Contributing to their Stanley Picker Fellowship, Boudicca (Fashion Designers Zowie Broach and Brian Kirkby) were in residence in the Gallery’s Fellows Studio from 1-15 May 2013. Here they experimented with new ideas to progress their Fellowship research and as part of this invited 16 students from Kingston University to participate in a two group exchanges.
Participants whose interests ranged from the practical to theoretical, were invited from a breadth of courses including Fashion and Design, Art History, Photography, Film Making and Computer Games Production.
For Boudicca, interdisciplinary collaboration and debate is integral to the development of contemporary design practice, particularly with regards to fashion and our ability to conceive the art form as independent from industry. Together the groups discussed these issues with reference to Boudicca’s practice past, present and future, and touched upon questions of identity – how and why does one change it?
For students these exchanges offered an “intriguing insight into the life, design and thought processes of professional practitioners at a fork in their practice” and have continued discussion as an independent online collective. For Boudicca, the input of the group opened new conversation and the opportunity for interdisciplinary and academic collaboration.