News | University of Brighton Design Archives

Purple, pink and yellow graph about Digital Capacity Building Strategy

New national digital capacity-building strategy features Design Archives case study

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 in their organisations, representing different elements of that journey. Being at a relatively early stage…

Colour photograph showing people working around a table at the DiAGRAM workshop

Design Archives contributes to award-shortlisted digital preservation project

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 the National Heritage Lottery Fund and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (ESPRC). The…

Design Centre posters from the Design Council Archive on display at Margaret Howell, Wigmore Street, London, November 2016. Photograph: Barbara Taylor.

Design Archives achieves Archives Service Accreditation

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 met clearly defined national standards relating to management and resourcing; the care of its unique…

A black and white image of a car on a cobbled street next to a lamp post. Taken from the University of Brighton Design Archives.

New exhibition at Brighton CCA responds to Design Archives collections

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 designers are invited to spend time researching in the archives as a starting point for…

New exhibition traces history of pioneering Brighton fine art course

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 development, in the context of British art school education post-1960. The origins of FACP lie…

Humorous scheme for window display at Simpson (Piccadilly) Ltd. Writing does not appear to be Kroll's. Undated. Natasha Kroll Archive, University of Brighton Design Archives.

Design Archives represented in three current exhibitions

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 summer of preparations by our paper conservator Sirpa Kutilainen, who administers and co-ordinates our loans….

A black and white portrait of Sir Misha Black. Taken from the Design Council Archive housed at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

University of Brighton Design Archives honoured with the Sir Misha Black Award

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 Award for Innovation in Design Education was inaugurated in 1998 to recognise those who, by…

Archivist presents papers in Manchester and Venice this month

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 archive collections and those working with them, using the archive of the fashion designer and…

A colour image of the accompanying book cover for the Design On Britain exhibition at the Jewish Museum in London, 2017

‘Designs on Britain’ exhibition

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 the twentieth century, escalating the influence of continental modernism on design in Britain. The Design…

A colour photograph showing tobacco packaging collected by Barbara Jones. Photo: University of Brighton Design Archives.

Two Design Archives presentations with an urban focus on same day

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 Architecture from the 1920s to the 1970s’ at Oxford Brookes University. Lesley Whitworth’s invited presentation examines…