Design history on the periphery of design practice

This paper aims to explore the possible threats and opportunities that face the delivery of design history (and indeed any contextualising/theorizing element) within art and design practice courses in the light of a number of developments in higher education, and in the discipline itself over the past few years. The paper concludes with a case study of changes that have taken place over the last year in the curriculum of design practice courses at the University of Huddersfield. The thoughts, comments, observations and information presented in this paper arose from the experience of teaching design history as a supporting subject across a number of design practice disciplines at the University of Huddersfield, and from reflection on and analysis of the curricula of the School of Design Technology in the light of feedback from an external subject quality assessment and internal School review processes. It in no way purports to be an accurate representation of the state of design history within Art & Design higher education globally, or even nationally. The observations may, however, be indicative of a number of institutions, and further exploration across other art and design courses is suggested.