Design Strategies and the Representation of the Commonwealth: from Institute to Museum

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This project presents an opportunity for a student to undertake research integral to a major development in the national design landscape, as the Design Museum plans its move from its current Shad Thames location to the Commonwealth Institute building, Kensington in 2014. The aim of the project is to explore the display strategies at the Commonwealth Institute and to investigate how designers interpreted the new political formation of the Commonwealth through the architectural space itself and by way of detailed display methodologies. It will go on to ask how the Design Museum might best inhabit a building with this heritage and how such a legacy might inform display policy in the future. A key asset to this investigation is the survival of all the drawings pertaining to the displays representing each member state of the Commonwealth which formed the nucleus of the Commonwealth Institute interior: these now form part of the James Gardner Archive at the University of Brighton. Though the displays themselves have been destroyed, the archival resource at Brighton offers a unique record of display strategy at a key political moment. Thus this studentship will bring about an opportunity to mine an untapped source and to explore its historical significance, and to contribute in a direct way to debate the Design Museum's future policy and the role of design in representing Britain's relationships with other countries and its former colonies particularly.The curatorial team at the Design Museum is especially interested in working with a student to research design collection display techniques and policies; they are excited by the prospect of the student undertaking this research alongside them while based at the museum. An exhibition of the archival material from Brighton is to be held at the Design Museum in its new home in 2014, and the student would play a key role in the research and curatorial elements of the project.Moreover, the Design Museum and the University of Brighton Design Archives have common interests and concerns. A plan of collaborative working is under development and this studentship would form an important part of that relationship and the longer-term dialogue between the two partners. Indeed, the energetic research culture at Brighton and the presence of students and staff working in associated areas, for example, de-colonisation, memory, museology, heritage studies, and design history, offers a supportive and stimulating environment in which to conduct this study. The university has a longstanding relationship with the V&A and the Henry Moore Institute and a good track record in uniting academic expertise with curatorial expertise in the museum sector. For students, access to the research cultures of two different institutions is an attractive and valuable opportunity.Conjoining research on the Commonwealth Institute displays, unique records of which are located within the University of Brighton Design Archives, and the history and background of the Design Museum itself, the intention is that research undertaken as part of this project will inform strategies for the inaugural collection display when the Design Museum moves to the Commonwealth Institute in 2014.