Design Strategies and the Representation of the Commonwealth: from Institute to Museum

This project presents an opportunity for a student to undertake research integral to a major development in the national design landscape, as the Design Museum plans its move from its current Shad Thames location to the Commonwealth Institute building, Kensington in 2014. The aim of the project is to explore the display strategies at the Commonwealth Institute and to investigate how designers interpreted the new political formation of the Commonwealth through the architectural space itself and by way of detailed display methodologies. It will go on to ask how the Design Museum might best inhabit a building with this heritage and how such a legacy might inform display policy in the future. A key asset to this investigation is the survival of all the drawings pertaining to the displays representing each member state of the Commonwealth which formed the nucleus of the Commonwealth Institute interior: these now form part of the James Gardner Archive at the University of Brighton. Though the displays themselves have been destroyed, the archival resource at Brighton offers a unique record of display strategy at a key political moment. Thus this studentship will bring about an opportunity to mine an untapped source and to explore its historical significance, and to contribute in a direct way to debate the Design Museum's future policy and the role of design in representing Britain's relationships with other countries and its former colonies particularly.
The curatorial team at the Design Museum is especially interested in working with a student to research design collection display techniques and policies; they are excited by the prospect of the student undertaking this research alongside them while based at the museum. An exhibition of the archival material from Brighton is to be held at the Design Museum in its new home in 2014, and the student would play a key role in the research and curatorial elements of the project.
Moreover, the Design Museum and the University of Brighton Design Archives have common interests and concerns. A plan of collaborative working is under development and this studentship would form an important part of that relationship and the longer-term dialogue between the two partners. Indeed, the energetic research culture at Brighton and the presence of students and staff working in associated areas, for example, de-colonisation, memory, museology, heritage studies, and design history, offers a supportive and stimulating environment in which to conduct this study. The university has a longstanding relationship with the V&A and the Henry Moore Institute and a good track record in uniting academic expertise with curatorial expertise in the museum sector. For students, access to the research cultures of two different institutions is an attractive and valuable opportunity.
Conjoining research on the Commonwealth Institute displays, unique records of which are located within the University of Brighton Design Archives, and the history and background of the Design Museum itself, the intention is that research undertaken as part of this project will inform strategies for the inaugural collection display when the Design Museum moves to the Commonwealth Institute in 2014.

This project has the potential to reach wide audiences through its research findings and associated dissemination activities, particularly as the Design Museum undertakes its move to the Commonwealth Institute building in 2014. The Design Museum will communicate the progress of this project and its findings with its visitors, sister museum organisations and as part of the HLF programme of community engagement that it embarks upon as part of the relocation process. Moreover, the project and the exhibition it informs will be launched as part of a suite of activities intended to mark the museum's move and will benefit greatly from this extended press coverage. Thus the Design Museum is a key beneficiary, and through it, the wider design community and broad public audiences it serves. The Design Museum will gain a better understanding of its past and its collections, as well as the research findings upon which to derive a more informed policy for the future. Moreover, the student will be encouraged to consider the possibilities of engaging with public audiences to explore changing meanings of the Commonwealth perhaps by inviting user-generated content at some stage in the process. In this way, the impact on individuals as contributors to the historical record, and as 'citizen scholars' more broadly, forms part of a wider move towards meaningful participatory knowledge exchange. Indeed, the research this project generates will be of significant interest to the museum and heritage sectors nationally and internationally, and the student will be encouraged to engage with these communities directly by writing articles and through participation at conferences relevant to these sectors.

In terms of both method and content, this project will attract interest and engagement, and will be promoted to that end among the various research communities to which the Design Archives are allied locally, nationally and internationally, for example the Design History Society, the Business History Unit at LSE, the Art Libraries Society. The supervisory team will call upon the services of the University's Virtual Research Unit and the Faculty of Arts marketing officer in order to develop an impact plan that will unfold as the project progresses. The project will be promoted from its start through the web pages of the Design Archives and the pages of the Faculty of Arts. As a research project running alongside our ongoing work with the Archives Hub (representing 184 UK HE repositories) and JISC, this project will form a high profile exemplar of the ways archive sources can enrich the ongoing work of national and international organisations. It will be promoted via the Archives Hub, VADS (44 repositories), and JISC through seminar and conference presentations, special news features, alerts, contributions to blogs and other social media mechanisms. It will be brought to the attention of our international partners ICSID and ICOGRADA, and publicised through their extensive educational networks. These global not-for-profit organisations promote better design around the world and with members in more than 50 countries, ICSID alone represents an estimated 150 000 designers. http://www.icograda.org/about/about/articles299.htm

Within the Research Student Division of the Centre for Research & Development at Brighton, the student will have their own dedicated web page and be encouraged to take part in research days and to make contributions to the CRD publication 'Research News'. They will be encouraged to present at conferences such as those of the International Design Alliance, and the Design Research Society, where our findings and approach will be presented to an international audience. At Brighton, managing postgraduate career development is considered a key means of consolidating impact over time and the CRD offers a range of workshops to this end. http