Artifacts Live: Creative Encounters with Design Heritage
Gillian Proctor, Mary O’Neill, Elizabeth Wheelband, Richard Hudson-Miles, De Montfort University, United Kingdom
Breakout Session 3: Thursday 11 May 12:00 – 13:00

The Museum of Leathercraft has made a selection of 20 leather artifacts available for DMU staff and students to respond to. Each artefact will inspire opportunities to review heritage, materiality, technique, patina, and the relationship between digital and traditional ways of making. This presentation shows the results of this creative collaboration and highlights the social, ethical, aesthetic, and political questions raised during the collaboration. This presentation introduces a collaborative project called Artifacts Live, run between researchers at De Montfort University, Leicester, and the Museum of Leathercraft, Northampton [https://museumofleathercraft.org/]. The project invites today’s designers and researchers to use this archive as a creative resource for contemporary art and design practice.

Positive Externalities in Fine Art Education
Mary O’Neill, De Montfort University, United Kingdom
Breakout Session 3: Thursday 11 May 12:00 – 13:00

This presentation will discuss three projects that encouraged students to engage with the world around them, both locally and globally. Cheap Trends asked students to consider the materials used to make art and to explore the potential of waste from local textile factories as a material and source of inspiration. The Writing Lab provided space and resources to give students, who are often averse to academic writing, an opportunity to explore text as an element in their creative practice. The Legacy of Leather invited students to use objects from the Museum of Leathercraft as a source of inspiration. Each of these projects had an element of collaboration and social engagement. All were funded, and in some cases the students were involved from the initial design of the project and funding application to the execution and review. Projects were designed to give students real art world experience, and each project was a model for creating and funding projects post-university.

Textile Hearts
Filipe Rocha da Silva, University of Évora, Portugal
Breakout Session 5: Friday 12 May 10:00 – 11:30

Join this presentation on the creation of a centre that will rejuvenate the textile activity in Arraiolos, Portugal, by bringing over new generations of artists, designers, and artisans. This is also helped by the proximity to Arraiolos of the University of Évora, which teaches, among others, courses in chemistry, heritage, fine arts, and design. The aims of the laboratory, besides being artistic, are also scientific and technological, to bring further knowledge about the Arraiolos carpet and textiles in general. There is an ongoing collaboration between the village and the university in which the following areas are being contemplated: natural materials and colorants; digital designing and weaving; cooperation with the local handicraft and standard improvement; and international collaboration with other textile labs, artists, and designers.

Maintaining Traditional Heritage Practices in Academic Life of Arts and Culture
Sonintogos Erdenetsogt, Odsuren Dagmid and Uranchimeg Dorjsuren, Mongolian National University of Arts and Culture, Mongolia
Breakout Session 5: Friday 12 May 10:00 – 11:30

Living cultural heritage is at risk all around the world. Preserving these practices is especially important in Mongolia due to the relative paucity of tangible heritage objects and structures, which is why the Culture has registered XVII intangible cultural heritage practices with UNESCO. Their projects are based on the traditional culture and artistic values of Mongolians, to prepare researchers and artist practitioners who combine tradition and innovation and contribute to world culture. They would like to share how they, as Mongolians, their intangible cultural practices, based on their traditional nomadic culture, see and live in the world differently. In this way, they hope to provide an understanding of the roots of our artistic, cultural, and social context when making art.