AcrossRCA is a special week in the academic calendar for MA students from the Royal College of Art. The week offers students from different disciplines such as interaction design, product design, communications and architecture the chance to work together on projects that explore new ideas, approaches and skills. This year the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the RCA approached Lambeth Council for community-led projects for their free ‘Creative Citizens’ brief.
The Friends of Tate South Lambeth Library was lucky to be one of only three projects chosen from 13 projects in Lambeth. We were also lucky enough to have two separate groups of five multi-disciplinary students choose our brief.
The brief that we set the students was how can the library attract, and be attractive to, more local people? Can the students consider new ways in which the library could communicate with local people, or new services it could offer. The outcome could be anything from concept(s) for new services, a communications campaign, a new user experience, to proposals for the interior and exterior.
The students’ programme consisted of the following:
- Monday, October 29th – Briefing at the RCA by a Friends of TSL representative
- Tuesday, October 30th – Meetings with a TSL librarian for a tour of the library, and with TSL service providers such as Digital Tuesdays ® (DTVIP & Digital Bazaar) and St Stephen’s Children’s Centre (Parent & Toddler groups)
- Wednesday, October 31st – A meeting with a cross section of the community, comprising long-time library users and non-users, local exhibiting artists & film-makers and local business supports.
- Thursday November 1st- Presentation of the students’ work at the RCA. Since this clashed with the 1st November TSL open day , the RCA tutors kindly filmed the presentations for us and we are looking for opportunities for the students to come back and to present their ideas.
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