Author Sirpa Kutilainen

The Design Archives’ distinctive collections and innovative practices are contributing to two conferences in late August and early September 2024. Our Preservation and Digital Resources Coordinator Sirpa Kutilainen has co-convened a panel at the Archives and Records Association’s 2024 Annual… Continue Reading →

The University of Brighton Design Archives will receive £315,000 from the Research England Museum, Galleries and Collections Fund. Retaining their position among the country’s top archives to receive support, the Design Archives will receive £63,000 in each of the next… Continue Reading →

Sustainability and reduction of carbon emissions are a concern across the cultural heritage sector. Dependency on energy hungry HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) systems to maintain unrealistic environmental conditions has become an issue of adaptation, working with existing infrastructure… Continue Reading →

Two recently opened museum exhibitions feature material from the Design Archives, as part of our work to share our collections with public audiences. Consultant design commissions for the GPO (General Post Office) by graphic designers FHK Henrion and HA Rothholz… Continue Reading →

The Jonathan M Woodham Award was instigated through the generosity of one of the Design Archives founders, to encourage imaginative use of research undertaken in the Design Archives. In 2023 we are excited to inaugurate a dedicated undergraduate prize in… Continue Reading →

What is ‘archival knowledge’? A new, ongoing Design Archives event series foregrounds the creative archive as a method for research, knowledge generation and exchange. It frames the archive not just as a source but a site, a subject and a… Continue Reading →

Join us for this three-part talk series on the 9th and the 23rd November and 14th December organised as part of the ongoing University of Brighton Design Archives research theme “Global Archival Cultures of Design,” run by Zara Arshad, Research… Continue Reading →

Two new publications feature work by Design Archives researchers, contributing to scholarship in design history, émigré studies and fine art practice, as well as critical archive studies. A major edited collection, Designing Transformation: Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European… Continue Reading →

Continuing our celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, new resources have been added to our Document Library and Flickr set from the archive of designer H A (Arnold) Rothholz, relating to the Festival’s Land Travelling Exhibition. … Continue Reading →

The Design Archives has been awarded a grant from the National Archives’ Collaborate and Innovate Archives Testbed fund, a scheme which supports innovation in archive practices and methods with the potential for transformative impact in the UK archives sector.  The project will… Continue Reading →

The Jonathan M Woodham Awards are made for work in any medium informed by research in the University of Brighton Design Archives, and are made possible by the generosity of Emeritus Professor Woodham who, with Dr Paddy Maguire, established the… Continue Reading →

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the Festival of Britain. Designed to nurture the country’s recovery after the Second World War, the Festival’s South Bank exhibition in London was the main attraction. On a 27 acre site, it ran… Continue Reading →

Since its inception in 1944, the Design Council (formerly Council of Industrial Design) has been fortunate in being able to call on royal support for its many initiatives.  This began when King George VI and his consort Queen Elizabeth opened… Continue Reading →

The Design Archives have loaned a poster from the Design Council Archive to the Design Museum’s new exhibition ‘Margaret Calvert: A Woman at Work’. The exhibition celebrates three of Calvert’s most influential typefaces (Transport, Calvert and Rail Alphabet), as well… Continue Reading →

The Design Archives is one of four case studies featured in the National Archives’ new strategy for building digital capacity, ‘Plugged in Powered Up’. The case studies offer practical examples of how archives have implemented digital preservation processes and systems… Continue Reading →

A National Archives (TNA) project to which the Design Archives contributed professional expertise has been shortlisted for a 2020 Digital Preservation Award.   Safeguarding the Nation’s Digital Memory was developed by TNA in collaboration with statisticians from the University of Warwick, supported by… Continue Reading →

The University of Brighton Design Archives has been awarded national accreditation. The Archive Service Accreditation is the UK quality standard which recognises good performance in all areas of archive service delivery and, according to the service, “demonstrates that the Design Archives has… Continue Reading →

A new exhibition opening at the University of Brighton Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) at Grand Parade is the first in an annual series of collaborations between Brighton CCA and the University of Brighton Design Archives, in which artists and… Continue Reading →

Excavating contemporary art education, a new exhibition in the Atrium Gallery at the University’s Grand Parade site, traces the history of Brighton’s distinctive Fine Art Critical Practice (FACP) degree programme, presenting an ongoing project to build an archive documenting its… Continue Reading →

As the display of Council of Industrial Design educational folios reaches the final days of its run at the Margaret Howell store in Wigmore Street, two further exhibitions introduce the wealth of our collections to new audiences, bringing to fruition a busy… Continue Reading →

The award, considered one of the most prestigious of its kind, is in recognition of the “innovative work in building an impressive complex of resources that embrace teaching, research, the preservation of knowledge and its dissemination nationally and internationally”. The… Continue Reading →

On Friday 9 February, Archivist Sue Breakell gives the invited keynote address at a symposium organised by the AHRC-funded project ‘Life on the Outskirts’, at Manchester Metropolitan University.  The project explores the multiple challenges and opportunities faced by small creative… Continue Reading →

The University of Brighton Design Archives has lent 35 works to a major exhibition opening next week at the Jewish Museum in London. The exhibition considers the significant influence of Jewish designers who migrated from other parts of Europe during… Continue Reading →

On 16 June the Curatorial Director and Deputy Curator will each be speaking at events with an urban focus. Catherine Moriarty at ‘The City as Modernist Ephemera’ at London South Bank University and Lesley Whitworth at ‘Architecture, Citizenship, Space: British… Continue Reading →