Join the Centre for Design History and the University of Brighton Design Archives for the November instalment of our IOTA II seminar series, with archival artist, writer and poet, Pauline Rutter. Pauline will be speaking on Designing for ‘Radical, Informed and Liberatory Scholarship’: A Creative Archival Research Journey inspired by the Institute for Race Relations (IRR) Race and Class Publication Journal Covers

IOTA II

IOTA stands for Image, Object, Text, Analysis, and was the title of a seminar series established by dear former colleagues Louise Purbrick and Jill Seddon. IOTA II aims to resurrect the inclusive nature of the original IOTA, bringing together students, colleagues and all interested parties from beyond the university to consider the visual and material world from a wide range of perspectives. It is a space for work-in-progress to be shared and nurtured, and for our research to be celebrated.

Designing for ‘Radical, Informed and Liberatory Scholarship’: A Creative Archival Research Journey inspired by the Institute for Race Relations Race and Class Publication Journal Covers

with Pauline Rutter

Wednesday 27 November, 4-5pm

M2 Grand Parade Building, University of Brighton

 

You are invited to consider how Institute for Race Relations’ core themes are expressed and amplified through Race and Class journal covers of the 1950s onwards. As an organisation with a complicated history dating back to the 1970s, what position has IRR established for the Race and Class journal between academia and grassroots? What role does design play in the perspectives presented by IRR on themes including: the changing nature of racism; Black politics and Black history, colonial imperialism and liberation struggles?

Pauline Rutter is an archival artist, writer and poet. Her background in fine art, research sustainability and community activism shows up in her cultural work and academic and creative writing published online by The Centre for Race, Education and Decoloniality, The Culture Capital Exchange, We Hear You Now and Writing Our Legacy. Pauline’s practice continues to evolve through a speculative archival poetics informed by Black Feminist creative research methodologies, the ‘The Black Living Archive’ experience and the ‘Lifting Us Up’ installation. This work has further inspired new Black oral history research that will become the basis of Brighton and Hove Museum’s online Digital Collection and schools’ resource.

Pauline’s current Changing Chalk/National Trust commission focuses on the natural history collections of Brighton’s Booth Museum, Kew Gardens and the Linnean Society. It explores these in relation to environmental equity, rewoven histories and restorative intergenerational storying. This Changing Chalk commission, ‘From Collections to Connections,’ has been creating connections across South Downs locations and with community groups including the Open Minds Project and A Seat at The Table, based in Brighton. Pauline comments:

My archival artwork and writing propose decolonial perspectives to understanding artefacts and ephemera, to creating collaborative historiographical knowing and to excite embodied cultural production. This is a connective practice that draws together archives, collections and communities nurturing relationships between them and questions of equity, society and environment.

This seminar is programmed as part of the ‘Museums, Archives, Exhibitions’ strand of the Centre for Design History. It is part of an ongoing series of events inspired by the theme ‘Archives as Method’ and supported by the University of Brighton Design Archives.