RCA Rectors Text Film:Layout 1 4/12/07 12:46 Page 1
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RCA Rectors text film:Layout 1 4/12/07 12:46 Page 1 Contents Introduction 2 Other College 39 Departments and College Year in Brief 4 The Great Exhibition 2007 6 Activities The Future RCA: 2008 and Beyond 8 Exhibitions 40 External Relations 40 Department Reviews 13 Buildings & Estates 41 Information & Learning Services 41 School of Applied Art 14 Students’ Union 41 Ceramics & Glass 14 College-wide Initiatives 42 Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, 15 InnovationRCA 43 Metalwork & Jewellery Donors and Sponsors 44 School of Architecture & Design 16 Architecture 16 Design Interactions 17 College Honours and 47 Design Products 18 Industrial Design Engineering 19 Appointments Vehicle Design 20 Student Statistics 49 School of Communications 21 Animation 21 Applications 2006/7 50 Communication Art & Design 22 Students 2006/7 51 Graduate Destinations 51 School of Fashion & Textiles 23 Overseas Students’ Nationalities 52 Fashion Menswear 23 Fashion Womenswear 23 Tex t ile s 2 4 School of Fine Art 25 Painting 25 Photography 26 Printmaking 27 Sculpture 28 Drawing Studio 29 School of Humanities 30 RCA/V&A Conservation 30 Curating Contemporary Art 31 History of Design V&A/RCA 32 Critical & Historical Studies 33 Post-Experience Programmes 33 Research 35 Research at the RCA 36 Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre 37 RCA Rectors text film:Layout 1 4/12/07 12:46 Page 2 Introduction the Exhibition of 1851 who supplemented language of art and design is now at Terence’s generosity. the heart of business and government documents: ‘fitness for purpose’ – which 2006/7 was a very special anniversary The Great Exhibition 2007 was of course of course comes straight from Modernist year for the Royal College of Art. 150 years preceded by the Curating Contemporary writings on design, via the Bauhaus; is ago, in 1857 the RCA moved to its South Art exhibition Various Small Fires, the just one phrase that everyone now uses. Kensington home, alongside other notable Fashion catwalk show and by our Sculpture Like ‘cutting edge’ from the Arts and Crafts institutions born of the Great Exhibition, exhibition in Howie Street Battersea, the movement and ‘blue skies thinking’ from including the South Kensington Museum last before the complete refurbishment of Prometheus Unbound, and Icarus. These (now the V&A), the Science and Natural the Sculpture studios in time for next year’s and other phrases are so deeply embedded History Museums, Imperial College, The show. And speaking of developments in in the public mind now – we really must Royal College of Music and the Albert Hall. Battersea, this year we signed the lease have moved centre stage. The creative It was an astonishing permanent legacy for a whole side of a street opposite the industries and the arts have also moved and Legacy – the L word has been a Sculpture Department – which in time will up the political agenda in 2007. Let us hope word that’s been in the news a lot this year. house our schools of Fine and Applied Art, that this message comes over strongly That’s why we held our annual Summer giving them much-needed space to breathe to the Specialist Institutions Review, Show in a tent in the park this year, which and develop; it will also house incubator which is currently considering the level with the College galleries showed the units for start-up businesses, a large lecture of our funding from government. work of nearly all our graduates, all theatre and a gallery. RCA North and RCA together for the first time ever in the South – a second College campus, with Where research is concerned, this has been long history of this institution. And that profound implications for all of us, and if all a successful year in attracting externally was why we called it The Great Exhibition goes well, this second campus in Battersea funded research grants (from the AHRC, 2007, not to be nostalgic, but to say that will help to resolve our pressing space EPSRC and elsewhere). The AHRC-funded this was our contemporary take, at the problems for the foreseeable future. There’s Centre for the Study of the Domestic beginning of the 21st century, on the more about these developments on page 8. Interior came to an end in style – with a cultural and technological issues first major exhibition at the V&A, At Home in addressed all those years ago. Issues It was the year when, implementing the Renaissance Italy, two important book which today have turned into sustainable agenda of the George Cox Review – steered publications, several conferences and design; digital design and manufacture; by my successor as Chairman of the Design symposia and an extensive database. The asking the users what they want; soft uses Council – we created Design London, academic year 2007/8 will be crucial for of technology; the politics of identity and which is an important alliance between our research performance in the 2007 of nostalgia; and the status of the visual design, engineering and business, involving Research Assessment Exercise, where image. The Independent said it was the the RCA, Imperial College engineering staff research and the growing number best degree show they’d seen anywhere and the Tanaka Business School, the first- of research students are concerned. for 10 years, the Telegraph said it was the ever alliance between an art and design birth of a new renaissance, while The Times college and a Russell Group University. The departmental entries that follow provide concluded: “The posturing has largely It has been generously supported by a detailed guide to the achievements of the gone. The work presents itself thoughtfully, HEFCE. This was also the year when past year. They reveal that the College more more quietly and more intelligently.” The James Dyson endowed a Fellowship and a or less continues to perform its important private view of our Great Exhibition 2007 seminar series in intellectual property, role, a national role and an increasingly was visited by an astonishing 7,000 people from the proceeds of a design rights international one, as a crucible of the in a single evening – and the total number battle in court from which he’d emerged creative industries, andusually to perform of visitors was an even more astonishing triumphant. These will be supplemented it well. 73,000 in 14 days. With the tent, and what following future victories, and we hope its done for all the summer exhibitions this he’ll win a whole lot of them. “If only”, The whole of the Architecture Department year, we’ve certainly turned a corner. James said with feeling in a lecture for us, went to the Venice Biennale, and Design There’s no turning back though we’re not “if only the RCA was a microcosm for Products did the same, to the Milan Furniture sure yet exactly how to go forward. My innovation in Britain today.” If only. Fair. Design Interactions launched a major thanks go to Nigel Rolfe, curator of the project with Intel on the future of digital College galleries, and to Claire Catterall There’s also been a realisation this year money, while Industrial Design Engineering and Gerrard O’Carroll, curator and designer in public statements – at last – that was listed in Business Week as one of the of the tent for their hard work in making it a the creative industries have become top design schools in the world. In Vehicle memorable Summer Show, and also to the mainstream rather than marginal, not Design, our graduates became design Pro-Rector Alan Cummings whose idea it ‘economy lite’ but ‘economy central’; directors of Ford Europe, Land Rover, GM was. I wasn’t convinced at first. He was worth more than 7% of gross domestic Europe, Bentley, Volkswagen, Mazola and right. Above all many thanks go to the product and growing at three times the Kia – an incredible record. Provost Sir Terence Conran, whose rate of the economy as a whole. No longer Foundation made the tent financially a side show, but centre stage. The penny Our School of Communications created a feasible. And the Royal Commission for really has seemed to drop in 2007. The complex multimedia performance about 2 RCA Rectors text film:Layout 1 4/12/07 12:46 Page 3 childbirth called On the Edge of Life, which Original Print Fair in the Royal Academy; My thanks as ever go to all the staff of played to capacity houses at the Bath and Margaret Salmon, a recent Photography the College – academic, administrative, International Music Festival. Meanwhile, graduate won the first Max Mara Award technical, catering and manual – and to all one of our recent graduate animators won for women artists, in collaboration with the members of the Council (especially the the BAFTA for best short animation, and the Whitechapel Gallery. She, too, was Provost, the Chairman, the Treasurer and another created an amazing new version selected for the current Venice Biennale. the Chairman of the Estates Committee) of Peter and the Wolf, premiered at the for helping to make this such a memorable Royal Albert Hall with a live orchestra. Among this year’s leavers, I’d like to single year. Above all my thanks go to all the out, on a personal note, Gill Plummer, my students for making the College such a Fashion students won five out of eight personal assistant for 23 years – which must continually challenging, unpredictable as awards at the International ‘It’s Six’ be a record; it’s longer than most marriages well as energising place, which it should competition in Trieste, while Textiles these days – who has put up with my always be.