UAL students, staff and alumni were joined by leading figures from the BBC and Royal Shakespeare Company this week to celebrate how the creative sector is contributing to the excitement around London 2012.

Golden Wiff-Waff, smart sportswear designed by a former Team GB rower and insights into the process of designing Paralympic medals were highlights of the event held at the University’s King’s Cross campus.

See more about the event below and on the UAL 2012 blog.

Alasdair Leighton Crawford retired from professional rowing after extensive success as a member of Team GB, and focused his creative passion on design, as a London College of Fashion BA Fashion Sportswear student. Above he talks about his work to marry design and technology with smart sportswear that incorporates GPS, hazard warnings and audio visual communication. (more…)

The Costume Store, UAL’s newest accommodation for students, has opened its doors for the first time to give a sneak peek into what life will be like for its residents.

Located on the site of the old BBC Costume Store in Acton, the newly built halls of residence will welcome its first guests in September this year. (more…)

Chelsea alumna Louise Giblin has spent the last year working on a unique Olympian venture: body casting five British sporting heroes. The resulting sculptures will raise money for brain injury charity Headfirst and will be exhibited twice, in London and Battle, ahead of the Games. Giblin studied Sculpture at Brighton Polytechnic where she was taught by Central Saint Martins alumni Antony Gormley. She went on to complete an MA in History and Theory of Modern Art at Chelsea, graduating in 1993 and is an Associate of the Royal British Society of Sculptors (ARBS).
Giblin’s sculptures will be unveiled at Mall Galleries on 21 May, days after the Olympic torch relay begins. The exhibition will feature Olympians including Kriss Akabusi MBE, Dame Kelly Holmes, Sally Gunnell, Darren Leach and 2012 hopeful Beth Tweddle. The designs feature a combination of stripped, stylised musculature on the back and detailed relief imagery of the Union Flag on the front. For an added twist of individuality, Giblin integrates the design with imagery relating to the city that gave way to each athlete’s ‘greatest achievement’. For Paralympian swimmer Darren Leach, this meant Sydney – where he won four medals – and for Dame Kelly Holmes, Athens; in celebration of her ‘Double Gold’ triumph in the birthplace of the ancient Olympics. The sport stars are set to receive one of their £8200 cold cast sculptures to keep or sell to raise money for Headfirst. Others from the series will be sold with a proportion of the profit going to the charity.

The exhibition, ‘Body Casting Olympians’ will run at the Mall Galleries from 21-26 May, two days after the torch relay begins and continue at Saffron Gallery in Battle, from 21 May to 2 June. It will feature Olympian Series sculptures, sketches, photographs and the five bronze cast designs.

Read more 

UAL students are finding novel ways to interact with Shakespeare thanks to a new project launched by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

MyShakespeare is an online space where artists and audiences can share their ideas about how the playwright continues to influence and reflect human life. It forms part of the World Shakespeare Festival which began this week and runs until November.

To Be Or Not To Be by Chris Kontogeorgos

The five Central Saint Martins students featured in the online myShakespeare gallery use a variety of approaches to represent and expose the drama and emotion in Shakespeare’s works.

This ranges from Hanna Bischof’s Talking Dots, which colour-codes the emotions of Shakespearean characters in the form of 60,000 dots, to Ophelia’s Skull by Owen Woonyung Lee, which eerily creates a music box within a skull to illustrate “the melancholic beauty of death”.

Ophelia's musical skull

Kate Brangan, meanwhile, marries the Bard’s timeless verse with modern technology with a design program that creates visual translations of Shakespeare quotes based on the most popular Google Images searches at that moment.

See more about the work of all five students on the myShakespeare Gallery.

The students are all studying on Central Saint Martins’ MA Communication Design course.

Turn up on time, be nice and put in the hours – that was Grayson Perry’s most important advice for UAL students at an exclusive Q&A event yesterday.

“Being cool and wearing an interesting hat won’t cut it,” he added. However he did concede that “what you learn at art school primarily is how to be a trainee bohemian.”

UAL Meets Grayson Perry was the first in a series of events giving students and staff exclusive access to inspirational figures in the creative and cultural sectors.

In a conversation led by Stephen Farthing, the University’s Professor of Drawing, Grayson covered issues including the trauma of trying to come up with ideas (“My best works are done after a couple of beers on the sofa watching X Factor because my mind’s only half on it”) and the difference between art and craft which, he said, is a debate “still crawling on exhausted”.

Grayson and Stephen Farthing (photo: Paul Cochrane)

“Art dislikes craft because it’s like the pretentious next door neighbour,” he added. “For me, ceramics was just another material. The problem is when you’re defined by your material. Painting is just as much of a craft as pottery.”

“There are far too many artists,” he concluded. “We should really go round with a rifle and cull them.”

Read a round up of tweets from the event on Storify or search under #ualmeets.

This, asserts Jon Snow, “is inescapably the darkest and bleakest moment this end of the industry has ever known”. Speaking at the Annual Hugh Cudlipp Lecture at London College of Communication, the veteran Channel 4 new anchor, Snow went on to share touching, entertaining and illuminating details of his own beginnings in journalism, including anxiety-inducing bids to catch the first live interview with President Carter while disguised as a technician, saving Prime Minister Harold Wilson from catching fire,  bribing passengers to carry back film reports on BA flights from Uganda, footage lost forever into the ocean, and hiding under tables from competitor BBC reporters  to ensure an exclusive with a controversial exile in Kenya.

Despite his deep reservations about the challenges facing journalism in the West today, Snow’s theme was “the breath-taking opportunity that is beckoning us on into a new Golden Age of journalism”. Stating that “my life today is multi-platform”, Snow shared his view of phenomenal benefits communications technology is bringing to the revival of journalism, allowing for greater transparency, speed and wider perspectives:

“For the first time since Caxton, Alexander Graham Bell, Marconi, or Logie Baird – the entire media has been liberated; liberated in a way that allows the reader, viewer, listener the true capacity to answer back. We are in the age of answer back, better still we are in the age in which “we the people” have their greatest opportunity ever to influence the information agenda…But above all we are in the age of more. More potential to get it right, to get it fast, to get it in depth. We have that illusive entity “the level playing field”; we can compete on equal terms and yet be the best… As never before, rafts of new journalists are emerging from our Colleges and Universities. The human potential is as vast as the technological – we are well placed to seize this Golden Age. Let’s go for it!

Watch the lecture on YouTube

Read the full transcript of the lecture

Matthew Stone is an artist, shaman, photographer, sculptor, performance artist, curator, writer, optimist and cultural provocateur. Graduating from BA Painting at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London in 2004 with first class honours, Stone spearheaded South London’s !WOWOW! art collective, organizing guerrilla art exhibitions, throwing notorious squat parties and generally putting Peckham on the art map. Dazed and Confused reported that the children of !WOWOW!: “would live on in legend for years to come” and i-D Magazine described Matthew, saying: “He gave birth to a happening, and all of a sudden, in his wake, London was exciting again.”

More recently he presented a celebrated solo exhibition titled “Optimism as Cultural Rebellion’ at The Hole gallery in New York. The New York Times said of it “Mr. Stone’s work suggests that what the world needs now is not political agitation but a new, mystically inspired choreography of how to be human”. The Sunday Times placed him at number one  of their “Power players under 30” arts list and British Vogue featured him in their Bright Young Things edit. Curator Norman Rosenthal comments “he has invented a new ‘ism’—Optimism.” Stone also provides the soundtrack to Gareth Pugh’s fashion shows and films, and was a resident DJ at London’s legendary nightclub Boombox. His exhibitions and performances have taken place at the Baltic, the Royal Academy, the ICA and Tate Britain.

What are you working on at the moment?
I’m developing a new work that brings together all the different creative activities I’m involved in. Day to day I’m producing sculpture, photography, music, video, performance, lecturing and writing. I’ve struggled a lot with understanding how to package all of this as a “career”. It’s all linked up in my head and this project will expose this. The nucleus of it all is a video manifesto. I’m basically directing a music video for my personal philosophies relating to optimism and spirituality. Its “minifesto” form (which is basically a manifesto short enough to tweet) is; “Everything is Possible & Love Changes Everything.”  Whilst I am engaged with working on every element of it, I’ll still be collaborating with lots of people, which is key to the ideas I want to promote.

Who or what first inspired you to follow your chosen career?
Ultimately my family and my teachers. I don’t come from a background with a lot of money. I got a job washing up in an old people’s home when I was fourteen and haven’t had any financial support from my family since then. But I feel privileged to have come from a home that actively nurtured my creativity. There is a history of people going to art school in my family, so I felt confident to do the same. I have worked hard, but ultimately I believe that my successes stem from that early knowledge of creative careers, being told that I was important and that I could contribute to society.

What are you most passionate about?
I love people and thinking about how they relate to each other. I think that whilst religion in its established form, has largely ceased to be of relevance, the same gaps that it was initially designed to heal, remain. I think about whether art can do this, every day. If it can it won’t be through this small idea of an artworld that only exists to sell expensive objects. I think we need to always think bigger, to try and bounce off of infinity. We don’t need an artworld, we need an art universe.

Which piece of art/design/performance/communication/fashion do you wish you had created?
I am a student of the Dutch artist Louwrien Wijers. She worked with Josephs Beuys and interviewed him extensively. There is one interview that she takes, at Beuys’ request, onwards to Warhol with the same questions. Amazingly Warhol then suggested she also pose the questions to the Dalai Lama. It’s a rare and fascinating piece of art history and a collaborative  artwork in itself. I interviewed her about it here.

Where is your favourite London haunt?
I love shopping on the Ridley Road market in Dalston. It feels like a nice f**k you to all the hideous Tescos that populate the Kingsland Road and I like the people who run the stalls.

What is your guilty pleasure?
Buying milk in Tesco? It’s hard to escape feeling morally compromised by big ugly corporate culture and modern life, but that’s not a reason to give up. I think a lot of apathy is generated by the self-conscious fear that our actions may never meet the intensity of our altruistic intentions. But to reclaim a well-worn slogan “Every little helps.”

Name a favourite book, song or film
The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse

What is your signature dish?
I make a beetroot salad that includes the following. Beetroot, feta, fresh orange pieces, toasted pumpkin seeds, raisins and lime juice. Its amazing, I think I stole the recipe from someone and then forgot exactly how they made it, but thats how I do it.

What’s next for you?
I’d like to properly collate, remaster and re-edit the music I have made for my friend and fashion designer Gareth Pugh. I don’t know yet whether they should become part of a performance piece or live show or whether to release them in a more conventional way.

Do you think arts education has an important role to play in Britain’s cultural life?
Absolutely, yes. For those who believe in competition and not compassion it can be difficult to trace art’s worth. But as John Ruskin said: “Industry without art is brutality.”

What advice would you give to aspiring creatives?
Even after the vicious, immoral and dramatically short-sighted education cuts, you can still afford to go to art school, if you want to. Whilst you will be left with a disgusting amount of debt once you graduate, you only pay this back when you earn enough money to do so. Whether you go or not, go to nightclubs, talk to strangers, find unlike-minded people (who you still like) and try out everything.

Do you have any tips for someone hoping to work in the creative sector?
The best way to learn is to do something. Love your fear, it describes an exciting and valuable path. Collaborate outside of your creative field, you will learn more and suddenly be an expert amongst admirers.

If there is a corporate client involved in any creative project, demand payment. If they say there is no budget for a fee, explain that you don’t mind working for free (only do this if it’s an interesting project), but say you need expenses covered. *Strangely* there is often enough budget for £200 expenses but not a £200 fee. Plus if you tell them your day rate is £200 they might think it too low and never get used to the idea that they should pay you a small fortune to bring edge to their boring corporate venture.
Be very nice to people whilst sticking to and doing what you think is best and most interesting. There are a few creatives who have asserted their successes by making others fear them. They are not happy.

Regularly self analyse and see if you have forgotten who you were and what you believed in when you were younger. It is rarely too late to address the parts of you that might be trodden down by routine. Don’t be jaded, use your creativity to reimagine your situation and then combine hard work with problem solving to move forward.

Do not subscribe to conventional ideas of what “making it” means. If you can do something you enjoy some of the time and survive financially even in a very modest way, you are very lucky. At the same time don’t be afraid of earning money, it’s a tool and can be used in creative, generous and beautiful ways. Remember to actually do that once you do start earning it.
For more tips see Matthew Stone and Princess Julia discuss the topic on i-D.

Follow Matthew on Twitter at http://twitter.com/artshaman

Visit Matthew’s site

Opening shortly after the unveiling of Elmgreen and Dragset’s Powerless Structures Fig 101on the Fourth Plinth, and Gilbert & George’s mega-show across London, Simon Linington and William Mackrell’s first “solo” exhibition Take Two, opened at Arts Gallery, exhibiting works which are created collaboratively but in competition.

While the production of collaborative artworks by artist duos has existed for over half a century, and has roots going back throughout art history,  the past decades have seen an exponential rise in this practice. Commenting on Linington and Mackrell’s joint practice, Turner Prize nominee Angela de la Cruz notes “There are many contemporary artists currently working as a two-some: Gilbert & George, Fischli and Weiss, Jane and Louise Wilson, Elmgreen and Dragset… But the element of competition they are trying to achieve with their work is something very daring and exciting indeed.”

Scandinavian duo Elmgreen and Dragset met in 1995 and have been working collaboratively since then from their base in Berlin. The pair are famed for their enigmatic, teasing, cheeky and charming works, including their staging of “Drama Queens” at the Old Vic for Frieze, featuring a six remote-controlled fiberglass versions of iconic sculpture, with actors’ providing tounge in cheek  voice overs  pastiching contemporary art legends including Koons and Hepworth. Their piece “The Collectors” for the Danish and Nordic Pavilions at Venice saw visitors  invited to view the work of 24 international artists in the guise of the private collection of a fictional family residing in the Danish pavilion and their neighbour “Mr. B”, resident of the Nordic pavilion.  Making Venice Biennale history, the duo’s work represented the first time national pavillions have ever been presented collaboratively.

Sibling artists Jane and Louise Wilson studied for their BAFAs at separate institutions but submitted identical work for their final assessment, before studying together at Goldsmiths for their MA. They continue to work together across photography and film.

Perhaps the most famous artist duo, Gilbert & George,  met at St. Martin’s School of Art, now Central Saint Martins, as students on the Sculpture course. As students they began to develop a collaborative practice, creating films and ‘living sculpture’ in which they appeared as figures. Partners and collaborators, the pair state “Our subject matter is the world. It is pain. Pain. Just to hear the world turning is pain, isn’t it? Totally, every day, every second. Our inspiration is all those people alive today on the planet, the desert, the jungle, the cities. We are interested in the human person, the complexity of life.”

Collaborative artist brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman enrolled at the Royal College together before becoming assistants to Gilbert & George  at the beginning of their joint career.

Simon Linington and William Mackrell met on the Fine Art BA at Chelsea College of Art and Design and began to develop work in which they devise and deploy abstract rules as a conceit to provoke their individual interpretations of their practice and as a means to introduce a sense of chance and constraint. Key to Linington and Mackrell’s work is the introduction of competition within the boundaries of collaborative practice and the absurdist humour that their work ultimately realises. Their “solo” exhibition  Take Two presents a series of performance works through video shown alongside props as relics of the acts. These include the steel bar the duo attempt to hold aloft in a performance of tragicomic endurance, ‘Propping up a Bar’. Preceding the exhibition they will perform ‘Take Two’, leaving marks on the wall as the memory of the action.

In the foreword to the limited edition book which accompanies the exhibition Take Two,  Angela de la Cruz explains: “What interests me about the collaborative work of Simon Linington and William Mackrell is the curiosity of how far an idea can be pushed.”

Chelsea College of Art and Design Fine Art Researcher Jo Melvin explains, ‘They are realists who begin as idealists dreaming impossible schemes that sound like jokes, but are actually the means which make the artworks. These schemes test experience. They are simple, low cost and involve low-tech support. A characteristic thread consistently is to tread a thin line between the plausible and the absurd. They celebrate clumsy and at times crazy hands-on experience.  It is a forum in which the so-called rules and generalized structures of day-to-day ‘facts’ are subjected to tangible empirical testing.’

The phenomenon of creatives working as pairs or groups is not only confined to art, with examples in design including brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana. University of the Arts London is currently leading the arts higher education sector in how the rise in the number of creatives working collaboratively can be accommodated in assessment.

Take Two runs 22 March – 4 May 2012, private view 21 March, 6-8pm, at Arts Gallery, University of the Arts London, 272 High Holborn, WC1V 7EY. Open Monday – Friday 11am – 6pm.

Elmgreen & Dragset’s Powerless Structures, Fig. 101 is currently on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.

Gilbert and George London Pictures runs until 12 May at White Cube London.

The vital role of arts, design and communication education in underpinning the UK’s creative industries has been highlighted by Business Secretary Vince Cable on a visit to the University.

Visiting the King’s Cross campus, Dr Cable explored how the UK’s renowned arts and design schools attract students and partnerships from around the world and nurture the cultural and creative leaders of the future.

His tour of the University’s new home for Central Saint Martins took in its fashion, ceramics, jewellery design and print studios. Following the visit, he travelled to the fashion brands Jaeger and Aquascutum to meet the University’s graduates now working there.

The Minister also discussed the importance of university-industry collaborations with Harold Tillman, Chairman of Jaeger, Aquascutum and the British Fashion Council, who sponsors scholarships for postgraduate students at London College of Fashion.

Welcoming Dr Cable’s visit, Nigel Carrington, Rector of the University, said:

“The UK is genuinely world leading in the creative and cultural industries. But they don’t exist in a vacuum – they are fed by the exceptional talent and ground-breaking imagination that is nurtured in our arts and design schools. The staff, students and graduates of this University make a major contribution to the economic prosperity of this country, and I am delighted that Dr Cable has visited us to show his appreciation of what we do.”

Dr Cable added:

“The UK has the largest creative sector in Europe, with industries like fashion, film and design supporting thousands of highly skilled jobs and accounting for a growing share of our exports. This is underpinned by excellent institutions like University of the Arts London, which are fostering the very best cultural and creative talent of the future.

Meeting Drama Centre London students

“The Government is committed to the continued growth of the sector. Last year we set up the Creative Industries Council with figureheads drawn from across the creative and digital industries. We are also supporting creative companies through research and development tax credits, enterprise finance guarantee schemes and grants from the Technology Strategy Board.”

Harold Tillman commented:

“British colleges create the creative talent pool for fashion business across the world. Dr Cable was able to see one of our leading fashion institutions, the opportunities it provides for young people and then here at my offices how those skills and talents are translated into careers that contribute to this thriving sector.”

University of the Arts London students regularly take part in industry placements, work experience and projects as part of their education with partners including Sony Ericcson, Hugo Boss, Topshop, the Body Shop and Tommy Hilfiger.

Harold Tillman and LCF Head Frances Corner with Vince Cable

Major creative industry companies also sponsor scholarships and facilities at the University, including Swarovski and LVMH.

The creative industries are a major part of the UK’s economy, contributing 5.14% of the UK’s employment total, 10.6% of exports and 2.9% of Gross Value Added.

Jotta, the portfolio site co-founded by University of the Arts London, has just turned three. To celebrate they have a launched their first print publication, a poster-sized compendium celebrating the artists and designers they discover through the jotta.com community and their real world escapades.

The debut issue features University of the Arts London alumni including Amy Pliszka, a CSM MA Textile Futures graduate, in an article on her textile beehives. Amy will also give a talk this Thursday evening at Jotta Live. The work of Chelsea grad Sophie Percival, one of Jotta’s Editions Space artists,  occupies one of the magazine’s 5 A2 posters. Recent Arts Gallery exhibitor and Camberwell graduate Renhui Zhao  is on cover and Chelsea fine art alumnus Francis Patrick Bardy and LCC journalism student Chiara Rimella have written articles.

Jotta are offering three copies of the magazine to be won. To enter email me@jotta.com with “Arts Hotlist Jotta competition” in the subject line and your contact details by 8 April.