Curated by...

Curated by… was created by Pam Bowman and Matt Edgar, initially, to help students navigate through the enormous amount of material now available to them online and to encourage the use of other analogue sources of information, influence and inspiration. There was a time, which now feels quite distant, when reading lists were relatively succinct and limited to well known and respected sources of information which could be, as far as possible, guaranteed accurate. Publishers and editors were our gatekeepers. Currently within education we are finding that students have a new problem, which is not to do with having little information to work with but too much. As practitioners and educators we have the skills with which to filter the plethora of material and build understanding based on our experience and wider knowledge. In order to bring some of this experience to our students and the wider design community we have approached internationally leading practitioners to present, not their own work, but a few references for the things they have, in the past or present, found inspiring or valuable in shaping their knowledge and understanding of their practice, or simply really good advice.

The references chosen are broad and varied and allow us to begin to spot patterns and relationships between influences within different disciplines. The ongoing enquiry is to analyse the links and relationships between disciplines and publish the findings alongside the materials collected.

The format, so far, has been lecture based and has included 3 conferences and a total of over 30 speakers. The events are open to the public and attract our own students, students from other colleges and design industry colleagues from the surrounding regions. More than 600 individuals have signed up for tickets.