{"id":5669,"date":"2024-12-20T14:26:09","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T14:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/?p=5669"},"modified":"2024-12-20T14:28:03","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T14:28:03","slug":"reflections-on-our-face-to-face-design-meet-ups-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/reflections-on-our-face-to-face-design-meet-ups-this-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on our face to face design meet-ups this year"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have been delighted to be able to run a number of informal face to face meet ups at various venues across the country this autumn. It has been wonderful to meet with students as well as their partners, children and grandchildren! It has been a joy to meet such enthusiastic students and to see some great innovations and inspiring work.<\/p>\n

Clive Hilton kicked the season off with a trip to the Young V&A in Bethnal Green in October. As he wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Young V&A is a fabulous place and very much centred on giving children (and grown-ups) a clear and non-patronising understanding of how designers past and present are using design to improve the lives, activities and creative engagement of children. Impressively, there are displays that show how cultures from all over the world have produced toys, artefacts and furniture for the use of children.<\/p>\n

Just as impressively – the many examples of design innovation also include the design journals used by designers to document their experimentations. This reinforces why we on U101 encourage students to maintain their own design journals, precisely because this is how professional designers work.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Mycelium experiments<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Clive is planning to run another trip in February.<\/p>\n

Steve Hoffman organised a visit to extensive Salts Mill in Saltaire, accompanied by Lisa Bowers and Jenny Burke. Steve had kindly set up a tour of the furniture exhibition in the gallery which the students very much enjoyed and which generated enthusiastic peer-to-peer conversations.<\/p>\n

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Saltaire, Yorkshire, UK and the mill at the side of the river.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Vera Hale and Elouise Huxor led a visit to the Stradling Collection in Bristol, which they described as \u201can inspiring treasure trove of 20th and 21st-century design and applied arts. The superb collection spans glass and ceramics, industrial design, and mid-century furniture, and packed full of stories of design and craftsmanship. It was a fabulous opportunity to chat with students and explore the collection together.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Theodora Philcox and Nicole Lotz joined students at the recently re-opened Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery where we were able to critique the new mode of display and discuss the representations of diversity in its upper gallery. Having students from all levels of study there, led to some really interesting conversations, especially as a couple of the students had experience of museum design, including at that very museum!<\/p>\n

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Derek Jones and Belinda Langlands headed a visit to the V&A in Dundee where the architecture alone is impressive and offers opportunities for the analysis of cultural spaces and engagement.<\/p>\n

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Anne-Marie Bartlett coordinated a meet up at the Working Class Creatives Exchange in Manchester in November, which offered excellent opportunities for networking for those living in the area.<\/p>\n

Finally, Elouise and Theodora braved Storm Bert to meet with students at the Design Museum in London. It was lovely to see students who had been the previous year and to see friendships blossom. There were lively discussions in the design gallery, and for those who wished to, there was the opportunity to see the incredible work of Tim Burton including his drawings, models, costumes and set designs.<\/p>\n

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We have more visits planned for the new year and look forward to further design-focused discussions and inspiration, and of course, forging friendships and meeting more of our fabulous students!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have been delighted to be able to run a number of informal face to face meet ups at various venues across the country this autumn. It has been wonderful to meet with students as well as their partners, children and grandchildren! It has been a joy to meet such enthusiastic students and to see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":5655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,5,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-design-comment","category-design-education","category-design-engagement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5669"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5688,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5669\/revisions\/5688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}