3128 research outputs found
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Pride and prejudice: the history of LGBTQ people in British newspaper cartoons
No full textThis short article provides an overview of the LGBTQ People in British Newspaper cartoons exhibition that I curated at the University of Kent in summer 2025 with funding from the Beaverbrook Foundation
Reconsolidate, Revise, Reframe: Narrativising the Past with Diary Comics
No full textDiary comics are a readily accessible artistic and narrative practice that provides at least some of the benefits demonstrated in art therapy. In this chapter I make a case for graphic narrative reflection and self-narrativisation through diary comics, exploring this niche form of autobiography as a means of creative life writing, intentional identity formation, and constructive reframing of past experience. More than that, diary comics are offered as a portal for creativity and introspection, a methodology for slowing down, and a practice for developing sound artistic habits. I will outline the key distinctions between the two closely related fields of autobiographical comics and diary comics, drawing out relationships to art therapy modalities, and propose distancing and reframing as therapeutic mechanisms. I close this analysis of diary comic practices via a case study of narrative structuring in real-time, through the creation of my 2020 diary comic, Kicked Out During Coronavirus
Evaluation of the First Phase of the Remedial Framework — Ver. 1
Full text linkThis dataset and accompanying visualization represent the initial phase outputs from the research project Advancing Design Education: A Catch-Up Programme and Blended Learning Framework to Address Learning Disparities Among Communication Design Students. Conducted prior to student interviews, this exploratory stage utilized AI-driven emotional forecasting to simulate and predict undergraduate students' user experiences (UX) across a 14-week blended learning curriculum in communication design. The framework differentiates between standard classroom cohorts and a remedial "catch-up" group, targeting learning disparities through structured phases: Research, Analysis, Innovation, Experimentation, Engaging with Practice, Personal & Professional Connectivity, Realisation, and Communication.
Key components include weekly breakdowns of content (e.g., brief analysis, ideation, prototyping), cognitive/practical skills (e.g., triangulation for insights, modular design experimentation), and tasks (e.g., mood boards, video presentations, format evaluations). AI-generated emotion levels (e.g., stress indicators from presentations) were mapped against task-content alignment for two personas: Persona 1 (unable to attend class, higher remedial needs) and Persona 2 (able to attend). Findings highlight stressors like classroom presentations (per Advance HE research) and positive alignments in visual asset creation, informing adaptive strategies such as modular prototyping and alternative formats (e.g., video over oral delivery).
Post-interview comparisons will validate these forecasts, contributing to equitable design education models. Data includes annotated timelines, skill matrices, and UX emotion graphs for replication and extension in blended learning contexts
Colour me Pink! Being inspired by the Zandra Rhodes' Colourful Heritage Project
Full text linkShort paper about accessing and searching the Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection in VADS; written for the Association of Librarians and Information Professionals in the Social Sciences (ALISS), and based upon the presentation given during the webinar titled 'Colour me Pink! Being inspired by the Zandra Rhodes' Colourful Heritage Project'
Repair Cafes: A Case Study in Data Collection and Analysis
No full textRepair Cafes are community workshops that aim to facilitate the repair of products. There are 3652 repair cafes worldwide that are registered on the Repair Cafe International Federation (RCIF) website and an estimated 425 in the UK (Postma, Personal communication regarding the estimated 425 repair cafés in the UK. Note: Ongoing research indicates that numbers may be higher, 2025). Repair cafes collect data for various reasons; however, not all gather data. This chapter presents a case study of the approach taken by Farnham Repair Cafe (FRC) in the UK to collect and analyze data on the repairability of products using Microsoft Power BI and Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio). The data collection and analysis were completed in two phases in 2020 and 2022–24. A dashboard was developed that enabled the analysis of 3848 products received by FRC that resulted in over 2610 completed repairs as at September 2024. The dashboard was initially developed for use by FRC Trustees for management information purposes but has recently been used to provide specific information to repairers. The importance of establishing clear rules for data entry into a Microsoft Excel sheet, which sits behind the dashboard, has been particularly highlighted during the development of the dataset. The chapter highlights the background issues related to repair cafes and data collection, the data collection process used by FRC, and lessons learnt, conclusions, and recommendations that may be useful for other repair cafes and related organizations
At Home: mobilising contemporary design history through curatorial practice
Full text linkIn April 2022 At Home: panoramas de nos vies domestiques opened at the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Étienne. Co-curated by three design historians and curators, Penny Sparke, Jana Scholze and Catharine Rossi, the exhibition explored the values and meanings of the home today, and examined how designers, architects and artists have deployed these concepts in their work.
This paper positions At Home as a case study in contemporary design history. Based on a collaborative cu- ratorial approach, and focused on mobilising design’s past to interpret and communicate the present, the exhibition sought to show the relevance of design history to an international, local and non-specialist audience.
The curators organised the exhibition into five themed sections: Utopia, Shelter, Identities, Well-being, and Connectivity. Through a selection of international artworks, designs, architectural projects, photographs and films showing design-based responses to these issues past and present, the curators set out to stimulate reflection on the ways the domestic interior interacts with its inhabitants and the external world. They sought to articulate designers’ and inhabitants’ growing concerns about the climate emergency, widespread inequality, the erosion of the bound- ary between the private and public self, and the challenging aspects of today’s technological advances, and how these affect the inhabitants of the domestic sphere (Taylor, Downey and Meade, 2023). Conceived before Covid-19, researched during it, and exhibited in its aftermath, At Home also reflected on the home’s changing meaning in light of the pandemic.
The curators sought to include everyday and familiar design objects alongside critical, speculative and polit- ical projects in order to facilitate the audience’s engagement. The latter included examples of Italian design from the 1960s to 1980s; Recognising the repeated citation of these designers’ practice in Italian design historiography, we sought to provide a different perspective by contextualising these architects’ work in light of contemporary designerly concerns.
This paper seeks to examine the relationship between the history of design and its contemporary interpretation, how the developing realm of curatorial research methods and approaches can further the relevance of design history today, and how design history can inform curatorial practices and vice versa
Staircase modernism: Moholy-Nagy's English photobooks
No full textLázsló Moholy-Nagy’s work as an avant-garde photographer, painter, sculptor, film-maker and theorist has been examined extensively in books and exhibitions. However, one aspect of his output is relatively under-researched — three photobooks made in Britain in the 1930s, on the subject of Eton (private school), Oxford (town and university) and the informal street markets in London. Even when the first two of these books have been analysed, The Street Markets of London (1936) has continued to be neglected. This paper re-examines Moholy- Nagy’s three English photobooks and investigates the marginalisation of the street markets volume. It argues that, far from being ‘merely documentary’ in nature and antithetical to Moholy-Nagy’s earlier experimental photography, all three books, but especially that on street markets, show continuity with many of Moholy-Nagy’s earlier concerns and innovations, employing these in the context of a socially-engaged documentary mode which applied the artist’s ‘new vision’ as a tool for observing and analysing the modern city of the 1930s, an approach designated staircase modernism. Moholy-Nagy’s photographs depicted the street markets more effectively than previous representations, providing a visual dissection of both the spatial configuration of the markets and the character of the people and things that were gathered in them
Colour me Pink! Being inspired by the Zandra Rhodes' Colourful Heritage Project
Full text linkOn Thursday, 6th February 2025, the University for the Creative Arts, Library & Learning, and the Colourful Heritage Project hosted a webinar introducing the Zandra Rhodes’ Colourful Heritage project. The webinar highlighted the vibrant fashion images and educational resources now freely available for educational use. The project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, offers a unique platform for students and educators to explore the influential work of fashion designer Zandra Rhodes.
The webinar attracted art librarians, visual arts researchers, educators, fashion historians, curators, and museum/gallery staff, interested in learning about Rhodes' legacy and how to inspire future generations of designers and creatives. The Colourful Heritage project emphasizes engagement with fashion heritage and skill-building opportunities, particularly for underrepresented learners in Medway, Kent.
The webinar introduced participants to the expanded Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection, which now includes textiles, headpieces, hats, jewellery, and iconic pieces such as the cape worn by Freddie Mercury. The webinar also included discussions on copyright rights and the use of the collection, visual literacy, and 'slow looking' techniques for better understanding garments and fashion collections.
The event concluded with a reflection and Q&A session, offering attendees a chance to engage directly with the speakers.
Further details about the Colourful Heritage project and the Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection can be found on the website: https://mylibrary.uca.ac.uk/colourfulheritag
RISE: Realtime Immersive Sculpture Experience
No full textThe research revolves around my temporary Holst sculpture commissioned by Morley College to mark the centenary of the composer Gustav Holst and his celebrated suite The Planets.
This research draws on ‘sculpture within the digitally expanded field’ by using my site-specific sculpture as a focal point for practice- based research, by generating new knowledge through the reimagining of this site-specific sculpture as digital entities.
Using frame by frame animation as a framework to generate digital ‘moving image sculpture’ that incorporates sound. The outcomes will be generated to allow the viewer to be immersed in the work. Exploring the relationship between the viewer traditionally ‘animating’ themselves around sculpture to being ‘inanimate’ as the sculpture moves around them
Thematic analysis in an artificial intelligence-driven context: a stage-by-stage process
Full text linkAlthough a substantial body of research has explored the application of thematic analysis within qualitative enquiry, considerable variation remains regarding how scholars might operationalise the method. More importantly, the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has introduced additional complexity to the expanding corpus of secondary data. The volume and evolving characteristics of AI-generated content necessitate a critical re-evaluation of existing analytical frameworks. In response to these emerging challenges, this study develops a carefully constructed and theoretically grounded thematic analysis framework to support researchers in conducting analysis within an AI-driven context. Drawing on a previous framework, it highlights the flexibility of thematic analysis and its capacity to generate rich, contextually grounded insights, particularly in the synthesis of existing knowledge through secondary data analysis. This paper proposes the RIPES (Reflexivity, Interpretation, Procedural consistency, Evaluation, and Situatedness) model, outlines the key stages of conducting thematic analysis, examines its application to secondary data, and evaluates both the benefits and the challenges associated with this approach in qualitative enquiry. It aims to assist researchers and practitioners in critically engaging with both primary and secondary data while maintaining methodological integrity within an increasingly technologically mediated research environment
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