Make It Public

“Think outside the box.”

But how? Explore the Make it Public Digital Festival to find out how 49 postgraduate researchers from the Royal College of Art MRes Programme responded to this question through seven interdisciplinary projects, confronting the challenge of being creative when confined to the box of our homes.

Take part in workshops, Q&As and particpatory artworks, as well as exploring boundary-pushing design projects. Memory Collective invite you to explore a maze of memories constantly transforming. Retool Box present a series of provocations to inspire creative collaboration. PAPER explore the myriad uses of the ubiquitous material through workshops and artist-led Q&As. A Kind of Sound welcomes you to submit sounds of kindness to be shared in a public perfomance. DE-HOME challenge our perception of the home, highlighting its paradoxes through defamiliarization. Gathering zine interrogates the notion of the body through imagery. And in a series of interviews, designers and artists share their stories about how their identities have changed being trapped in “the box.”

Schedule:

11:00 - The Identity Box interview leading creative Tnop Wangsillapakun
11:30 - Live Demonstration from the Re-Tool Box of Cards
12:30 - Livestreamed participatory performance exploring the sound of kindness from A Kind of Sound
13:30 - PAPER in conversation with Pio Abad
15:00 - PAPER in conversation with Eleanor Annand
16:00 - Second livestreamed participatory perfomance from A Kind of Sound

Plus lots more bonus content hosted on the exhibitors' platforms. Simply click through the links below to explore additional workshops, interviews and perfomances.

Addressing the current situation, The Identity Box reflects on how the concept of ‘identity’ can be viewed as a construct that functions as a box - physical, conceptual, emotional, cognitive and social - from which one might be forced to step out of. Working across the fields of art, design and architecture, these perspectives will be explored through a series of intimate online interviews with artists, designers and scholars. These interdisciplinary conversations use identity as a lens through which to create connections between professionals working in different fields of thought and practice.

Join us at 11:00 to see the collective in conversation with Tnop Wangsillapakun in conversation. Other interviewees include Noam Goldway, Umberto Giovannini, Miaomiao Lee, Ruijing Ge, Jiawei Guo, Dr Jonathan Ashley-Smith and Diane Ashley-Smith, and can be viewed on the Identity website.

The Retool Box is a set of online cards designed to foster collaborative work. Drawing on the work of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, designers can select a card at random, with the chosen activity stimulating the group's creativity in new and inventive ways. The Retool Box comprises two groups of cards: Tasks and Provocations. Task cards are interdisciplinary activities designed to get the group working together creatively. Provocation cards offer quick teasers and questions to unlock ideas and generate different actions. Join us at 11:30 to see them in action.

All cards are available for you to trial on the @retool.box instagram. Share your activities using our hastag #retoolbox.

Does it seem like the world is falling apart? Do you feel listless? Aimless? Hopeless?

Fear not! Today, DE-HOMË launches a special edition of its furniture and lifestyle catalogue to guide you through these trying times and make the most of life in lockdown.

By restyling your furniture, DE-HOME show you how to re-create those human experiences you’ve come to miss these last few months. Can’t go to the gym? Use your papyrus shade concentric lamp set as a set of dumbbells. Missing the great outdoors? Rediscover tranquility on the comfort of the toilet by using the scolecite ceramic basin and postmodern faucet as a fishing pond.

You’re stuck at home and the world is descending into madness. Time to reorganize, redecorate, and reinvent!

What happens when you listen to a sound? Does it make you happy, sad or trigger a memory? Hearing is processed in the same part of the brain that generates emotions, interlinking sounds and feelings. We want to connect people through a collection of common sounds by asking: what does kindness sound like? Sounds submitted by the public over the past two weeks have been collected and will be shared through three pieces: a live audio installation, a digital archive and interactive website, each designed to prompt participation through simply listening, watching or even playing. Tune in at 12:30 and 16:00 to listen to two individual participatory performance pieces, generated by your audio submissions and livestreamed directly to IGTV.

You can view our global collection of what kindness sounds like on our instagram @akindofsound. You can also explore visualisations of sounds submitted by the public via our website.

Gathering Zine is a collaborative publication exploring notions of the body. The zine has at its heart collaboration and inclusivity and readers are encouraged to contribute artworks responding to this theme that speak to their own experiences. By working in collaboration with the public, sharing different mediums and approaches, Gathering Zine functions as a body of knowledge, inspiring participation and empathy between differing perspectives.

Fashion Illustrator Sue Dray contributed her expansive knowledge of working creatively with the bodily form. As Gathering Zine’s featuring artist and main contributor, Dray shared her experiences and expertise through workshops, discussions and illustrative contributions.

PAPER at the Royal College of Art welcomes you to discover the many facets of paper, the fragility and strength of which recall the polarising emotions that we experience in these extraordinary times. At 13:30 we are excited to be joined by artist Pio Abad in conversation on the use of paper as a medium through which to investigate the past, followed at 15:00 by Eleanor Annand on the centrality of paper to her work.

To explore more creative content, including painting and papier-mache workshops, visit the @materialsandmatters instagram, and share your work using the #makeitpublic hashtag.

Memory Collective present visual research into the concept of collective memory and its hold over our understanding of the world. The 'memory palace' is a method used to help recall information through association with different objects, places and stories, but it is a structure found in ruins. When this concept is interrogated, cracks and holes begin to appear in its facade. Journeying through the memory palace, Memory Collective discover blurred and glitching memories of times past and stories told: a labyrinth that does not lead to the same place twice. A maze leading to dead ends and unexpected destinations. As the places and objects in your memory palace change and decay through time, how will your trip down memory lane twist and turn? Where will the maze of memories lead you?