Shining a new light on the collections of the National Art Library through creative practice
How can we explore the National Art Library through play? VARI Creative Fellow Hafsa Jamal Makda explores the role of joy and wonder at the National Art Library, looking into the idea of research as a leisure activity and turning to the library collections as inspiration for her creative practice.
Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, VARI Creative Fellowships bring together creative practitioners with curators, scholars, and diverse audiences to explore cross-disciplinary connections and strategies. The VARI Creative Fellowship 2025-26 focuses on the collections of the National Art Library, which are often less well known to wider visitors to the V&A. The scale of the collections and their sensitivity to light mean that only selected books can be put on display for a limited time, and so the many of them often remains invisible to those not already aware of them.
The VARI Creative Fellowship 2025-26 invited creative practitioners to work closely with colleagues from the National Art Library and the V&A Research Institute to shine a new light on the library collections through their creative practice. As a visual designer and illustrator, Creative Fellow Hafsa Jamal Makda is exploring how joy, wonder, and play can be found within the library collections. By wandering and wondering through the library and following curiosities, she hopes to develop playful ways of engaging with the collection and being in the library space.
Focusing on the discoverability and materiality of the objects in the library collections, Hafsa is creating playful interactions within the library space that allow visitors to experience the National Art Library in new ways. Through participatory design methods, she involves library staff and users/visitors to develop outcomes collaboratively. Her work also highlights the role of libraries as places of solace in a digitally saturated world.
Hafsa Jamal Makda is a visual and play designer, specialising in creating joyful experiences with and around libraries and cultural spaces, often using narratives, illustrations, and spatial installations. Her work with The Ministry of Culture Denmark ... Read more
h.jamalmakda@vam.ac.uk
The fellowship is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
While exploring and uncovering often less visible objects from the V&A’s archives and library special collections, Creative Fellow Amina Jama reflects, through film, poetry, and collaborative making and thinking, on the complex, interwoven relationship between museum objects, body, space, and land.
