News & Events September 2010

WIRAD Team Appointed

A small team has been tasked with moving the development plans for WIRAD forward. Gavin Cawood (PDR, UWIC), Jo Hare (PDR, UWIC) and David Smith (UWN) will work together over the next few months to identify institutions built on collaboration around the UK and arrange visits to understand in more detail the workings of the most successful similar models. With this insight a revised Expression of Interest for the application of Reconfiguration & Collaboration Funds will be developed and discussed with the wider partners in WIRAD.

WIRAD at Cobra conference

2 & 3 September 2010, Dauphine University, Paris, France

Dr John Littlewood and two Research Students (EBERE) have recently presented at this year's RICS COBRA conference. Held in Paris during early September, the annual conference addressed all aspects of the construction, management, planning and use of the built environment. Dr Littlewood chaired a new conference theme: Biodiversity and the Built Environment. The linkages between a biodiverse built environment and a sustainable urban development are being viewed as being increasingly close and mutually supportive, and the aim of this session was to explore key issues relating to the role of the built environment professions in achieving a more biodiverse built environment.

PDR's Centre for Patient Specific Medical Product Design

PDR has established the Centre for Patient Specific Medical Product Design to assist the broad spectrum of Welsh medical product development companies and NHS specialities to tackle the growing demand for products that are personalised to meet patient needs.

Funded by the Welsh Assembly Government's Academic Expertise for Business (A4B) programmer, the centre will build upon the success of the Medical Applications Group (MAG) and the CARTIS collaboration. It will make available to Welsh-based companies the latest intellectual and technical resources in patient-specific design and work with companies to improve the performance of existing medical products by incorporating customised design features to meet individual patient needs. Technologies will include the use of advanced CAD images, medical scans, rapid prototyping and additive manufacturing technology - or tool-less manufacturing - to design and develop affordable bespoke products.

A Rough Equivalent - Sculpture and Pottery in the Post-War Period

Mezzanine Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery, 30 September 2010 - 2 January 2011

Following Dr Jeffery Jones's (Ceramics) Research Fellowship at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, A Rough Equivalent: Sculpture and Pottery in the Post-War Period brings together sculpture and ceramics from the 1950s to the 1970s from the major collections at Leeds and York Art Galleries.

Whilst there is little in the way of shared history between ceramics and sculpture in the mid twentieth century, this exhibition highlights a common aesthetic of artworks made at this time. It also continues the Institute's exploration of the meaning of sculpture and its relationship with other three-dimensional art forms.

The exhibition co-curated by Dr Jones, Sophie Raikes (Henry Moore Institute) and Helen Walsh (York Art Gallery) includes work by sculptors Kenneth Armitage, Ralph Brown, Geoffrey Clarke, Peter King, F.E McWilliam, E.R. Nele and Eduardo Paolozzi, and ceramicists Dan Arbeid, Ian Auld, Peg Campion, Hans Coper, John Dan, Bryan Newman, Colin Pearson, Robert Sturm and Denise Wren. By showing these works together, Dr Jones draws out the striking similarities in form and texture between objects in the different media, in terms of heads, towers, jagged edges, ‘cut-out' forms and distorted figuration. Roughness of texture and imperfect finish were qualities that were employed by both sculptors and ceramicists at this time, and half a century later, the works can be seen to be much more alike than was appreciated at the time.

In bringing together work from these two major collections the curators have highlighted the value of collaborative work across disciplines in the visual arts and have demonstrated that the juxtaposition of ceramics and sculpture is long overdue.

Natasha Mayo announced as Jorum Winner

Dr Natasha Mayo's (Ceramics) Making the Creative Process Visible won third prize in this year's Jorum Learning and Teaching Competition. The top six resources were chosen and scored by a judging panel and public vote. The judges comments included: "Really liked the use of students themselves to articulate the creative process, and illustrate it with the various artifacts and things that inspired them. Very cleanly presented and engaging, would appeal very much to other art students." The overall winners were announced at a gala dinner on Wednesday 8th September. Natasha has also written a review of the Ceramic's team's involvement in the Jorum prize for Nov/Dec issue of Ceramics Review.

In addition, Natasha has created a DVD containing a filmed presentation of the resource and its development into a more comprehensive website to be presented at the Designs on e-learning, Savannah. These DVD's will be a part of the delegates' packs and contain examples of the other resources on the website. The DVDs will also be available on the Jorum stand at the Nottingham conference and become part of the delegate packs and presented at Leeds College of Art's International Perspectives on Art and Design Pedagogy conference.

User-Centric Laboratory announced

PDR has announced its development of a purpose build User Observation Laboratory. The facility enables controlled observation in recreated environments and rapid ethnographic analysis to be undertaken in a controlled and systematic way, allowing deep insights and sources of innovation to be uncovered and accelerating the effectiveness and speed of development activity.

Mothercare at PDR

Over the summer, Mothercare launched ‘MyChoice', a new range of customisable children's furniture range. PDR were involved in the idea creation, observational studies, product concept and design of the furniture items. With a focus of providing ‘easy personalisation' of the furniture items, this product range can provide a changeable children's furnishing which is able to keep up with a child's development and ownership of opinion and choice.

Learning and Teaching Research

Annie Grove-White and Dr Natasha Mayo both attended and presented at the Society of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) Conference, Toronto in June 2010.

Grove-White (Creative Pedagogies) presented Designer Learning: Cross Institution Creative Collaboration, a paper co-authored with Kirsten Hardie (University College Bournemouth) developed from a research symposium held with 3rd year Graphic Communication and Graphic Design students from their two institutions, and a second paper, Developing Students Intrinsic Desire to Create, (co-authored with Ruth Dineen, UWIC) on ways of enhancing students' creativity through suspending judgement in new and different ways.

Dr Mayo presented Delivering Creativity in Material Arts through Post-material Means, a paper co-authored with Ingrid Murphy on a new interactive web‐based resource that makes visible the ways in which connections and associations between skills and ideas can arise.

During the summer, Dr Mayo also presented at Creative Thinking: Re-Imagining the University, The 8th Annual Galway Symposium in June and Staffordshire University's Research Informed Teaching: Delivering Participation, Engagement and Enquiry conference.

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