Encounters on the Shop Floor

About the Project

Together curators, artists, surgeons and historians investigate and learn the fine hand skills connecting each of their very different occupations. Encounters aims to highlight the importance of this embodied knowledge and create a new model for the inclusion of these skills in higher education.

Context

The lack of recognition of the cultural, social and economic potential of embodied ways of knowing is a major area of 'wastefulness' and a significant factor – nationally and globally – in rising levels of educational under-performance, social and economic inequality and an absence of innovative, socially progressive and environmentally sustainable industrial practice. The project places techne at the centre of research and education to explore, reformulate and showcase its fundamental role within learning.

Aim

The V&A's collections are a highly fertile place for a productive encounter between expert knowledge-makers and 'the made'. Rooted within the V&A and Imperial College London, these two institutions at the heart of 'Albertopolis', revisit Prince Albert's radical vision to make South Kensington an interdisciplinary hub for design, the arts, science and education. Participants in 'Encounters' are diverse and include artists, musicians, surgeons, anthropologists, historians, scientists and curators. Together they are engaged in a process of sustained collaborative research, exchange and practice.

Outcomes

Encounters aspires to create a model for challenging the intellectual hierarchies that historically have placed a low value on embodied ways of knowing and produced the marginalisation of that knowledge that we are witnessing today. The intention is to be able to articulate this approach, making a persuasive case for its value through research events, publications, film, labs, displays and performances, and to design and model pedagogical resources of value to teachers and learners at all stages from primary school to higher education and beyond.