Encounters on the Shop Floor

The knowledge created through making, sometimes called ‘embodied’ or ‘tacit’, is fundamental to life and how we understand the V&A’s collections. Innate within the arts, humanities, sciences and medicine, this knowledge is now at serious risk of being lost. Join us at this V&A Research Institute symposium as we develop a manifesto placing this knowledge at the heart of our future.
Day tickets can be booked via the Contact Centre 020 7942 2000, concessions available.

This international symposium will develop strategies for championing the value and usability of embodied knowledge in learning, the workplace and society. Artists, makers, educationalists, manufacturers, anthropologists, neuroscientists, historians, performers, philosophers, social entrepreneurs, surgeons and curators will come together to develop new ways of articulating and showcasing the cultural, social and environmental potential of this knowledge.

The symposium will address these themes:

• Challenging the Body/Mind Divide
• The Thinking Hand: Histories and Practices
• Making, Knowing
• Making Futures
• The Thinking Hand in Science and Medicine
• Thinking with the Body: Learning by Making and Doing
The programme is subject to change.

The symposium stems from Encounters on the Shop Floor, a V&A Research Institute Research project generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Left image: Julian Stair at work (detail)
Right image: Third Thumb. Danielle Clode, Designer & Research Assistant
Plasticity Laboratory, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London