Recent Programme Highlights | Design Trust / RCA Virtual Dialogue

Looking back on the dynamic sharing and roundtable discussion at Design Trust / RCA Virtual Dialogue “Future of Design Curation” on 28 July, where fellows Carrie Chan and Anne Zhou presented the highlights of their fellowship.

During the Design Trust / RCA Virtual Dialogue “Future of Design Curation”, Carrie mapped out contemporary questions on the growing synergy between fashion, technology and the Internet for discussion and narration for future curatorial project development. Anne shared her exploration addressing the subject of sharing ownership in design between the designer and the end-user and how design could be made more relevant through co-creation.

Lively panel discussion chaired by moderator Jane Pavitt, Professor of design and architectural history, Head of Impact at Kingston University London, inviting prominent Curators as respondents: Deyan Sudjic, Director Emeritus of the Design Museum, Director of the Design Museum (2006 –2020) and Priya Khanchandani, Head of Curatorial + Interpretation, Design Museum, as well as Marisa Yiu, Co-founder/Executive Director of Design Trust with Sarah Cheang, Head of Programme, History of Design, RCA to join the inspiring conversation. Roundtable discussion addressed the questions from the audience in relation to the positive impact of design in the challenging time, and the values of hyperlocal. Thank you all for your support to make this event possible.

Carrie Chan explored how China’s Internet culture is changing self-representation and expression through fashion artefacts and developing a curatorial framework for discussing fashion’s social and cultural significance through a virtual or immaterial experience. Her study culminated in a “#Re-Fashioning The Internet” - a seminar and workshop that uses China as a case study to explore the Internet’s influence on the way we express ourselves through garments, and the way we create and innovate fashion and other wearables. 

Anne Zhou shared on how design curation offers models for expanding design practices to non-traditional design audience, not only by curating exhibitions of extant design projects, but also through research, events and other aspects of critical curatorial practices. Her work challenges current thinking and curatorial practice in London and European settings, and expands on design curating networks to localized and cultural site-specificities. Anne delivered eight weeks of workshops where design graduates collaborated with an intended end-user to create an off-the-shelf product that would give them creative agency to participate in the process. The culminating exhibition "You and Me in Design: Seminar in a Fruit Shop" addressed the subject of sharing ownership in design between the designer and the end-user and how design could be made more relevant through co-creation in the context of China. The final exhibition took place in early September in 2020 in the Xinxin Fruit Shop in Shanghai.

Design Trust / RCA Fellowship in Design Curation 2022 with a focus on the theme ‘Hyperlocal’,  extensively supported by Design Trust, is a six-month opportunity for two fellows to be selected for research, learning and engagement at the Royal College of Art in London and an opportunity for a museum placement experience in London.

Design Trust / RCA Virtual Dialogue “Future of Design Curation” programme pamphlet