Impact case study database

UAL’s research in Comics Studies has been highly influential in British higher education in the arts, at the heart of the creation of a subject in its own right rather than an adjunct to ‘lit. crit.’ or film studies. UAL’s work in the area has been consolidated by the setting up of the Comics Research Hub (CoRH), providing a context for the wealth of ongoing comics research at the University and for other academics working in the field worldwide. The day after the launch of CoRH at UAL in 2018, the website received over 2,000 hits; it has been name-checked at major comics-related events since (e.g. ‘What is Manga? Exploring Japanese manga and visual narratives’ symposium at the British Library, 2019). CoRH is the world’s largest comics research facility with an influential membership, in addition to the University’s internationally recognised comics research staff. The network has provided opportunities for collaboration and impact both internally and externally, in the UK and worldwide.

The audience for Comics Studies is both public and academic, with a notable and important overlap between scholarship and general culture in this context. Often, individuals engage with comics initially as fans, then, through a public-facing event or exhibition, become involved at an academic level. An illustration of this is the annual Comics Forum (est. 2009), a central event in the comics scholarship calendar, co-convened by Hague in collaboration with Leeds Central Library as part of the Thought Bubble Comic Art Festival. Leeds City Council Librarian: “We welcome this diverse forum as part of the wider Thought Bubble Festival … which draws new audiences to Central Library every year”. [5.1.] Assistant Director, Thought Bubble: "Having Comics Forum running alongside the festival has helped to set [the festival] apart as a unique event: one which celebrates creators and artists, and views comics as a serious tool, which can educate, enlighten and inform." [5.2.] A number of individuals attending the 11 conferences to date have gone on to successful PhD studies at UAL, subsequently taking up posts in Comics Studies at other universities. Three major research titles (Routledge) have resulted from Comics Forum: Representing Multiculturalism in Comics and Graphic Novels (2015, eds Hague & Ayaka), Representing Acts of Violence in Comics and Contexts of Violence in Comics (both 2019, edited by Hague, Horton and Mickwitz).

UAL’s research has had cultural, public-facing impact. Sabin was consultant for the British Museum’s record-breaking exhibition Manga (2019). The Museum aimed to reach a younger audience and increase visitor numbers. Sabin (with UAL curating staff) advised on elements such as narrative wayfinding and dealing with 'extreme' content. The exhibition attracted a diverse audience profile, with 43% aged 25–34—the youngest audience on record at the Museum—and high levels of overseas visitors. (Total number of visitors: 175,134.) [5.3.] The exhibition had approximately 16,000 visitors in the first four days, and was sold out in the final months. It received extensive media coverage internationally (Europe, USA and Japan).

Sabin’s Marie Duval project led to the creation of an open access digital archive, a touring exhibition (Berlin, London, New York) and two co-authored books. The archive pioneered unique software, and differs from other archives of 19^th-century material in that it brings the work of an individual practitioner together in one place. It is the largest digital comics project yet funded. Media coverage included BBC Radio and The Guardian. The project has shown that a woman is key to the development of comics as an artform; until that point, the history of comics had been presented as a predominantly male realm. In 2020, the exhibition travelled to the USA where, typically, it had been believed that the comics form originated. American comic The Yellow Kid was first published in 1896; the work in the Duval exhibition dates from 1869–85, challenging the widely held belief that comics is an American artform. Sabin, with Simon Grennan and Julian Waite (2018), published Marie Duval (Myriad Press), an illustrated study of Duval’s work; Marie Duval: Maverick Victorian Cartoonist ( Sabin, Grennan and Waite, Manchester University Press) was published in 2020.

A UAL/British Library collaboration on a CDP PhD project based on digital comics has been designed to shed light on the collection and management of ‘emerging formats’: ‘Collecting UK Digital Comics: social, cultural and technological factors for cultural institutions’ looks at how cultural institutions respond to innovative digital material, and the cultural, social and ethical questions that inform collection-building. The project is an examination of the collecting culture of the British Library and how its collecting and archiving policies can be modified and progressed to incorporate this kind of publication (AHRC-funded, three-year studentship supervised by Sabin and Hague, with the British Library’s Digital Curator, Contemporary British Collections).

Advised by Sabin, the University has secured major additions of comics material to the UAL Archives and Special Collections Centre (ASCC) including the Les Coleman Collection, which features a significant collection of work by Robert Crumb. UAL’s comics archives attract researchers from all over the world; CoRH members John Miers and Will Grady were researchers-in-residence at the Centre. As examples of academic work picked up by a non-academic forum and promoted to the wider comics community, Miers’ interpretation of his own health journey, through the comics medium of graphic medicine, a growing field in the medical humanities, investigated how producing graphic autobiography might help artists to express and process experiences of illness. His award-winning comic, So I Guess My Body Pretty Much Hates Me Now (Best One-Shot, 2020 Broken Frontier awards) [5.4.], is now held in the Wellcome Collection Library. Miers presented this work at ‘Drawing Yourself In and Out of It’ (2nd International Amsterdam Comics Conference, 2018, with a keynote by Mickwitz). [5.5.]

Material from the archive forms the subject of many exhibitions and projects, providing a valuable resource for scholars from inside and outside the University. Sabin, Horton and Hague were also involved in negotiations around the ‘Hansen Bid’ to save for the nation a large comics collection of children’s titles, owned by UK comics collector Peter Hansen.

In 2020, CoRH hosted the annual ‘International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference’ (IGNCC), the main annual conference in the field’s European calendar. With the event taking place early in the first lockdown, CoRH took the decision to host it online. The conference’s innovative structure (using FigShare), theme and content received excellent reviews, with a global spread of delegates (highest proportion: USA, 50%; UK, 21%). By 31 December 2020, the conference platform had received 39,234 views, with 3,303 downloads. [5.6.] Leading comics research society, Gesellschaft für Comicforschung, congratulated CoRH for the way the IGNCC conference was transformed into a virtual conference, with the organisers saying that “it has now set standards for digital academic conferences with its very nearly seamless combination of recorded open access lectures, lively synchronous online Q&A sessions and extended debate in social media. A model, then, for ComFor’s annual conference this fall...”. [5.7.]

Horton co-founded the Applied Comics Network in 2015, a network for individuals who work with graphic narrative and information. In 2019, an event at Newcastle examined user-experience design in heritage and cultural institutions; comics in classrooms and libraries; healthcare and patient information. As a result the broader impact has been to disseminate research from a variety of fields to a wider, public, audience. Comics Jam—Preserving British Comics History, a collaboration between the British Cartoon Museum, University of Dundee Scottish Centre for Comics Studies and CoRH, was held in November 2019, with high-profile speakers including Posy Simmonds and Jonathan Ross. Horton has recently published ‘Comic Books, Science (Fiction) and Public Relations’, in Simon Collister and Sarah Roberts-Bowman Visual & Spatial Public Relations: Strategic Communication Beyond Text (Routledge, 2018), which addresses directly the use of comics to engage with different audiences, and thus the impact that comics can have in the public relations field, identifying how comic books have been used extensively in promoting health campaigns across the world.

CoRH members act as consultants for an extensive range of external organisations and provide press commentary on comics-related issues. Sabin has been Consultant Curator, 19th Century, for 2014 British Library exhibition Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK, which broke attendance records; Tate Gallery, Rude Britannia, 2010; House of Illustration; The Guardian, British Museum; bid assessor, Wellcome Institute, Fulbright, Leverhulme, AHRC, Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

Sabin has been described as “a cultural studies critic and journalist whose comics-related works Adult Comics (1992) and Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art (1996) have become standards in the history of Comics Studies”. [5.8.] The Sabin Award for Comics Scholarship (est. 2016), “intended to recognise and encourage comics researchers at an early stage in their career and to honour Professor Roger Sabin’s dedication to furthering the cause of comics study”, is awarded annually to the best paper presented by a postgraduate student at the ‘International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference’.

The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (Routledge) was founded by Sabin. He is commissioning editor for the booklist Palgrave Studies in Comics. His books have been described as “classic” ( The Guardian) and have been acknowledged as being foundational for the field. A Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media, University of Manchester: “[ Sabin] goes beyond the curriculum and is the most highly influential and respected researcher in British and international Comics Studies. He is the go-to person for publishers who want to either start up a journal, or review journal and book proposals”. [5.9.]

Mickwitz’s Documentary Comics has been impactful in film studies and documentary studies, while Hague is described by Aaron Kashtan in Between Pen and Pixel: Comics, Materiality, and the Future of the Book as “the leading authority on non-visual sensory aspects of comics”.

With work including Hague’s work on the senses, Horton’s on colonialist stereotypes, Mickwitz’s on documentary and Sabin’s on bringing women into the canon, coupled with Miers’ work in UAL’s Archives and Special Collections Centre and the UAL/British Library’s Collecting UK Digital Comics project, as well as the Applied Comics Network, collectively, this group of UAL researchers’ work is setting an inclusivity agenda and, as such, influencing the future of the comics studies discipline.

Living with Environmental Change and Community Resilience are two of UAL’s key research themes, and the researchers in this case study have been deeply involved in work that supports these concerns. Collectively, they have created a body of work and new ways of thinking across the University that have impacted institutions and individuals worldwide, in particular, representatives of international organisations relating to policy change, including NGOs, representatives of government institutions, and members of the public, all of which have engaged with the issue of climate breakdown through the work presented in this case study.

By communicating complex issues around climate breakdown, often alongside scientific and economic information, Wainwright’s research highlighted its impact. The works he produced have been used extensively to make visible the effect of climate breakdown; probably best known in this relation are the images for Red Ice–White Ice. Building on his previous research disseminated through the U-N-F-O-L-D project, in 2017 Wainwright curated and exhibited in What Has To Be Done (Today Art Museum, Beijing, with support from the Beijing Culture & Art Fund and ThinkPad). This art, environment and cross-disciplinary project was based on four voyages convened by Wainwright, with artists, writers, collectors and filmmakers from Europe and China travelling around the Scottish Western Isles on a sailing ship, Lady of Avenel. The material exhibited at the Today Art Museum challenged artists across the world to continue to respond, to create powerful messages and to promote the role of art, and artists, as catalysts of environmental change.

Through this work, in 2015, UAL became a partner to the Nansen Initiative, which, in 2016, became the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD), a group of international states working together towards better protection for people displaced across borders due to climate breakdown and disasters. In the same year, representatives of 109 government delegations endorsed the Nansen Initiative Protection Agenda at the Nansen Initiative Global Consultation, which also included global organisations, NGOs and academics . At the conference, Wainwright—as curator—showed his own work alongside that of others (including Orta) in DISPLACEMENT: Uncertain Journeys. This collaborative art project, originally created in partnership with the Nansen Initiative, now primarily supports PDD by curating art interventions that create opportunities to understand disaster displacement from a visual, experiential and emotional perspective. With its primary audience international policymakers rather than the general public, the project was developed with Wainwright’s leadership to introduce new insights and energy into the way disaster displacement is presented, discussed and understood in intergovernmental processes, introducing artistic forms of understanding and knowledge.

Co-funded by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the project also led to an ongoing relationship with UAL; the University now has a collaborative PhD student with NRC, supervised by Cross. Following the tragic death of Wainwright in 2017, UAL, represented by Orta and Cross, remains on the PDD Advisory Committee, with DISPLACEMENT led by the PhD student (Entwisle Chapuisat) who co-founded the project with Wainwright. UAL’s participation (Baddeley) in the PDD Advisory Committee Workshop in 2019 enabled the University to contribute to the development of the PDD communication strategy and underscore the relevance of artistic research to international policymaking processes.

With the inclusion by PDD of the DISPLACEMENT art project in its workplan, UAL’s research has continued to reach policymakers at international conferences. Migration Week in Marrakesh (2018) formed a particularly strong focus for UAL’s work ( Orta and Wainwright), bringing together representatives from UN member states, international organisations and civil society organisations for two official events: the ‘11th Global Forum on Migration and Development Summit’ and the ‘United Nations’ Intergovernmental Conference to Adopt the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration’. In particular, Orta’s Antarctica World Passport Delivery Bureau and Antarctic Village—No Borders, exhibited in the heart of the conference centre, attracted significant attention and curiosity amongst delegates, prompting personal exchange and conversation about the importance of placing disaster displacement within the formal discussions. Orta spoke alongside the Bangladeshi Foreign Minister and the French Consul General at a PDD event hosted at the French Residency. The Antarctica World Passport Delivery Bureau delivered the fifth edition of the passport to delegates and invited guests. This distribution saw the Mayor of Lampedusa, The Ambassador of Fiji, and the Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh signup. The communications officier of the International Organisation of Migration stated this was the most successful method of engagement to reach audiences that he had ever seen. Professor Walter Kälin, Envoy of the Chair of the Platform on Disaster Displacement: “ Orta’s work and presence in Marrakesh were crucial to keeping disaster displacement high up on the agenda of this overcrowded intergovernmental meeting with so many competing thematic priorities”. [5.1.]

First printed in 2008, Orta's Antarctica World Passport is an internationally celebrated advocacy and social engagement tool that explores the underlying principles of the Antarctica Peace Treaty as a symbol of the unification of world citizens. There are currently six Antarctica World Passport editions in French, English, German and Russian totalling 72,000 examples. Further to the online component and the touring exhibitions, ten major Passport distribution events have been held. The eleventh and twelfth passport events were scheduled for 2020 and were postponed due to the pandemic. At 31 December 2020, the online database had over 31,000 citizens from across the globe, including some from the hardest hit catastrophe zones: The Philippines, Alaska, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Passport holders populate the ‘Citizen Map’, a delocalisation app portraying the collective distribution and strength of the project. [5.2.]

In 2015, Antarctica World Passport Delivery Bureau and Antarctic Village were installed in the Pavillon Sicli, Geneva, as an integrated cultural component of the Nansen Initiative Global Consultation. The exhibition was hosted by the Swiss Ambassador, the State Secretary of Norway and the Mayor of Geneva. Passports were delivered to all the 350 delegates present, who became members of the Antarctica World Passport community. The passport manifesto, 13.3, was adopted by the Interior Minister of Iraq as an official governmental position to be put forward as part of the Nansen Initiative Protection Agenda.

The Geneva manifestation of the Antarctica World Passport Delivery Bureau was followed by an installation at the Grand Palais, Paris, during the ‘COP21 Climate Summit’ (December 2015, funded by COAL and ArtCOP21, France). Businessmen, entrepreneurs, indigenous peoples, activists, artists, government ministers, negotiators, journalists and lawyers signed up. Visitors to the installation included scientists working in the Arctic and Antarctic, the engineer of the Antarctic schooner Tara, the director of the Cousteau Society, who pledged to support a voyage to Antarctica for an Antarctic citizen, and the great granddaughter of the Antarctic explorer, Captain Scott.

Commissioned for group exhibition Show me the money: the image of finance, 1700 to the present (2014), Cross’ Black Narcissus (2014) takes the form of an artificial mountain landscape generated from financial graphs. The work builds on the 2003 work for the LSE, The Lost Horizon, but, with advanced technology, Black Narcissus uses terrain-generating software for advertising and mainstream cinema to fuse the abstract profile of financial graphs with the illusory space of computer-generated imagery. The rise and fall of trade in the vertical scale of the graphs emerges as steep gradients resembling rock faces, cliffs and ravines. The passage of time on the horizontal scale encompasses the historical period 2003–2013, with the landscape embodying a decade of trauma, chaos and revolution. Throughout 2014, Black Narcissus was exhibited in Show me the money (with accompanying publication) at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland; Chawton House Library, Hampshire; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton and, in 2015/16, People's History Museum, Manchester. The work was described as a “standalone representation of Show me the money”. [5.3.] The power and pertinence of the image is demonstrated by its choice as the cover image for The Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation (Oxford University Press, 2015). [5.4.]

Cross’ ongoing activism within UAL includes campaigning for the University to divest from fossil fuels, adopt Science_Based Targets for achieving Zero Carbon Emissions, and connect decarbonisation with decolonisation. [5.5.] Cross set the historical and theoretical framework of the joint UAL/Horniman Museum participatory event Climate Crisis: Speculative Futures (2020) . The event involved students, staff and the wider public, and launched a strategic partnership to promote knowledge exchange and build on common interests, following UAL’s commitment (September 2019) to place decarbonisation at the heart of the University’s academic offer. [5.6.]

UAL has developed relationships with institutions engaged in issues around environmental crisis, such as the British Antarctic Survey and Cape Farewell. Through its international Art for the Environment Residency Programme (AER, est. 2015), UAL has partnered with institutions in countries including Canada, Italy, India, Mexico, Senegal and the UK. While the initiative places UAL students in residencies in relation to their studies, the institutions recognise the impact that it has on their own work. AER’s first partnership, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP, partner since 2016): “Fostering a greater connectedness to nature and understanding of our surroundings, through projects such as the AER residencies involving close and careful looking, research and analysis, is critical.” Labverde (partner since 2017), an arts agency based in the Amazon that brings together art, science and communities: “On an international level, the [Environment Residency Programme] partnership is an opportunity for us to exchange knowledge in a global context, collaborating with a highly qualified team in the artistic field to co-develop solutions for environmental justice.” Banff Center for Arts and Creativity (partner since 2017): “[The Environment Residency Programme’s] connection to environmental concerns prepares artists to be conscientious citizens who will make a difference to the future of our planet—a goal that aligns with Banff Centre’s strategic plan and location within a UNESCO World Heritage Site.” [5.7.]

The University has strengthened this field of research further through the appointment of researcher and artist, Professor Tom Corby (UAL Associate Dean: Research, 2018). Corby’s practice-based research explores climate breakdown, extractivism and geographies of conflict, taking the form of large-scale screen and physical installations, articulating and making tangible relationships between social, political and technological worlds. Northern Polar Studies is a large-scale, screen-based installation, which uses datasets from drifting buoys and satellite measurements of Arctic sea ice. This data has been used to model the retreat of the Arctic going back the 1980s by examining the age and distribution of sea ice. Since joining UAL, Corby has achieved AHRC funding to pursue this research. ( Materialising Data Embodying Climate Change, 2019–2021, with researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and Birkbeck College, University of London, GDP705,588.00, PI: Corby), which asks how the production of artworks from ‘factual data’ offers new possibilities for representing climate breakdown. Corby is also UAL lead and creative partner in the Horizon 2020-funded ‘Deepice Consortium’ , led by Centre national de la recherche scientifique. The project addresses major scientific questions on the role of ice sheet size and greenhouse gas concentrations on the dynamics of past climate changes.

UAL has supported its researchers to develop external partnerships to produce work in specific contexts of key museums, galleries, collections and archives. Those selected for this case study present the breadth of types of intervention as a method for change employed by UAL researchers and are indicative of the University’s success in this area.

Acknowledging Boyce’s long-term collaborative and often performative practice, to stage critical interventions in institutional archives and cultural memory, Manchester Art Gallery (MAG) commissioned the artist to research, develop and produce a site-specific evening of performances to encourage public engagement with the gallery’s permanent collection as part of their ongoing ‘The Gallery Takeover’ series of events. As part of one ‘act’ of the artist’s Six Acts project (2018), Boyce worked alongside staff at the gallery to interrogate its curatorial practice as it stood at that point. The artist initiated a discussion about the curation of a gallery called ‘In Pursuit of Beauty’. As a result of the debate, it was decided, collectively, to remove one painting temporarily—John William Waterhouse’s, Hylas and the Nymphs (1896)—explaining that its removal was in order to prompt discussion. Public response for and against the initiative followed across a range of media types, with events at the gallery organised to enable deeper investigation of the issues. Some 927 comments were posted on the MAG website comments page, including: “Removing a painting for seven days has caused it to be seen by a vastly larger audience than would otherwise have been the case. It’s the opposite of censorship. It’s display plus a fanfare of drums and trumpets”. [5.1.] The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones confronted the debate in a series of articles; readers’ letters continued the discussion. [5.2.] [5.3.] “The painting was removed for just a week, but in that time accusations of censorship and virtue-signalling dominated local and national discourse. Comments ranged from calling the move “vitally important” and “courageous”, to “a trite PC gesture” that was “born out of the same impulse as book burning”. [5.4.] The debate is ongoing—in late November 2020, Boyce gave the annual Andrew Carnegie Lecture for Edinburgh College of Art in which she discussed the important nuances of the controversy arising from the removal of the painting (audience: over 300). The Contemporary Arts Society acquired Six Acts after the exhibition (2018).

The Currency of Art is an important example of UAL’s strategic plan to invest time and resource to create partnerships with other institutions to increase the external impact of the work of its fine artists, and the ideas being explored. The project generated creative responses to the Baring Archive, culminating in exhibitions hosted by ING Bank, including re:searching (2010), in which the works produced were exhibited alongside the historical works that inspired them. Participants including pupils from three local secondary schools, and UAL students and staff brought fresh perspectives, distinct from those of financial historians or more traditional academics. This work led to a centrally funded, cross-departmental research network around artist interactions with museums and archives and, subsequently, to two large international conferences supported by the University: Im/material: Encounters within the Creative Arts Archive (2016) and the later Archives & Embodiment (2019). This group worked in particular across the University’s Professoriate, holding regular internal events and talks to explore thematic and theoretical issues that could underpin developments in approach and methodology in this area of work. The collaboration resulted in a UAL PhD student working on Socialising The Archive, based around the Baring Archive (funded by a Rootstein Hopkins Research Scholarship). Hogan gave papers at Geographies of Collections (Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference: The Geographical Imagination, 2013) and Creating Art From a Living Archive (Past Is Prologue Conference, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2014).

Further developing the work on absence so important to his residency at Kettles Yard, Coldwell’s Freud’s Coat project , Temporarily Accessioned: Freud’s Coat Revisited (2017), returned to the Freud Museum, London. As part of this stage of the exhibition, Coldwell arranged for the coat bought by Freud for his journey to London in 1938 to be x-rayed by the National Gallery to provide the data for a life-size digital print, called Temporarily Accessioned-X-Ray. The work raises issues around attitudes to contemporary migration. (Audience figures: Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna—22,630 visitors; Freud Museum London—6,400 visitors). [5.5.] The artists’ book, Temporarily Accessioned, has been acquired by galleries including The National Gallery, Tate and Victoria State Library. More recently, Coldwell has continued his work around uncovering meaning through a further AHRC-funded research network (GBP30,498.00), Picturing the Invisible, which brings together key research academics from subjects as disparate as astrophysics, philosophy, printmaking, psychoanalysis, surgery, forensics and fine art, to examine how they imagine and manifest ‘the invisible’ from within their own disciplines.

Morra’s 2018 book, Inside the Freud Museum: History, Memory and Site-responsive Art (International Library of Modern and Contemporary Art) offers a nuanced analysis of the Freud Museums in Vienna and London and their unique relationships to contemporary art, giving a new perspective of the history and practice of psychoanalysis, of museums and of contemporary art. The concept of ‘site-responsivity’, in particular, has had considerable impact and the book has been widely praised by senior academics and theoreticians. “ Morra… demonstrates the fruitfulness of revising the relationship between site and the art installed there. The concept [of ‘site-responsivity’] will transform our thinking about that special spatiality without which art cannot reach its audiences.” (Mieke Bal, 2018). The book has been described as “impressive and thoughtful… For anyone interested in the pervasive influence of Freudian psychoanalytic ideas within conceptual art, this is an important read”. (Caroline A. Jones, 2018). [5.6.] An element of Coldwell’s Picturing the Invisible was a solo exhibition at the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London (2020). Coldwell has been described as “a past master of this type of site-responsive exhibition… Taking his cue from the show’s setting—the basement kitchens of the famous architect’s grand house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields—Coldwell imagined how the unknown cooks and servants who laboured there, out of sight and beyond the pale of cultural history, might have perceived their master’s lofty endeavours”. [5.7.]

Medical museums and clinical settings are places where the patient voice is often absent. For Transplant and Life, Wynne was asked to bring the patient voice—in all its diversity—into the medical museum, a space normally dominated by specimens, clinical hardware and medical ‘heroes’. Filming, photographing and recording a total of 29 participants—organ transplant recipients, live donors, people on the waiting list for a transplant—as well as specialists, Wynne’s intervention created an aural and visual body of work. The project also revisited participants from the earlier Transplant project, generating a unique longitudinal qualitative study of transplant recipients (with additional support from Royal Brompton and Harefield Arts). The project contributed to both the professional and the public understanding of the experience of receiving—or waiting for—an organ transplant. The Lancet described how: “Clare Marx, the Royal College of Surgeon’s first female President, spoke feelingly at the launch of how proud she felt to have the testimony of patients put centre-stage, within such hallowed walls, for the very first time. She is right to claim that this modest exhibition is ‘the jewel in the crown’ of what the RCS has to offer. In proclaiming what matters most to surgeons is their patients, Marx makes a gesture on behalf of our whole community, one that is important and certainly long overdue”. [5.8.] One of the surgeons that Wynne worked with wrote “In terms of what I have learned, it is perhaps the depth of the impact that having a transplant has on a patient and their family. In the day-to-day ward work, we don’t really get a chance to sit down and think about the impact… we pay lip service to it, but do we really think about it deeply? This work certainly allows us to do this.” When one Harefield patient heard some of Wynne’s recordings, they commented, “I wish someone had told me some of this before I had my transplant”. [5.9.]

Approximately 50,000 people visited the exhibition. (Online exhibition visitor numbers: 272,405 page views and 23,427 unique views.) In part, the online element was to ensure that the Museum had a presence during the closure of the Royal College of Surgeons building for major refurbishment. Exhibition reviews and related articles appeared in the British Medical Journal ( BMJ), Journal of the American College of Cardiology and The Lancet. One visitor described the exhibition as “such an informative and viscerally moving exhibit. I have been taken to a different head space and have been exposed to so many new points of view”. [5.10.] One patient explained how the act of talking about her kidney transplant to Wynne for the project helped both her and her husband to think about the transplant experience itself: “It’s actually a really great experience for me because … I’d never thought about it or talked about it before. And the pictures were there but I’d never … looked at them … it was kind of cathartic.” [5.11.] The exhibition was selected as part of the international SEAD collection (Multidisciplinary Exemplars of Science, Engineering, Art, Design and Humanities) as an exemplar of how artists can provide a new human perspective to scientific and technological issues. [5.12.] Beyond the quantitative data, the nature of the project means that much of the impact was at a personal, intimate level—patients, families and medical staff. Dissemination took place through a six-month series of events around the project, including presentations at ‘Encountering Pain: hearing, seeing, speaking’ conference, University College London, 2016; ‘The Sound of Feelings’, presentation at Rethinking Sound 2018, Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea; ‘Transplant and Life: Memory, pain and emotion in the patient voice’, presentation at The Sound of Memory Symposium: Sound-track/Sound-scape, Goldsmiths, University of London; ‘The Intersection of Research and Practice’, keynote address at Research and Innovation: Practice-related Research Conference at Southampton Solent University; and an artist’s talk at the Royal College of Surgeons library, introduced by Clare Marx, President, RCS.

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UAL’s work in prison industries is transformative for individuals and for prisons thinking, through prison design education research projects including: Making for Change (MFC, 2012–2020), Makeright (2014–2018), Cell Furniture (2018–2020) and, more recently, Inhouse Records (2018–2021). Initiatives have involved UAL undergraduates and post-graduates in working successfully alongside, or co-designing with, prisoners. These projects directly address the University’s strategic objectives to widen participation and contribute to lifelong learning by inspiring some inmates who attend creative classes in prison or who have worked on ROTL (return on temporary license) with MFC to seek access to higher education via UAL as returning citizens. Support from Open Book at UAL, an initiative to open up education to vulnerable adults, is available to make this possible and support such applications. Positive media coverage received by the projects is also important in encouraging prisoners to apply to UAL. Makeright inspired former offender Carlotta Allum, founder of Stretch (charity delivering arts projects with individuals including prisoners and ex-prisoners), to apply to the University to undertake a PhD on the role of storytelling and digital design in changing prisoners’ lives; in 2018, she received LDOC funding to undertake a part-time PhD (supervised by Gamman).

Primarily, these projects enable the harnessing of creativity to make positive social impact on the lives of individual prisoners during their sentence. The long-term aim is to build skills and resilience, reducing the likelihood of prisoner re-offending. Such projects support the value of arts education in prison and in the national context by incentivising prisoners to change. The contribution of creative education has been demonstrated, and the case made for its transformative value by many scholars. Understanding the value of arts & culture: (Crossick and Kaszynska, 2016) does this, referencing Gamman’s work; the Arts Council report on Health and Wellbeing (2018) references criminal justice activites and the MFC project, praised for its focus on skills and “high quality garment manufacture”. The Coates Review (2016) outlines the value of creative education in prison, offering a strong case for the value of creative prison education, also made by diverse prison arts organisations, including Koestler Arts, the National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance (NCJAA), Clinks and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), with which UAL has close affiliations. For example, Gamman advises the NCJAA, whose evidence library identifies how art aids the development of non-criminal identities and crime-free lives.

In a keynote lecture for Portal Trust (previously Sir John Cass’s Foundation), Professor Frances Corner (then Pro-Vice Chancellor and Head of London College of Fashion, 2002–2020), set out how: “creative education can lead to the sort of shift in representation and social mobility that the creative industries so acutely need.” [5.1.] Corner mentored Swift and others at UAL to understand better fashion’s relationship to social responsibility, and encouraged Gamman to explore design and making projects with prisoners that offer potential for positive change for individuals with negative lived experiences.

The award-winning Makeright programme started at HMP Thameside in 2014–16 (funded by AHRC, GBP20,732.00) with follow-on funding in 2017–2018 (GBP79,838.10) is one such initiative. The first project in the world to engage prisoners in designing against crime, Makeright teaches creative and analytical approaches associated with 'design-thinking'. Inmates engage with self-reflection, self-organisation and, ultimately, ideas about self-employment. This has enabled over 85 inmates at HMP Thameside to learn in a pragmatic and vocational context, to produce a range of bags sold by Abel & Cole (with profits to Sue Ryder charity).

From 2015 to 2017, seven iterations of Makeright were delivered in the UK and India through the award-winning knowledge exchange project with the National Institute of Design at Sabamarti Central Jail (2015–16); in 2019 Makeright ran at Doncaster prison. A total of 170 prisoners benefited from the course, with over 40 graduate design volunteers taking part in a peer mentoring scheme, and creating an inclusive learning environment for both prisoners and design graduates. The work has shown that prisoners can engage strongly with design thinking and collaborative design practices. The depth and significance of the impact on individual inmates was revealed in interviews conducted with 26 Makeright prisoners at HMP Thameside (2016). Whilst the objective of the programme saw the final objects delivered—the anti-theft bags—as an important goal, the process of the programme was always seen by its creators as more significant than just object creation. Impact on prisoners includes improved communication skills, entrepreneurship techniques and restorative making and design thinking skills. The work generates more positive behaviours and attitudes; collaboration skills; understanding the benefits of education; how reflection and iteration lead to improvement. Asked how he was benefitting from Makeright, inmate ‘TA’ replied “It’s giving me a purpose, a purpose to get on with life and focus on achieving stuff.” [5.2.] The programme’s success was evaluated by the Centre for Entrepreneurs (2018): “For the prisoners, the empathy and entrepreneurial learning received was more valuable than the products they actually produced”. [5.3.] Similarly, the Director of HMP Thameside. [5.4.] observed that "the anti-theft bag project is entrepreneurialism at a high level from the most unlikely of arenas … inmates involved in Makeright at HMP Thameside demonstrate the sort of changes in behaviour that are key indicators of a reduced likelihood of reoffending. These include engagement with purposeful learning, not engaging in conflict, attitude changes and greater compliance with the resettlement agenda”.

A similar participatory design approach informed DACRC’s Cell Furniture action research project, funded by the British Ministry of Justice (2018–20, GBP238,000). Furniture designs resistant to vandalism and self-harm were generated. The Flip Chair, co-designed with prisoners, is to go into production for use by the MOJ nationally. Engineered as a single injection moulded part, the chair can be manufactured cheaply as one solid object and provides two seat height options. Prisoners’ and HMP staff insights informed the design, and two prisoners at HMP Standford Hill—who had learned DACRC’s methodology—were employed on the Makeright project in 2020. [5.5.]

Swift’s DESIGN+MAKE was a unique collaboration between Art Against Knives and UAL. Groups of students aged between 18 and 24 from the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Newham, whose lives had been impacted by knife crime, took part in a programme in which they each made a leather bag to their own design. Art Against Knives commented: “the project made a noticeable impact on the participants’ communication skills, confidence and agency, planning and problem solving, relationships and leadership, creativity and resilience, and determination.” One participant described how the project “encouraged me to want to do more. It really [had] a positive influence on me.” [5.6.]

Swift’s Making for Change project was co-created with Professor Frances Corner, and supported by the Portal Trust. Initially, the Making for Change Education and Manufacturing Unit (MFC) was established at HMP Holloway in partnership with HM Prison Service Business Development Unit. (When the prison closed, the unit transferred to HMP Downview.). The unit offers a more traditional vocational training approach, delivering industry-recognised fashion making skills inside prison to enable women as returning citizens to take up specialist vocational opportunities within the fashion industry. The MFC programme supports inmates to develop new skills, build pride through the creative process and build confidence through teamwork. To date, MFC has supported more than 150 women in prison. Out of these, 69 completed Level 1 or 2 awards and five completed ROTL (release on temporary licence) placements at UAL, left HMP and were employed, or set up their own business. Asked which three words they would use to describe their experience on MFC, women used words such as “hope and confidence”, “achievement and success”, “determination and life-changing”. [5.7.]

Providing a scalable model for other institutions and prisons, MFC has opened a new unit in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, one of the most deprived boroughs in the country, which suffers with particularly high levels of female unemployment. Poplar Works is a community-focused fashion ‘hub’ which extends the MFC programme work to deliver accessible fashion programmes predominantly for female ex-offenders and women from marginalised community groups, providing employment and training to a local workforce.

UAL’s work has influenced the way national partners think about prison education and employment. Partnerships with prisons include HMP Brixton, HMP Holloway, HMP Downview, HMP Send, HMP Thameside, HMP Doncaster, HMP Isis and HMP Stanford Hill. The key national relationship is the Ministry of Justice, which commissioned the MFC Education and Manufacturing Unit and awarded a grant for two roles in production and skills development, plus a research evaluation exploring the impact of the project on the women prisoners. Other national partners include National Offender Management Service, and HM Prison Service Business Development Unit. Local government partners include the Greater London Authority and Poplar HARCA Housing Association. Specialist recruitment agency, Working Chance, is a long-term supporter, delivering industry engagement days in the MFC unit.

UAL’s award-winning work in prison industries has received UK and international media coverage (e.g. The Guardian, Design Week and Business of Fashion) [5.8.] and extensive positive commentary from key stakeholders: MFC was evaluated as “outstandingly successful”, making “a valuable contribution to HMP Send’s core priorities of rehabilitation.” [5.9.] “The initiatives we have developed in partnership with [UAL] contribute towards the reducing reoffending agenda and help fill an increasing skills shortage in the fashion industry … offering the two things [offenders] never thought they would ever have—hope and a real opportunity to change." Head of Prison Industries, Catering & PE, National Offender Management Service. [5.10.] "Makeright delivers precisely the level of integration needed to make a step change for individuals and realise the benefits in reducing the costs of crime to families and communities … Makeright offers a unique approach to restorative justice.” Chair, National Criminal Justice Arts Alliance. [5.11.]

Makeright won the innovative partnerships category in the India-UK Excellence Award for Collaborations in Higher Education (2016) and Sublime Magazine Badge, Best Design Initiative (2016). This research activity has led to international research collaboration (India and Denmark), and international recognition in academia (Insight conference, NID, 2018 and Design Museum, 2019).

In 2014, UAL received the Big Society Award. Presenting it, then Prime Minister David Cameron said of Fashion Education in Prisons: “this project has given female offenders an opportunity to gain real transferable skills to help them rebuild their lives outside prison.” [5.12.]

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The impact of Storey’s work is both at a personal level, reaching individuals and small groups, and at scale, with audiences (physical and digital) for individual projects regularly in the tens of thousands. Since 2014, Storey has been awarded Honorary Professor at University of Bournemouth, appointed an RDI (Royal Designer for Industry, 2014), appointed the first Designer in Residence at the College of Human Ecology, Cornell University (2016), followed by the appointment as UNHCR Artist in Residence at Za’atari (2019).

The D4OT project has had a number of iterations, displayed in public places at times of social significance. The first installation of the dress was at St Pancras International, London (26–29 November 2015), at the entrance to Eurostar. The location was key to the project as the staging was timed to coincide with the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21, in Paris. Through the world’s first digital couture dress, delegates passing through the station were confronted with a digital depiction of climate breakdown and its human impact.

The dress was positioned to capture the attention of the maximum number of people passing through St Pancras international—politicians and decision-makers travelling to COP21, as well as the general public. Audience numbers: 1,204 visitors (actual); 136,600 (Twitter and Facebook combined); social media reach to over 289,000 (1,600 Instagram ‘likes’); online media coverage: 180 million unique page views. There was extensive media coverage in newspapers, magazines and online totalling over 207 million unique visitors per month. To date, D4OT has over 2,000 followers on Instagram and 4,500 on Twitter. Network Rail commented “It was great having the Dress For Our Time at the station and I feel that the event brought a very important message about the future environmental concerns to the forefront, and need for action towards sustainability.” [5.1.]

At the Science Museum, London (August–September 2016), the second major installation, the dress was shown as part of the museum’s Our Lives in Data exhibition. UNHCR data was used to visualise global migration, with each pixel of light representing 100 migrating people. Head of Exhibitions and Programmes at the Science Museum: “The beauty of the display and the use of visually appealing moving representation of large-scale data drew visitors to it. Once engaged with Dress For Our Time, the installation evoked an immediate and personal response in our visitors…”. For this iteration, visitors were interviewed by invigilators in the gallery: “… so different to when we watch the news on TV, although the information itself might be the same.” “A work of art that beautifully, heartbreakingly and unflinchingly expresses the reality of the refugee crisis.” “…this was a great way to address an issue like this… it was human and beautiful.” [5.2.].

Further appearances of D4OT followed. By invitation of UNHCR, it was shown, with the D4OT film as the backdrop, to the UN Geneva TEDX conference ‘Transforming Lives’ (The Grand Palais, Geneva, 11 February 2016), trailed on Twitter as “A refugee tent from Za’atari given a second life to send a powerful message at TEDxNations”. Live audience: 1,000; 21 live viewing parties worldwide: 3,000+ viewers. D4OT project ambassador Louise Owen explained some of the reactions to the dress: “Everyone responded really positively to it. Its presence created a lot of intrigue about the whole project.” [5.3.]

Rokia Traoré, Malian singer-songwriter and UNHCR Regional Goodwill Ambassador for West and Central Africa, wore the dress when performing on The Pyramid Stage to open Glastonbury Festival (24 June 2016). “There’s no better place than Glastonbury to wear the incredible Dress For Our Time. We’re in the middle of a huge pop-up tented city and I’m wearing a dress made from a UNHCR tent, which sheltered a Syrian refugee family for months. I’ve seen myself the work of UNHCR supporting refugees from Mali and the difference that shelter can make to people who have lost their homes… I stand with refugees; will you stand with me?” D4OT appeared at No. 10 Downing Street (27 September 2019) as part of the London Climate strike, at the first ever London Peace Talks (3 November 2016) and at the Venice Biennale 2019.

Media coverage of the dress has been extensive, consistently reaffirming its message. Lucy Siegle, *The Guardian (*daily average unique browsers: 7 million) commented: “It’s rare that there’s a piece of fashion which is designed not to influence what you buy but to shift the way you think. It’s even rarer to find a piece created to promote the discussion of climate science. But that’s Helen Storey for you.” [5.4.] Working with fashion celebrity Lou Teasdale, who has 4.2 million Instagram followers, and using the hash tag ‘Look Mum No Future’, a social media campaign for the dress was launched to engage the public. More recently, an interview with Times Higher Education [5.5.] gave Storey a platform to describe her work—including the dress—and the most recent UKRI-funded project designing and distributing PPE across Za’atari.

During D4OT at St Pancras International, many children and young people asked incisive questions about the dress, often about the family that used to live in the tent. Feeling that the answers to these questions were important to public understanding of the issues communicated through the dress and, in order to answer them, Storey visited Za’atari refugee camp (March 2016). Her work there ran for nearly three years, when the relationship was formalised, with Storey’s appointment as UNHCR’s first Artist in Residence, at Za’atari. The invitation came on the basis of the work that she had carried out at the camp, which UNHCR Jordan said has, “…promoted refugee women’s emerging role by delivering new opportunities, driving innovation and contributing to improving life in the camp for the communities we engage with.” [5.6.].

The reach and significance of Storey’s work is demonstrated by her academic and professional reputation. She is invited regularly to collaborate with partners and maintains long-term relationships across extensive, complex projects. Storey’s ability to bring relevant partners together with UAL is evidenced in the following examples. For D4OT, she gathered a group of 15 collaborators, including UNHCR (UK and Jordan), Unilever, MET Office, Science Museum and St Pancras International; Storey’s 15-year-old ongoing collaboration with Sheffield University on a range of projects, including the current UKRI-funded (through the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund and the Newton Fund), 18-month project (£800,000, from August 2020), ‘People’s PPE: Dealing with a Crisis by Building Livelihoods in Za’atari Refugee Camp’, also known as ‘PPE4Refugees’ . By the end of 2020, this project, which involved a number of NGOs and two Jordanian Universities had designed and distributed 60,000 face masks. To reflect the potential and achievements of the collaboration, hand in hand with the refugee population, a five-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between UNHCR, University of Sheffield and UAL was signed in 2017.

Storey’s methodology at Za’atari has been to co-define and co-create works, using ‘deep listening’ and problem-solving to improve the lives of the refugees in situ and in real time, rather than bringing pre-held approaches, or design methodologies, or pre-conceived ideas as to how the relationship would work. The projects across the camp have a clear focus on women and young girls. The examples of the projects at Za’atari chosen for this case study are the ‘Soap and Perfume Making Lab’ (in partnership with Swiss multi-national company, Givaudan) and ‘The Tiger Girls’ (These Inspiring Girls Enjoy Reading).

Part of a larger Za’atari initiative, Made in Za’atari—a lab space co designed for training and the production of products, crafts, a Hydroponics Garden (with Sheffield University), a beauty salon, a crèche, a café and a retail/gallery space, to sell produce to the camp and to camp visitors—the soap and perfume making project brought a group of Givaudan employees from France, Dubai and Egypt to provide training for groups of women to make and sell fragranced soap (100 women over the period). A member of the Givaudan team commented: “Working with the women in Za’atari has been an inspiration to all the Givaudan team. Their enthusiasm and resilience in the face of extreme hardship, their desire to learn and determination to build a better future for their families is incredible. They have a lot to teach us.” [5.7.]

Storey’s ability to create productive relationships is evident in the soap-making initiative, where she has made links with local industry to upscale production. In a related initiative, the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is working on an experimental project looking at the impact on hand hygiene for children if a toy is buried in soap; a local industrial partner in Jordan has been found to manufacture the soaps, involving the trained Za’atari women in the production.

At least 10,000 of the 80,000 refugees at Za’atari are adolescent girls. The Tiger Girls are a group of young women (aged nine–17) who engage in a programme of high-quality learning in order to provide an alternative to early marriage. The greatest long-term impact is on the girls—and now boys—engaged in the programme. LOVECOATS is a collaborative project through which the girls designed and made coats for themselves around their specific needs and wishes (to be warm in winter, to learn new making skills, to enjoy their love of fashion, to have something to gift). The co-design workshop format brought together other makers, NGOs and camp teachers and, in July 2016, they worked with 29 girls, teaching new making skills to create coats which reflected their own identities and sense of self. “Now I know I am important because I got to make my own coat and I walked on the catwalk. I feel confident.” [5.8.]

Film has played a key part in the recording and dissemination of Storey’s work, including Dress For Our Time: The Next Chapter by David Betteridge. The films also form a crucial part of the development of the projects, central to Storey’s work at Za’atari, showing the complex and detailed work taking place there in compelling and illuminating ways. In 2020, the cameras were given over to the refugees to record their own lives. The films are used by the UNHCR to communicate the work, with the film made around the soap-making project reported as the most watched UNHCR film for years, while the camp manager has had the most requests for how that project was set up than any other initiative. Za’atari is one of the most visited UNHCR camps, with visits from the Jordanian Royal Family and members of government, and international dignitaries. UNHCR officers visit from around the world, to see how Za’atari is managed and to understand how it has become so innovative.

The work at Za’atari continues, developing and expanding established projects and creating new initiatives, with ongoing impact on the lives of the individuals who live there.

In Justine (2013), Rughani took further the thinking developed for The Dance of Documentary Ethics. Premiered at the Stockholm Academy of Art, Justine is an award-winning (Research in practice award from the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies) short documentary film portrait of a young woman with severe neurological disorders. The film has been used to help social services assessors achieve a fuller picture of the experiences of a young person with such conditions and quickly became an important teaching tool at universities in several countries, entering curricula in documentary studies. The film sits at the centre of UAL’s Ethics for Making, a free online initiative for students, teachers and makers to explore creative arts practice, that builds on Rughani’s questioning of existing modes of documentation to develop methods of empathic looking and listening. The film was screened and debated at UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities (December 2015, Leicester). The film’s methodology has been debated in leading international art and academic conferences and human rights film festivals.

The University has further supported work in this field through its Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC, founded by Williams in 2003). As a measure of the importance of Williams to British photography and its curation, her archive became part of the Martin Parr Foundation in March 2019. The archive reveals the progression of Williams’ practice, creating a resource for the study and interpretation of photography and cultural networks from the early 1970s, as well as a forming a historical record of the thinking that drove changes in attitudes towards photography. Parr described Williams as “one of the most esteemed British photography curators, with a long and illustrious career”. [5.1.]

Williams co-curated and devised with Karen Shepherdson, (now UAL Programme Director, Photography) the widely applauded exhibition Seaside: Photographed (2019, GBP220,000 ACE Strategic Touring grant; GBP10,000 Turner Contemporary). This photography exhibition (and book), Turner Contemporary’s first, presented a set of themes to do with everyday life, whilst showing the British seaside in a personal, empathic way. Critical reception recognised the pertinence of the approach: “Not the least pleasure of this tremendous show of seaside photographs [...] is the sheer rush of revelation”, and “…the result of many years’ work and quite formidable research on the part of its curators. As a result, a subject that might have been fluffy and superficial in other hands has been permitted quite astonishing complexity”. [5.2.] [5.3.] Central to the project was a ‘Call for Works’, a tool used infrequently in UK exhibition projects, important because it enabled the curators to venture far beyond already known work to discover bodies of work that had become obscured in the fragmented histories of British photography. Williams’ objective was to explore a complex topic in a way that would respect both specialised and non-specialised audiences (approximately 12,500 visitors).

Award-winning artist/photographer Davidmann, a UAL PhD alumna, was one of the first to receive an AHRC Creative Fellowship ( Beyond Male and Female: The Experience of Photography and the Self-Visualisation of Transsexual People). Davidmann took this work further in Ken. To be destroyed, a multi-faceted project based on a family archive that contained images, letters and papers relating to her uncle, Ken, that revealed that he was transgender. The project was disseminated in a series of outputs including a book, six solo exhibitions, two group exhibitions, three events at the V&A, and a co-authored journal article. Davidmann won a Philip Leverhulme Prize (The Leverhulme Trust, 2016–2019), and the project was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2017). Ken. To Be Destroyed (2016, supported by PARC) received extensive exposure through international media [5.4.] [5.5.], the venues at which it was exhibited and at a range of conferences, symposia and debates, all of which served to reach new audiences and networks, for example, the LGBTQ+ Archives, Libraries, Museums and Special Collections’ ‘Without Borders’ conference (June 2016). Davidmann’s work has contributed to raising awareness of trans people’s lived experience and to generating greater understanding.

Hunter’s body of research has continued to develop the themes evident in his early work. For example, A Journey Home (2019), a collaboration with Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Lucy Bell Gallery and Hastings taxi firm 247247, traces its research roots back to Living in Hell and Other Stories. Hunter photographed each taxi driver in their favourite location in the town. Their stories were recorded by Hanna Wiebe, a multimedia artist working with sound and photography; these became part of the soundscape for the exhibition. ( A Journey Home, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, 2019. 14,252 visitors. Funded by Arts Council England. 11 photographs inspired by paintings in the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery collection). The exhibition attracted local and national media coverage, including The Guardian [5.6], *Wallpaper\ and BBC South East. Visitors to the exhibition commented: "Brilliant; if only people could view this and not judge people as many do”. "Timely subject, gentle, moving approach, brilliant photographs, anything that humanises migrant experience is welcome at present.” [5.7.] Hunter’s work is in many international collections including; MoMA, New York; National Gallery, London and the Smithsonian, Washington. Hunter’s internationally known image, Woman Reading a Possession Order, (now part of the V&A’s collection) is part of the exhibition, Inspiration—Contemporary Art and Classics (co-curated by UAL research fellow, James Putnam), first staged at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, then at Ateneum (Finnish National Gallery).

Alongside his work using still imagery, exhibited in both film and art contexts, Raban’s extensive body of work over the last five decades has impacted on filmmakers and filmmaking. The BFI: “one of the foremost British artists and experimental filmmakers of the last forty years”; “ Raban has acquired a reputation as one of the most singularly important artists to work in [landscape and nature in film].” [5.8.] While known initially for his landscape and expanded cinema films of the 1970s, in the 1980s, his focus moved towards a more historical and socio-political context: the history of London and the Thames. Time and the Wave was screened internationally (e.g. London International Film Festival, 2013; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2015), and shown as a continuous installation at the Mercosul Biennial in Brazil (2013). It was nominated for the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (2014). Raban runs UAL’s Documentary Research Forum, an arena to develop ideas around documentary in film, sound and photography.

Zimmerman’s award-winning work engages in an innovative and radical way with those she films, extending the collective ownership to audiences by staging discussion forums at screenings (in prisons and community centres, at film festivals and for disadvantaged young people), often with one or more of the actors taking part. For Estate, Zimmerman worked with the residents of the estate—herself one of them—having direct impact on each of the participants. Joshua Oppenheimer, Director of The Act of Killing, described Estate, A Reverie as “a deeply moving portrait of a community struggling to survive in a boarded-up London public housing project, long slated for demolition. Multi-layered and profound, Andrea Zimmerman’s film masterfully immerses us in a dreamlike lost world of misfits, outcasts and survivors whom she films with love and aching tenderness. Her ground-breaking approach to cinema—at once collaborative and performative—creates a work of rare intimacy, a lyrical and gripping vision of the loneliness and disempowerment that haunts life even in the world’s wealthiest cities” [5.9.], while Paul Sng (maker of the highly successful Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle, 2017) cites Estate as one of his key influences: “ Estate: A Reverie was among a small handful of films that inspired and informed Dispossession, a documentary about the mismanagement of social housing. Andrea’s empathy and respect for the residents shines through in a tender and powerful meditation on what it means to call somewhere home”. [5.10.]

Multi-cultural working-class voices are underrepresented in the theories and practices of essay film and visual culture. Estate produced a visual map that works towards bridging this knowledge gap. For example, Zimmerman researched housing policy for the film, interviewing architects, activists, sociologists, poets, residents and council workers as well as filming town hall meetings in order to gather opinions and insights from the local community and housing experts. This work helped to inform understanding of planning, local and government housing policy and, crucially, the voices of residents and other locals who were being impacted. Zimmerman also photographed the estate regularly, which led to a photo essay book, Estate: Art, Politics and Social Housing in Britain (2010). The ethos of Zimmerman’s work seeks to trouble ideological frameworks, especially around class, race and marginalised lives, in order to explore and perform how stories can be told across differences and beyond fixed ways of seeing. Her recent film, Here for Life (2019, commissioned by Artangel following an open competition), continues this direction. Zimmerman was joint winner of the Film London Jarman Award in 2020 for the film. Artangel: " Here for Life fuses fiction with documentary, conjuring up a world where difference makes no difference and hope is given a voice through trust". Founder of theatre company Cardboard Citizens: “If this film tells us anything about London today, it’s that there are many unconsidered lives surviving against the odds. It feels important to tell these kinds of stories today—to hear from people who are often ‘othered’ in a variety of ways—to show a world we don’t see enough of”. [5.11.]

By enabling cross-disciplinary work around social design across the University, and making key academic appointments, UAL has created a space to challenge, question and develop a varied set of approaches to the field. UAL’s Social Design Institute (SDI) is a major milestone in the development of the field (pilot year 2019–20; first full year 2020/21, AKO Foundation, GBP300,000, 2018–19/2019–20). Under the leadership of Kimbell, the Institute harnesses the potential of social design to address a multitude of large-scale, complex challenges, with cross-disciplinary work a priority. It has built on and expanded the strong work in this field already being produced by the group of researchers in this case study, while two recent Institute appointments— Patrycja Kaszynska, Senior Research Fellow (2019) and Jocelyn Bailey, Research Fellow (2019)—build on its core themes of values, systems and policy.

Kimbell’s research in design for policy—including a fellowship in the UK Policy Lab through an AHRC award—led to a role as consultant, supporting the EU Policy Lab team on the European Commission’s The Future of Government 2030 project (2018–2019). Kimbell co-authored the report, which resulted in policy recommendations: “… [It] explored changing power relationships in society and new governance models and actors. The project examined stronger alliances of local governments through new types of political institutions (such as the European Parliament of Mayors) and stronger inclusion of individuals in policymaking through Citizen Councils. It has also proposed better synergies between the public and private sectors…”. [5.1.] This research and practice led to invitations to speak at events organised by the EU Joint Research Centre, Nesta, Danish Design Centre, Carnegie Mellon University and others and involvement in training UK and international civil servants in design thinking.

A key component of UAL’s social design work is the Public Collaboration Lab (PCL, from 2015), led by Thorpe. PCL is a strategic, AHRC-funded research collaboration created to investigate what models might bring together citizens, local government, academic research and other agencies to facilitate collaborative action that delivers sustainable benefits to the public. PCL provides a vehicle for engagement with structures that deliver services, applying conceptual, abstract thinking to real world situations. The PCL was founded by the UAL DESIS Lab and the Strategy and Change team of Camden Council. UAL initiators included Thorpe and Prendiville, working closely with UAL colleagues in Knowledge Exchange. The University has supported the practical application of design innovation in particular relationship to its locality—in this case, a strategic collaboration in King’s Cross, London Borough of Camden. In the 18 months of the AHRC funding period, PCL worked with over 3,000 Camden residents, over 100 council officers from nine local authorities, and more than five schools. [5.2.]

Over four years, PCL has delivered more than 20 projects, designed by council officers and Heads of Service in collaboration with UAL researchers and community leaders, to be strategically useful to the council and the residents it serves. The project uses design-led social innovation approaches to engage citizens and other stakeholders in the co-design and co-delivery of aspects of public services. Examples include the Home & Community Library Service (H&CLS) project that applied the methodology developed by the PCL research to navigate between user needs and the council, re-thinking the council’s interaction with residents to improve the service for 400–500 Camden residents unable to leave their homes. The findings fed into a consultation document on the future of the H&CLS, which was delivered to council members. The ‘Overcrowded Living’ project engaged Camden residents, council officers and other stakeholders to examine the challenges faced by those living in overcrowded conditions to identify opportunities to improve the situation. A toolkit, website and further recommendations for phase two of the project, which is developing a ‘public and collaborative’ service model (service delivered with and by service participants) for design and manufacture of bespoke furniture appropriate to overcrowded conditions, has been well-received by LBC officers and is being developed with the council's housing team.

“PCL has evolved from designing services to meet the needs of residents to creating a space which channels the collective creativity and imagination of our residents and partners into new platforms for innovation that are rooted in the distinctive identities of our neighbourhoods. It’s shown that you can develop a collaboration lab which works out in the open, helps residents and partners make and reinvent solutions together to local issues and scale them at a very human level”—Head of Corporate Strategy, London Borough of Camden. [5.3.] Other evaluations are positive: “… the PCL offered a very positive experience for all those involved. All interviewees could … identify a range of benefits from being involved, including a closer strategic collaboration between UAL and LBC, bringing innovation into the council, and creating a different type and quality of engagement with residents .” [5.4.]

Launched in September 2019 and located on a site behind the British Library in Somers Town, MAKE@Story Garden is a collaboration between UAL, Somers Town Community Association, LBC and property developer Lendlease. Developed by UAL to provide a local base for the work carried out by PCL, MAKE has delivered 169 workshops/activities/events engaging 1,694 participants (1,339 local residents and 355 students). The project’s Instagram posts have generated more than 17,000 hits. Nine community organisations have co-delivered activities with MAKE to date. [5.5.]

In 2019, UAL secured Horizon 2020 funding to extend the learning from projects including PCL and MAKE. T-Factor (2020–2024), ‘Unleashing future-facing urban hubs through culture and creativity-led strategies of transformative time’, (overall project budget EUR8,605,612.50) challenges the ‘waiting time’ or ‘meanwhile’ in urban regeneration—the time between the development of the masterplan and the infrastructure being built—to demonstrate how culture and creative collaboration between academia, government, community and business can create inclusive urban hubs. With partners in Amsterdam, Bilbao, Kaunas, Lisbon and Milan, UAL is contributing to the London pilot by applying expertise in co-design, creative public engagement and placemaking in London’s Euston regeneration area.

The reach and significance of Prendiville’s pioneering research is extensive, attracting significant funding. Central to her work is knowledge co-creation through dialogue with project stakeholders. The notion of ‘placemaking’ (e.g. a geographical location or a local authority) links much of Prendiville’s work, from the Byker project, to the PCL, and the DARPI and DOSA projects, through a combination of methodologies including design and digital anthropology, and design practices (e.g. mapping and prototyping). Major projects include: ‘Re-envisioning Infection Practice Ecologies in Nursing’ (RIPEN, AHRC-funded; Co-I: Prendiville), working in dialogue with nurses to look at why, though Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) impacts on nursing practices, it does not feature centrally or in the nursing curriculum. Working with Anne Marie Rafferty, President of the Royal College of Nursing, a RIPEN Policy Lab briefing with stakeholders with AMR-related expertise mapped how to transform the research content into policy, this then given to the RCN’s Head of Infection, Protection and Control, and contributing to an RCN policy paper for UK government. The EU Horizon 2020 Pharma Factory project, a collaboration between five biotech SMEs and four academic institutions (2017–2021, Co-I: Prendiville), is applying a user-centred approach to engaging stakeholders (industry, government, regulators, patient groups, clinicians and the public) to understand better the opportunities for plant molecular pharmaceuticals. Work so far is highlighting the importance of different ways to communicate with different stakeholder audiences in contentious areas. In 2017, to support the take up of design within science and technology innovation, Prendiville produced A scoping study: Design's Role in the Satellite Applications and Transportations Systems Catapults, funded by the Knowledge Transfer Network. This work went on to support the adoption of design and human centred practices across the Catapults. [5.6.]

AMR is a global problem and RIPEN led to three Bhabha Newton-funded research projects exploring AMR in India: DOSA (Diagnostics for a One Health User-Driven Solution in AMR (Co-I, Prendiville) [5.7.] and DARPI (Drivers of AMR in Poultry in India). Prendiville is one of a small number of researchers working at the intersection between design, science and technology, bringing an anthropological approach to investigate the complexities of AMR. DARPI is interrogating the poultry supply chain, looking at how design can affect complex supply chains and local practices. Findings from DOSA were presented at a UK Parliamentary AMR event at the House of Commons (February 2020).

Since 2009, Ordnance Survey’s (OS) Geovation scheme, with Prendiville as a judge, has supported UK startups focused on building local resilience within communities against real problems that need collaboration and design thinking across all sectors of the economy (public, private, civil society and individuals). Grants of up to GBP20,000 have enabled a wide range of projects, with extensive national reach. [5.8.]

Malpass has made a significant contribution to the field of Critical Design Practice through research into its function to extend the disciplinary agency of industrial design, contributing to its establishment as a model at UAL. His 2013 paper was published as Critical Design in Context: History, Theory and Practices (Bloomsbury, 2017), translated into Japanese and Chinese (2020, 6,723 copies sold at 31 December 2020); second edition in development. Malpass’ work is widely regarded as the first text to develop a holistic view of the subject; the book is a key text in this growing field (Bloomsbury Academic’s best-selling design-focused publication, 2017–2018). The work is widely cited regularly in design literature, while Malpass contributes to public understanding of the subject beyond academia through mainstream and design media. [5.9.] He judged the Core 77 speculative concepts awards (2016), delivers talks to design agencies, lectures internationally (A/D/O, New York, 2017) and is on the editorial boards of CoDesign: International Journal of Co-Creation in Design and the Arts and the Journal of Engineering Design.

In 2015, UAL invested in Cultures of Resilience, a two-year project co-created by DESIS Network founder/UAL Visiting Chair Manzini with Professor Jeremy Till, Head of Central Saint Martins. The work explored the cultural dimension of resilience with a specific focus on ‘place-related’ communities, with an agenda to answer how creative collaborative practices can contribute to creating the conditions for meaningful encounters between people. This pan-UAL project ensured the further development of social design work at the University. The results of this were reported on in a special issue of international journal SheJi (Volume 4, Issue 1. Elsevier, 2018) co-edited by Manzini and Thorpe. [5.10.]

In 2014, UAL supported Clark and de la Haye in founding the Centre for Fashion Curation (CfFC), a pioneering initiative bringing together researchers with diverse research and curatorial approaches to the theory and practice of fashion history and curation from across the University. This centre, like Tulloch and TrAIN before it, worked closely with the V&A, with UAL’s Professor Claire Wilcox appointed to a shared post across both institutions. The new research centre built on previous work in the area of Fashion History, Theory and Practice (involving O’Neil, Clark, UAL’s influential fashion historian and theoretician, Professor Caroline Evans, and de la Haye), returned as a case study in REF2014 but with a greater emphasis on curatorial practice.

Tulloch’s research forms a significant critical commentary on the relevance of dress to the assertion of black identity in different parts of the African Diaspora. Black Style

(publication) filled a gap in this under-researched area of study where the main focus had been on parts of Africa and African-America. Black British Style (exhibition) was the first to challenge stereotypes associated with Black aesthetics and identities. With 45,735 visitors (V&A, not including touring venues, exceeding target of 23,000 visitors), Black British Style was the first major exhibition devoted to these issues to be shown in a national museum. It addressed the V&A’s DCMS Strategic Priority 2: Opening up our institutions to the wider community, to promote lifelong learning and social cohesion; the exhibition was particularly well-received by its main target group, 18–34 year olds. The Black British Style Friday Late celebrated the eclectic styles of Black music and was the most popular Friday Late to date with 4,758 people attending. The two-day ‘Black Style International Conference’ (V&A/UAL) was the first dedicated to exploring black style across the African diaspora. [5.1.] The Observer: “The book offers a new understanding of black style in dress studies, a field that is predominantly white, as well as affirming the central place of popular culture within scholarship on race, difference and the African diaspora”. [5.2.] Tulloch went on to write the critically acclaimed The Birth of Cool: Style Narratives of the African Diaspora (2016). The Observer: “ The Birth of Cool is the product of a lifetime’s research … into black style and culture. In the book, Tulloch selects a handful of images taken during the 20th century and offers an in-depth analysis of the significance of the clothes and also what the photographs tell us about wider society at the time they were taken”. [5.3.] An outcome of the Black Style project was a successful application for an AHRC Diasporas, Migration and Identities Network grant, which resulted in the Dress and the African Diaspora Network.

The V&A’s internationally touring exhibition, Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up (2018), co-curated by Wilcox, reflects the influence of the work of Baddeley and Clark in the introduction to its accompanying publication. The exhibition and related events, brought UAL’s approach to fashion history research to an extensive audience, building on its work in the area to extend and expand on public understanding of key contemporary issues around gender, sexuality, race, religion and dis/ability, in particular relation to clothing and the representation of ‘the self’. A total of 284,000 people visited Making Her Self Up (making it the museum’s most popular exhibition after Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, 2015). A total of 16,469 tickets were sold in its first five weeks; the run was extended for two weeks. The V&A described how the exhibition “set off a ‘Frida Mania’ across the UK.” Baddeley convened the accompanying conference at the V&A, ‘Frida: Inside and Outside’ (November 2018), which, in particular, took further thinking on dress in relation to disability. [5.4.] [5.5.]

Touring venues include Brooklyn Museum, 8 February–12 May 2019; de Young Museum, San Francisco ( Appearances Can Be Deceiving in this iteration), July 2020. Post-COVID-19, Google Arts & Culture included Appearances Can Be Deceiving in ‘Faces of Frida’. [5.6.]

The original exhibition, Appearances Can Be Deceiving: Frida Kahlo's Dresses, impacted directly on Diego Rivera: Genio, figura y silueta/Diego Rivera: Genius, Figure and Silhouette (2018, Museo Casa Estudio Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Mexico), which presented more than 80 pieces of Rivera’s clothing, with drawings and photographs. The exhibition’s curator explained how “The exhibition … helped me to understand the garments as containers of value as well as historical documents. From this work, I considered the importance of reviewing dress as a carrier of messages and useful information for reading a historical character.” [5.7.]

Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore! (Somerset House, 2013) unpacked the significance of Blow as a patron of British fashion in the 1990s. The accompanying Rizzoli publication was edited by O’Neill. Evans, contributed Modelling McQueen: Hard Grace. Evans and O’Neill (P.I and Co-I.) secured an AHRC grant for ‘Exploding Fashion: Cutting, Constructing and Thinking Through Things’ (GBP253,674.41, 2018–2020). Both Isabella Blow and Making Her Self Up make a connection between the ‘individual’ and the ‘public’ as a group of individuals responding to the subject in each case. Subsequently, O’Neill worked with Wilcox on Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, contributing ‘The Shining and Chic’ to the accompanying book (V&A Publishing).

Ideas developed by Clark in The concise dictionary of dress in relation to curation and the representation of identity are picked up in Gluck: Art and Identity, an insight into the way that Sussex-based artist Gluck constructed and articulated her artistic and gender identities through wearing tailored, masculine-style clothing, enabling a wider consideration of the construction and communication of identity amongst contemporary LGBTQIA communities. Gluck: Art & Identity was a collaboration between Royal Pavilion and Museums Brighton (RPM), as part of a broader community initiative, Wear It Out, described by RPM as a “meaningful and true collaboration”, which explored local LGBTQIA communities in Sussex, past and present. [5.8.] Through the project, testimonies and dress were collected from the local residents, specifically from the LGBTQIA culture. The publication, Gluck: Art and Identity, was nominated for the TLS Book of the Year 2017. In 2017, de la Haye acted as advisor on The Phantom Thread, a major feature film focused on a 1950s Parisian fashion designer played by Daniel Day Lewis. De la Haye’s co-authored book London Couture 1923–1975: British Luxury provided the source material for the film.

Lewis has been researching the field of modest fashion since the mid-2000s, from the earliest stages of the phenomenon, creating a global community of researchers, designers and others interested in the subject. Now a leading commentator in this field, she is described as having “a tremendous following of modest fashion enthusiasts who rely on her research work, opinions, and teachings on this topic to get a better understanding and insight to the modest fashion space” [5.9.] and is sought out regularly by press and media for her comment on developments in modest fashion (for example, BBC Radio 4, Woman’s Hour, 21 January 2020.) Lewis’ work is consistently pioneering and innovative—note her recognition of the importance of online communications—blogs, vlogs, brand websites, influencers—to the promulgation of modest fashion. Her relationship with modest fashion vloggers and bloggers who she speaks alongside and in dialogue with, such as

Nabiilabee and Mariah Idrissi, is a testament to the credibility of her position. She has enabled interfaith dialogue as well as that between religious and secular communities, and contributes regularly to books, papers and essays; refereed journal articles; exhibition curation; and convening, speaking at and chairing events internationally.

Lewis was Consulting Curator for Contemporary Muslim Fashions, the first major international exhibition on Muslim dress codes (de Young Museum, San Francisco, 2018), described by the Museum’s Director as “a much-needed and overdue exploration of a multifaceted topic largely unexamined by museums”. The Faith and Fashion series (est. 2013) has held events in more than 20 cities including New York, Beirut and Montreal; podcasts are downloaded for research/teaching around the world. Members of the British Council fashion team have participated in these fashion events, and “have seen how effectively they open up complex discussions for mixed, and new, audiences.” [5.10.]

Lewis took this work further in ‘Modest Fashion in UK Women’s Working Life’ (AHRC, PI: Lewis, 2018–2020), with partners including the British Council and the Islamic Fashion and Design Council. Audiences for the outputs include the fashion and creative industries, and creative arts education, and employers, HR professionals, religious organisations and policymakers. Chaired by Baroness Young of Hornsey OBE, a House of Lords roundtable (March 2020) brought together organisations including Muslim Women’s Council, Equality and Human Rights Commission and Religions for Peace, UK Women of Faith Network.

UAL’s continued investment in its fashion and sustainability research is key to the level of impact achieved. Since REF2014, the impact created by these researchers has become increasingly defined and targeted, developing, refining and promoting the sustainable fashion agenda, embedding it in the ethos of major global fashion brands, including Kering’s and LVMH’s high-profile ‘Maisons’, and also a roster of small, medium and large fashion businesses including Filippa K and ASOS, which, in 2020, launched its groundbreaking Design Circular Collection.

In 2018, Kering and UAL introduced an award-winning course, ‘Fashion and Sustainability: Understanding Luxury Fashion in a Changing World’ (co-developed by UAL’s researchers and Kering’s sustainability experts), which was awarded a Green Gown Award for Next Generation Learning and Skills. In 2020, the course was cited as one of the best online courses to do during lockdown. [5.1.] More than 74,000 people have taken the course, across 191 countries.

Collet became CSM LVMH Director of Sustainable Innovation for the CSM x LVMH Global Partnership 2016–2020 (Sustainability & Innovation in Luxury | Fostering Creativity): a research fund and academic programme; five LVMH Grand Prix Scholarships; joint projects between LVMH Maisons and students/graduates; recruitment and campus events. Collet’s work is highly influential in the world of materials development, through conceptual research and thinking, and practical application. Her provocations create a space for discussion of future possibilities, while her design-led practice feeds into the work of others via her teaching ( Collet founded MA Textile Futures which, in 2017, became MA Material Futures, and then in 2019, the groundbreaking MA Biodesign). Her work through the Design & Living Systems Lab grew out of nearly a decade of research. Dezeen described Collet as the “driving force” behind pioneering educational design and research in the field of sustainable innovation practices at UAL. [5.2.] Her work has been featured in exhibitions and conferences internationally on subjects including textile futures, biodesign and biomimicry, future manufacturing and designing for the bio-economy. [5.3.]

The Mistra Future Fashion project has a strategic, systemic approach to achieving a Circular Fashion industry. The work culminated in the formation of a new framework for Circular Design, ‘Materials, Models and Mindsets’, which underpins work in the area. The programme involved representatives from government and NGOs, and around 50 representatives from industry, including Filippa K, with whom Earley and Goldsworthy initiated an innovative ‘researchers in residence’ project. Through this process, the Filippa K team developed ways to use recycled materials in fashion, new technology to extend the life of clothing, and insights for designing for full recyclability, including its 2018 Front Runners garments, based on ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ clothing concepts, launching in London in November 2018 with exhibition— Disrupting Patterns: Designing for Circular Speeds. Filippa K’s (fully recyclable) ‘Eternal Trench Coat’ went to retail and was acquired by the V&A as part of its permanent Fashion Gallery showcase. [5.4.] Executive Director, C&A Foundation (now Laudes Foundation): “As the leader of a foundation focused on making fashion a force for good, I have been both informed and inspired by the thoughtful reports produced by Mistra Future Fashion. They have brought data, insights and clarity to the many, diverse actors working to positively transform the fashion system”. [5.5.]

In 2017, as part of its 2020 Circular Fashion Commitments, ASOS pledged to deliver a circular fashion programme with its designers, subsequently developed by Williams and delivered with UAL’s Knowledge Exchange team. ASOS’ CSR initiatives included a conference for 90 of its third-party brands, including Levis and Adidas, to discuss ethical trade and sustainability issues. Engagement with small design-led fashion businesses has been integral to Williams’ research. Building on past funded projects London Style, Creative Hub and Bright New Things, design for sustainability mentoring and workshops have built capabilities in UK fashion design, recognised globally. AHRC-funded ‘Fostering Sustainable Practices’, ( Williams, Co-I) has created an evidence base of how business models; design and business operations; working practices; networks and ecosystems of MSEs can contribute to holistic sustainability parameters. In 2019, Williams co-authored a report for the European Commission that maps current initiatives and key organisations in sustainable fashion and textiles across Europe. [5.6.] This report became the basis for subsequent funding calls.

UAL worked with Condé Nast to create The Sustainable Fashion Glossary and supported the company in realising their strategy to become a stronger voice on sustainability, influence change in the industry and be a trustworthy source of information. The glossary of over 250 terms supports sustainability narratives across written and visual fashion media outputs, ensuring sustainability terms (across environmental, social and industrial contexts) are used correctly, evidence-based and globally relevant. Chair of Global Sustainability Steering Committee, Condé Nast: “We were keen to partner with a well-established research centre with an international reputation, robust academic rigour and experience working with global audiences in conjunction with our development of the Glossary. [Centre for Sustainable Fashion] has a diverse community of key changemakers around the world who all share a common vision of transforming the fashion sector through a sustainability lens”. [5.7.] (Glossary in translation into Chinese and Russian.)

UAL has received extensive media coverage for: Fashioned From Nature; Filippa K; the 2020 ‘red carpet season’ (for which a sustainable fashion guide given to ceremony guests asked them to reconsider their fashion choices for the event); the Modern Slavery Act, part of the University’s work with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. On the publication of the Environmental Audit Committee’s report, Fixing Fashion: clothing consumption and sustainability (2019), Williams was interviewed on news channels including BBC World, BBC Radio 5 Live and Sky News Sunrise. She has featured in the Evening Standard’s London’s Progress 1000 list (2015, 2016, 2017); in 2020, she was named Drapers’ Sustainable Fashion Champion: “a pioneer of industry change for more than a decade”. [5.8.]

UAL researchers were invited to contribute to Fashioned from Nature (V&A, 2018, touring: Natural History of Museum Denmark, 2019; Design Society, China 2020–2021). Williams acted as Special Advisor to the exhibition, contributed a chapter to the accompanying publication and was the only designer commissioned to make installations for the exhibition, Fashion Now, an examination of the environmental impact of five contemporary fashion items; and Fashion Futures 2030, an interactive element that allowed visitors to explore future fashion scenarios. 175,794 visitors viewed the exhibition. Tristram Hunt, Director, V&A: “… Fashioned from Nature … examines the impact at every stage [of fashion production], from the materials and the global networks that supplied them, to their manufacture, production and use.... Our collaboration with [Centre for Sustainable Fashion] has highlighted the innovative research taking place to resolve the challenges raised in the exhibition”. [5.9.] Time Out London (October 2018): “This impressive blockbuster show covers the way clothing has been inspired by the beauty of nature but has also exploited and damaged the natural world. Don’t miss it”. The Environmental Audit Committee held a select committee for the Sustainability of the Fashion Industry Inquiry at the museum during the exhibition, the best-attended UK Select Committee hearing in history, and the first to be held outside Parliament (led by Mary Creagh MP). Williams appeared as witness. [5.10.]

Ongoing UAL initiatives in fashion and sustainability are continuing the examination of materials use, systems and policy, including a focus on waste. Fishskin (Elisa Palomino, 2019–2023, funded by EU Horizon 2020 MSCA Research and Innovation Staff Exchange Programme) explores the viability of the use of fish leather in contemporary fashion. This project is already attracting considerable attention in academia and industry with initial findings communicated through conferences and events worldwide. Preservation of Hezhen Fish Skin Tradition through Fashion Higher Education, a film presenting the research (2020), won the Best Green Fashion Film award at the Fashion Film Festival Milan.

Local Wisdom, followed by Craft of Use, explored a set of under-documented practices relating to the wearing of and caring for clothes that challenge the high material throughput practices of the fashion industry. By turning attention to tending, mending and adapting garments rather than just creating them, this project positioned fashion away from the dominant discourses of consumerism. An international network of educators and students developed design methods from the research and integrated them into wider practice, education or business models. The culmination included ‘The Craft of Use’ event (2014, including Jonathan Porritt and John Thackara), and a publication: Craft of Use. Fletcher brought the findings and thinking that derived from the two projects into her subsequent work, which has been influential in relation to the development of ‘post-growth fashion’. Jonathon Porritt, Founder and Director, Forum for the Future: "I love the idea of the ‘craft of use', where meaning and wellbeing can be seen to flow not so much from the buying as from the using of any garment". [5.11.]

Trash-2-Cash engaged 18 partners from 10 countries to work on six new material prototypes: 0° shirt; R3 coat; ReAct Base-layer; Denim NAture Jeans; Fashion Fascia; Reborn–Reworn Jacket. The European Union Innovation Radar identified UAL as a ‘Key Innovator’ for Trash-2-Cash in developing “A holistic approach in product development, integrating materials development, product design and manufacturing”. [5.12] Papers were delivered at Circular Transitions 2016 conference (UK), and a keynote, Sustainable Innovation conference (2016).

UAL’s support of its award-winning researchers, recognised as experts in the field of fashion and sustainability, has enabled each to take up advisory roles, contribute expert media commentary, publish books and scholarly articles, curate international exhibitions, headline conferences and participate in events worldwide for the fashion industry and the more general sustainability arena. Earley is special advisor to European Clothing Action Plan. Fletcher’s Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys (2008) has become a key text, with its second edition published in 2014. Williams is special advisor on the APPG for Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion.

Under the leadership of Harris, and with Goldsworthy as deputy director, UAL is delivering one of nine UK-based Creative R&D Partnership awards, ‘The Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology, (GBP5,644,115), part of the AHRC-Creative Industries Cluster Programme. This extensive project takes further the University’s work, undertaken by Williams, (also Co-I on the project) in relation to the role of designers in the future of the fashion industry.

UAL has created a space in which a multiplicity of approaches can be debated, and conflicts in perspectives on Black-British art and artists interrogated. Understanding of the processes involved in how works by Black-British artists have become ‘lost’ or ‘hidden’ is increasing. UAL’s investment in the research has led to strategic internal appointments as well as UAL scholars being appointed to positions of influence in external organisations and institutions. The University’s support for research into issues around ethnic and national identity as they relate to art and design has led to the creation of UAL Research Centres. TrAIN (2004, Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation) is a cross-disciplinary hub for historical, theoretical and practice-based research. In 2018, UAL invited Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) to relocate to Chelsea College of Arts; award-winning artist and UAL alumnus, Yinka Shonibare MBE, commented that the relocation will “maximise the potential of the Stuart Hall Library whilst making a significant contribution to diverse perspectives within the college, in the community, across London, nationally and beyond”. [5.1.] In 2020, Shades of Noir (SoN, established by Aisha Richards in 2009, taking Shades of Black as its inspiration) became UAL’s Centre for Race and Practice-Based Social Justice, with Richards as Director. The UAL Decolonising Arts Institute (2019) was established to challenge colonial and imperial legacies in order to drive cultural, social and institutional change. Through these centres and a number of key academic appointments, UAL is investing in creating social, cultural and institutional impact— Boyce was appointed as UAL Chair in Black Art & Design in 2013. UAL’s Decolonising the Arts Institute is working with 15 partners comprising major UK public art collections (including Tate, Arts Council and British Council collections) and arts charities (e.g. Art UK and the Art Fund) to explore potential collaborative ways of working. UAL researchers have been appointed to a range of high-profile positions, which is contributing to the scale of the impact of UAL’s work in uncovering Black-British artists— Boyce will represent Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2022, the first black woman to do so.

The critically acclaimed Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017 (a partnership with UAL co-curated by David A. Bailey and Jessica Taylor), brought together 19 international artists (including UAL’s lok, Kimathi Donkor, Joy Gregory, the late Khadija Saye, and Erika Tan; and Isaac Julien, UAL Chair of Global Art, 2014–2016; UAL Honorary Fellow, Hew Locke; and Abbas Zahedi, TrAIN Co-Lab Artist Research Residency, 2019–2020), whose wide-ranging practices variously expand, complicate and destabilise diaspora as an enduring critical concept. The exhibition was part of a larger two-year programme through which 12 emerging artists were brought together with 10 mentors (including Gregory, Julien and Locke). Director, Tate: “The Diaspora pavilion was the greatest energy source of the whole Biennale”. [5.2.]

A collaboration between UAL and Middlesex University, Black Artists and Modernism (BAM) examined the artworks and practices of artists of African and Asian descent. One of the most impactful elements of the project has been the audit, which identified and catalogued a total of 2,085 works by over 300 Black-British artists. The institutions that took part in the audit report ongoing impact on practices including collections and acquisitions management, archiving policy and methods, and curating practice. Database search functions and terms in many audit institutions have been reviewed. Selections from the extensive positive feedback from 14 audit participants include the Government Art Collection: “The impact of GAC having been part of the original BAM project in 2016 is illustrated in several important and continuing strands of our work… Most significantly of all, the GAC's Representation of the People Project, was established in 2018 [creating] a seismic shift that has, and is, influencing and informing all aspects of our work. It is a ten-year commitment to challenge and review under-representation in the Collection across identities related to age, disability, gender, race, sexuality, and socio-economic background.” [5.3.] Citing the audit during the period after the death of George Floyd in the US and the resurgence of Black Lives Matter, curator and writer Aindrea Emelife ( The Independent, June 2020) identified how “The place where real change begins is in the storage units. What museums have and acquire into their permanent collections matters because museum acquisitions form the canon of black art”. [5.4.]

As part of the dissemination and the development of the thinking generated by the project, and to enable comprehensive interrogation of the issues, the BAM team created a series of events including two international conferences, a UK-based symposium, study days and exhibitions . (Selected activities were video-documented and are available on the UAL Decolonising Arts Institute YouTube channel.) This activity included a specific event addressing the impact of The Other Story, which was to form the basis for content in the digital archive of Afterall (UAL Reader, Lucy Steeds’ Retelling “The Other Story”—or What Now?, 2018), and a dedicated microsite, supported at the outset by a Digital Project Grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (2015–2016) and, subsequently, by two awards from the Teaching and Learning Exchange at UAL (2016 and 2017). Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH, 2017–2018) funding enabled publication of the first essay on this site to analyse the exhibition. [5.5.]

Workshops at a one-day symposium (Tate Britain, 2016), The Work Between Us: Black-British Artists and Exhibition Histories, addressed the issue of exhibition texts and labels presenting work by artists of colour through a prism of identity, race and ethnicity. The Public Collections Study Day (MAG 2018), the concluding event of the BAM project , engaged with curators of museum collections. Focused on the research that the BAM team had conducted on public collections and their curation, the day featured papers given by speakers including Dalal-Clayton, Dibosa and Nasar. An international conference, ‘Conceptualism—Intersectional Readings, International Framings: Situating ‘Black Artists and Modernism’ in Europe’ (7–9 December 2017), in collaboration with Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, proposed and developed new understandings of Conceptualism produced by artists based in Europe after the political and social upheavals of 1968, focusing on Europe in order to highlight the specificities and limits of discourses on ‘Blackness’ and Conceptualism between neighbouring contexts. Co-convened by lok, Orlando and Aikens, speakers included lok, Boyce, Dibosa. The revised conference papers were edited by the convenors as a 444-page e-publication (Van Abbemuseum, 2019). [5.6.]

A special issue of the Journal of Art History, presenting essays that examine a range of artists looked at during the BAM project, is due (summer 2021), edited by Boyce and Dorothy Price. A book on the BAM project is forthcoming (Duke University Press). Kenneth Montague, Tate trustee: "This project is a long-overdue, absolutely essential resource. For too long the importance of this work to the British arts scene has been overlooked. This initiative is about legacy, setting the record straight." [5.7.] Dalal-Clayton’s article, published by The Double Negative, ‘Developing more representative art collections could not be more urgent’ offers an overview and a continuing call for action, post-BAM. [5.8.] lok secured the commissioning of a one-hour BBC4 documentary, Whoever Heard of a Black Artist? Britain's Hidden Art History, which followed the research activity and elaborated on what was uncovered, through interviews and by outlining the historical context. (Presented by Boyce and Brenda Emmanus, and featuring Dibosa, Goodwin and Nasar, and Melanie Keen, Director, Iniva. First screened in July 2018: 160,000 viewers; 30,000 iPlayer views. Repeat screenings in July and September 2018: approximately 6,000 viewers.)

Boyce invited Nasar to curate the exhibition Speech Acts: Reflection-Imagination-Repetition (2018–19, Manchester Art Gallery, funded by the Paul Mellon Centre. GBP9,462.99) as a response to the BAM project. The exhibition juxtaposed works by canonical white British artists with those by artists of Asian and African heritage, rather than presenting a selection based on the heritage of the artists. Speech Acts inspired a series of workshops and conferences in collaboration with institutions including Contemporary Art Society and Iniva. ‘The LYC Museum & Art Gallery and the Museum as Practice’, a symposium organised by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (PMC) and UAL, in collaboration with Manchester Art Gallery and the University of Manchester (with conveners including Nasar and Afterall’s Steeds), at Manchester Art Gallery (6–7 March 2019), considered the LYC Museum as an extension of artist Li Yuan-chia’s (1929–1994) pioneering participatory art practice. The event examined wide-ranging questions such as: How does the example of LYC sit within wider histories of the museum as artwork? What does the LYC Museum contribute to wider considerations of Participatory Art practices? What forms and methodologies allow art historical enquiries into friendships and sites? (The practice of Li Yuan-chia and the LYC Museum were brought into the public domain by the work of BAM, and through the television programme, ‘Whoever Heard of a Black Artist? Britain's Hidden Art history'.) From Speech Acts, a collaborative exhibition is scheduled at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, bringing the LYC Museum and Kettle’s Yard together in conversation (2022–2023). Nasar works with MAG as a consulting curator, advising on the re-hang of its permanent collection, and is co-curator of British Art Show 9 (with MAG as his nominee)—one of Britain’s most significant exhibitions of contemporary art organised every five years by Hayward Gallery Touring.

Middlesborough Insitute of Modern Art’s (MIMA) Why Are We Here?, a year-long collaboration with BAM, through which the collection was audited for all contributions by artists of African, Asian and Middle East and North Africa Region descent in the UK in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, revealed new narratives within the collection. Described as “a huge success for MIMA, prompting serious discussion about who and what should be collected for the public good” [5.9.], the project ran from March 2019 to August 2020, with results of this research unveiled as they are uncovered, making new material available to the institution and its publics.

Goodwin worked with artist Hannah Collins to curate We Will Walk—Art and Resistance in the American South (Turner Contemporary, 2020), to reveal the little-known history of African-American ‘yard art’, shaped by the Civil Rights period in the 1950s and 1960s. At a time of widespread protest on the streets, We Will Walk was the first exhibition of its kind in the UK. A symposium, ‘Art, Roots and The Abstract Truth’ (March 2020) and an online discussion, ‘We Will Walk: Black Art, Radical Transformation’ (July 2020) unpacked the issues further. A virtual tour of the exhibition has had over 11,000 views on YouTube. “The exhibition … articulates Southern-ness through the lens of a too-often neglected corpus of African-American artists. In a genre-bursting and affecting assemblage of works, co-curators Hannah Collins and Paul Goodwin have sought to explore how the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s shaped the work of these artists.” [5.10.]