and reverse logistics of retail.
Research limitations/implications
The study focused on fashion items, but offers relevance for household items, furniture, sports equipment, and other items with similar characteristics.
Originality/value
This paper suggests extending the retail technology adoption framework to include the aspect of value conservation, in addition to the existing value-adding and commoditising features. The new pathways enable retailers to address the challenges of high returns rates, financial pressure, whilst reducing environmental impact
Vital Signs Part 3
No full textCollaborating with the long-term displaced people in Africa means direct engagement with and being in relationship to, some of the biggest global challenges we face; chronic poverty, hunger, social injustice, inequality, lack of education, gender-based violence and climate change. The Vital Signs project takes place with people whose lives are permanently affected by all the above hardships. Vital Signs is a project which began through invitation by UNHCR Mozambique & UNHCR Malawi to scope how our ways of thinking, working & collaborating might have a positive impact on the long-term displacement of refugees in Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi and Maratane Refugee settlement in Nampula Province, Mozambique. The refugee population represents multiple nations: Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, and Ethiopia. Scoping missions were conducted in May & October 2022 to understand the nature of life and environment in which people live and to value and co create a reciprocal ways of working, through relational practice and knowledge exchange
This trip saw the responses of the "Pockets of Love" piece by LCF students shared back with the original makers in Dzaleka. In turn, the DAL makers shared a new piece - an embroidered map of where they live and a new response piece, for us to bring back to the UK. This new work will be created into a further design brief for our students to respond to in the next academic year.
This trip also marks the moment that DAL became a legally registered refugee led organisation and recipients of a piece of land to build their premises upon
TODAY, AT THE DUMP, THE WORLD IS IN THE BIN
No full textShort story included in 22 Fictions: New Writing from Desperate Literature and Brick Lane Bookshop.
“If 22 Fictions is an argument for the short form, it is winning. A book worth studying.”
— Isabel Waidner, Goldsmiths Prize winning author of Sterling Karat Gold and Corey Fah Does Social Mobility
A curated selection drawn from the first five years of two indie bookseller-run projects—Madrid’s Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize and London’s Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize—these 22 Fictions feature Purim celebrations, multiple Stuart Halls, a kidnapping, gender injustice, an aeroplane fleeing a volcano, a chicken shop menu, climate change, a shaved horse, activism, and much besides, all the while roaming from a Cornish farming village to a Paris basement, a hotel bar, an island with a steep hill, a location deep within the internet, a family dinner table and further.
Proudly internationalist and profoundly imaginative, the 22 stories in this vital anthology are wild, innovative, funny, sad, harrowing and tender. Together they celebrate the energy and diversity of short fiction writing today, pushing the boundaries of the form into new territory and bringing together a radical new generation of writers from across the globe.
Featuring work from:
Shola Von Reinhold, Leeor Ohayon, Tom Benn, Alice Haworth-Booth, N G F Clark, Danielle Giles, Francesca Reece, Melody Razak, Mariana Roa Oliva, Giovanna Iozzi, Suey Kweon, K. Lockwood Jefford, Katie Hale, Max Lury, Jay Gao, Aoife Inman, Andrea Mason, Aisha Phoenix, Isha Karki, Jack Houston, Siri Katinka Valdez, Rajasree Variyar.
Foreword by Joanna Walsh and an introduction by Wendy Erskine, former judges of the two prizes.
Edited by Kate Ellis and Robert Loyko-Greer, published by CHEERIO.
“Bold and emboldening — each story here engages with the form in new and rewarding ways.”
— Gurnaik Johal, author of We Move and Saraswati
“Partnering with two of the world’s most forward-thinking booksellers to publish the razor-edge of contemporary writing speaks exactly to the DIY spirit CHEERIO was founded on. A dream.”
– Darren Biabowe Barnes, Editorial Director of CHEERIO Publishin
Gawain is Not a Hero? Tensions Between the Heroic and the Complex Subject in Representations of Sir Gawain in Art
Get PDFSir Gawain, as depicted in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK), has traditionally been represented in illustrations accompanying translations of the poem. I have previously referred to this as an "established visual language"—a framework that oscillates between portraying Gawain as a conventional heroic figure and as a complex, introspective subject. On one hand, he appears as a visual cipher of the knight: depicted in action, traveling, and fighting. On the other, artists attempt to convey his interiority—his regret, fear, and anticipation. While these representations may appear to depict the same Gawain, they reveal an underlying fault line: where iterations of Gawain, such as the man of action vs the introspective subject reflect significantly, and uncomfortably, on one another.
This plenary will explore Gawain as both a site and sight of crisis, moving beyond the traditional monomyth. Unlike conventional heroes, his transformation remains unresolved, complicating the notion of heroic incorporation. This ambiguity, rather than diminishing his significance, presents compelling opportunities for contemporary artists who seek to reimagine this figure in new and innovative ways
All YIN No YANG: Geometric Abstraction of Oil Paintings with Trained Models, Noise and Self-reference
Get PDFThe rapid development of Diffusion models and the declarative nature of interfaces developed for the public require automation methods, where media production can harness natural language as a mode of representation but not necessarily of interaction with humans. This article describes an image-to-video Diffusion system which removes practitioners from the process of defining prompts when producing images with conditional reference, documenting a set of results with a custom dataset of oil paintings. Our research focuses on the appropriation of trained model ensembles that are coordinated to produce indefinite sets of frames with occasional human intervention utilising timeline-based architectures. The proposed system automates a CLIP-guided DDPM with a supplementary depth estimation model and through a set of compositing techniques we found that results with coincidental and diverging descriptions can be useful for moving-image element composition. Our experiments focus on the representation of human figure and its morphological transformation
AI-Powered Fact Verification: Analyzing Public Consensus Through Machine Learning
Get PDFThe proliferation of misinformation on digital platforms necessitates scalable, automated truth-verification systems. This paper presents a machine learning-based framework that analyzes the alignment between social media posts and declarative statements using a transformer-based architecture. By experimenting with different classification paradigms—including consensus estimation, sentiment evaluation, and binary/multiclass predictions—the system’s capabilities and limitations are systematically assessed. Empirical results reveal that binary classification yields the highest accuracy, while sentiment-based alignment, though partially effective, fails to capture factual correspondence reliably. These findings contribute to designing robust, interpretable tools for large-scale misinformation detection
Lignin Oleate-Enhanced Tinted Mineral Sunscreens: Towards Inclusive Photoprotection for Skin of Colour
Get PDFCurrently, the cosmetic industry is still not inclusive in catering for a broad range of skin tones, particularly for consumers with melanin-rich skin. This is especially true in sun care (Geisler et al., 2021). An interest in more naturally-derived sun care formulations has grown, both due to chemophobia and fear of the impact of sun care formulas on health and environmental safety (Wu et al., 2024). Lignin-based materials are steadily gaining interest in the cosmetic space due to their sustainable, multi-functional formulation benefits, along with their potential in enhancing the UV performance of sun care formulations (Espinoza-Acosta, Figueroa-Espinoza and RosaAlcaraz, 2022; Piccinino et al., 2022). This experiment explored lignin oleate’s (LO) role as a functional active in sun care applications, its effect on the physical and organoleptic characteristics of a mineral sunscreen preparation with high naturality
Site, Illumination and Joy
No full textThe pandemic reframed our relationship with the physical environments that we learn and teach within. This practical workshop encourages a radical reimagining of the spaces within art and design schools. Participants will be invited to respond to a series of prompts that encourage critical reflection in relation to their own lived experiences and the ecosystems they teach within – with a focus on sharing practice, challenges and initiatives. We will use speculative design methods to think through collective making, working collaboratively to build the art school of the future