Date: 25 May 2010

Time: 4.00 pm

Pragya Agarwal ( Imagination, LICA, Lancaster University)

Date: 16 March 2010

Time: 4.00 pm

Drew Hemment (Lancaster University, LICA/Imagination)

Curating living labs on art, society and technology

A discussion of the work of ImaginationLancaster with a focus on the collaboration with FutureEverything and recent projects including Environment 2.0 and Open Data Cities. Here a methodology has been developed in which participatory art-design experiments offer a means to observe, challenge, stimulate and advance applied knowledge on art, society, the city, environmental sustainability and technology. Activity can include artworks, social entrepreneurship projects, technological innovations, and projects harnessing everyday creativity.

The method is conceived as an emerging approach to Art Curation, in which the curator adopts the role of a disruptor, staging participatory experiments in modern urban living that lead to people seeing a problem differently and can contribute to change. It also has characteristics of Design and Designing Thinking, in particular participatory design, by virtue of addressing the implementation of the creative ideas within the wider process, and due to its engagement in applied societal concerns.

The most recent joint project was the Environment 2.0 collaboration with the Met Office and Natural History Museum on participatory mass observation of climate and biodiversity. The current joint project Open Data Cities, looking at how cities today are vast repositories of information, endlessly collecting and archiving data, and leading the charge to make Manchester an Open Data City. This exploratory research feeds in and out of the FutureEverything Festival, which acts as a Living Laboratory for participatory experiments

24 February 2010

ImaginationLancaster is pleased to announce that Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, will deliver the keynote address to the Design PhD Conference 2011. The 2011 conference will be held at Lancaster University on the evening of Thursday 30th June and will continue throughout the day of Friday 1st July; registration for the event is expected to open in Spring 2011.

The Design PhD Conference is a collaborative event between ImaginationLancaster at Lancaster University and the School of Design's Centre for Design Research at Northumbria University. The conference offers an opportunity for PhD students, Masters students, recent graduates and businesses to meet, exchange knowledge and ideas, and learn about the latest developments in design thinking, methods and research projects.

The Design PhD Conference2009 event held at Lancaster University proved very successful. Information and outputs from this event can be found at http://imagination.lancaster.ac.uk/conference2009/. The Design PhD Conference 2010 will be held at Northumbria University on the 1st and 2nd July 2010. Further details and registration will be available via Northumbria University's School of Design's events page from next week- www.northumbria.ac.uk/designevents.

8 February 2010

ImaginationLancaster at Lancaster University has been shortlisted for The Arts & Business Cultural Branding Award.

The nomination is for the partnership between ImaginationLancaster and FutureEverything and is in recognition of the way that Lancaster is working creatively with a cultural organisation to extend its work into new areas in an innovative way. The announcement of the winners will take place at the ceremony held at the City Inn Leeds on 23rd March 2010 and each winning partnership for this Award will each receive a beautiful trophy. The ceremony will feature a celebratory drinks reception with regional celebrities and dignitaries, plus an extensive guest list of representatives from the leading arts organisations and businesses in the county.

5 February 2010

ImaginationLancaster's Drew Hemment is opening and closing the Futurity Long Conversation at transmediale.10 in Berlin on Friday 5 February.

The Futurity Long Conversation, a 9-hour relay of one-to-one conversations, brings 21 leading artists, designers, theorists, journalists and media interventionists together to discuss, contextualise and explore a multiplicity of utopias, projects and technologies crucial for the ways in which we conceive the future today. It remains open which turns these dialogues will ultimately take - just as the future itself always eludes our grasp. The processual character of the event creates a framework which allows to experience future without predicting it. With the dialogue thus unfolding as an aesthetic, analytical and collaborative process it establishes an open space in which the audience can wander about freely between the disciplines of art, science and ecomony. The event questions the predominant way in which 'future' finds its cultural roots at a point in history where the convergence of media technologies, communication mobility and means of simultaneity eclipse the 20th century rhetoric of the future.

Website: http://www.transmediale.de/en/futurity-long-conversation

25 January 2010

After 15 years at the cutting edge of art, music and ideas, Lancaster University's partner organisation FutureEverything has been awarded a prestigious Lever Prize 2010.

FutureEverything is an art, technology and social innovation organisation that runs year-round innovation labs and an annual festival of art, music and ideas. It leads pioneering projects and international debates on themes including innovation, technology, art, society and the environment.

Dr. Drew Hemment, Associate Director of the ImaginationLancaster research centre in the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA), is the founder and artistic director of FutureEverything. He said: "The FutureEverything Festival of Art, Music & Ideas brings together artists, technologists and future-thinkers to share, innovate and bring the future into the present. The 2010 Lever Prize is a fantastic accolade that will help us to deliver the festival to its highest standard."

Geoffrey Piper, Lever Prize CEO, said he was delighted to announce FutureEverything as the overall winner. The prize includes a trophy, £10,000 cash and the opportunity of a year long collaboration with leading businesses. He said: "FutureEverything is an outstanding winner of this annual award, and a very worthy successor to previous winners Liverpool Biennial, Manchester International Festival, Tate, and The National Football Museum."

The Lever Prize is awarded by top business leaders following a rigorous selection process, which includes a Dragon's Den-style interview with CEOs of international companies based in the North West. The Lever Prize is presented jointly by North West Business Leadership Team and Arts & Business North West.

The FutureEverything festival in Manchester was attended by 75,000 people and brings together visionary thinkers from around the world, while 500 people attend its annual conference to explore the latest developments in digital culture.

FutureEverything enjoys a sustained partnership with the ImaginationLancaster research centre at Lancaster University, as well as with researchers in InfoLab21 and Lancaster Environment Centre, and is also collaborating with the BBC to set up technology events in the North of England.

The nextFutureEverything festival will take place on May 12-15th this year.

8 December 2009

International designer Wayne Hemingway has broken the ground at the start of building work on the new £10m Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts. Born in Morecambe, the multimillionaire is an honorary graduate of Lancaster University and was awarded the MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. With his wife Gerardine, he founded the global fashion label Red or Dead which was sold in 1999. The couple then created Hemingway Design, which specializes in affordable and social design and whose projects have won numerous awards.

Mr Hemingway said: "Investing in the arts has always been worthwhile for our "souls" but it's now proving to be a worthwhile economic investment as the creative industries sector continues to grow and contribute healthily to employment and economic output."

The new LICA building will house Art, Design, Music and Theatre Studies as well as three public arts facilities; the Peter Scott Gallery, the Nuffield Theatre and the International Concert Series. It will also host the research group ImaginationLancaster. The timber framed building - due to open in September 2010 - will be the public face of the LICA groups, with a stage for the nationally and internationally recognised work produced at Lancaster University. The building, in a woodland setting on the north campus, is designed to encourage visitors into LICA and be the base for the redevelopment of the entire arts sector on the north campus.

The architects Sheppard Robson have designed the development with the aim of it becoming the UK's first higher education project to achieve the new "outstanding" rating under the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) rating. This will include natural ventilation, reduced energy consumption and the use of sustainable materials such as timber. The 5000 square metre environmentally-friendly timber building will be wrapped in translucent cladding which will filter varying degrees of light into the interior. The main accommodation includes three interlinked social spaces, with open plan offices on the first floor. The contractor is Morgan Ashurst.

Website: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/estates/projects/current_projects.htm#LICA

13 October 2009

Keynote Address: IADE Conference, Lisbon, Oct. 1st 2009

Rachel Cooper gave a keynote address at the IADE (Instituto de Artes Visuais, Design e Marketing) Conference in Lisbon, Portugal on October 1st 2009. Her presentation, called "Design Futures", discussed contemporary global trends and challenges that included power shifts, global connectivity and climate change. In view of these trends, factors related to wellbeing were introduced, leading to a robust basis for considering trends in design research such as growth in the volume of design research, its widening focus, and its increasing influence.

Website: http://www.iade.pt/40iade40/

13 October 2009

Presentation: Swedish Faculty for Design Research and Research Education, Gothenburg, Oct. 8th 2009

Rachel Cooper gave a presentation as part of the Swedish Faculty for Design Research and Research Education's D! programme on October 8th 2009. As well as students from the Swedish Faculty, the University of Gothenburg and the HDK School of Design and Crafts, representatives from Swedish companies attended her presentation, entitled "Trends and Challenges", about design management and design futures.

12 October 2009

Keynote Address: European Futurists Conference, Lucerne, Oct. 15th 2009

Stuart Walker will be delivering a keynote address at the European Futurists Conference in Lucerne Switzerland on October 15th. His presentation, entitled: "Touchstones: Conceptual Products for Sustainable Futures" discusses the theoretical bases underlying the need for radical change, and introduces a quadruple bottom line for sustainability that includes "personal meaning", in addition to economic, environmental and social considerations. The implications of this additional factor for our notions of "sustainable" products is illustrated through a series of conceptual objects that prioritise such factors as incremental adaptation, localisation and considered use.

Website: http://www.european-futurists.org/wEnglisch/programm/Programm2009/programm2009.php

5 October 2009

Tomorrow is the opening of the Environment 2.0 art exhibition, the inaugural art exhibition of the Public Arts at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA).

Launch Invite

Environment 2.0 by FutureEverything

6.00pm, Tuesday 6th October

Peter Scott Gallery

LICA (Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts)

Lancaster University

Lancaster LA1 4YW

07/10/09 - 31/10/09

Admission Free

Artists include Kim Abeles, Prayas Abhinav, Ackroyd & Harvey, Amy Balkin, HeHe, Aaron Koblin, Eva Meyer-Keller, Fujiko Nakaya, Andrea Polli, Janine Randerson, Scenocosme and Elin Wikström. The exhibition is a new iteration at LICA of the first Environment 2.0 art exhibition staged at Futuresonic 2009 in Manchester last May.

The exhibition is curated by Drew Hemment (ImaginationLancaster/FutureEverything) and Dennis Hopkins (FutureEverything), and is the culmination of a three-year collaboration between FutureEverything and Lancaster University. It is the inaugural art exhibition of the Public Arts at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA) and is the art launch for the FutureEverything 2010 festival.

http://www.futureeverything.org/news/artbigbang

Website: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/peterscott/exhibitions.htm