Curating Contemporary Design (in partnership with the Design Museum) MA: Research areas

Many of the staff in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture are research active and in-touch with the latest thinking in their subject specialisms. Contributions to KIOSK, the Faculty's annual publication, give an indication of the range of interests of our staff: www.kiosk-magazine.co.uk.

We can potentially support work-based learning projects in a wide variety of design-related subject areas, including:

• colour and design;
• communication design;
• creative management;
• curating;
• design for environments;
• design for the screen;
• design for sustainability;
• the fashion industry;
• heritage and museum studies;
• heritage and the modern interior; and
• organisational and personal development in the creative industries.

Design Research Centre

The Design Research Centre provides a creative environment for researchers engaging with the cultural, environmental and presentational contexts of design practice in its widest sense.  Research in this diverse area is developed through five interrelated areas:

• Curating the Contemporary – focusing on new initiatives and perspectives on curating, including the interface between design, craft and fine art;
• Design Innovation – focusing on the presentational contexts of contemporary design practice;
• Design for Environments – including design for wellbeing, health and micro-environments, as well as spatial, aesthetic and critical enquiries into building typologies and cultural analysis of urban and leisure environments;
• Design for Screen – focusing on interdisciplinary and practice-based enquiries into screen-based media; and
• Sustainability – multidisciplinary design research into issues of environmental protection and social justice.

Student research

You may be able to publish any research you undertake on the Kingston University Research and Innovation Reports (KURIR) website. This site gives anyone associated with Kingston University the opportunity to publish articles, which will be permanently available to the academic community.

A unique aspect of the Curating Contemporary Design MA at Kingston is the growing reputation of our annual conferences, which are organised around future-facing issues in curatorial practice. Each conference is developed through sustainable partnerships, leading to a number of ongoing projects. They have included:

• Tales of the Unexpected: Exploring the Future for Curating Contemporary Craft (2007) with the Crafts Council and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA);
• New Sites of Practice (2006) with the Design Council and Blueprint - follow-on projects include the publication of conference proceedings in Blueprint (June 2006), the magazine's most popular issue to date;
• Curating Cultural Diversity (2005) with the Museum of London - follow-on projects include Kingston's curating residency; and
• Collecting Now (2004) with the British Museum - Kingston graduate Gina Ha-Gorlin is currently an Inspire Fellow at the British Museum.