Drawing through Collaboration, Co-Creation and Participation

Description

Pattern design archives are a valuable resource for Fashion and Textile businesses and Art and Design educational institutions worldwide. As records of completed commissions they preserve the legacy of an ever-changing designed world by conserving images and instruction that guided a manufacturing process.
Through careful curation their heritage value can be extended to provide inspiration for designers seeking to converse with patterns from the past, whilst it is through creative play that the same patterns can ignite conversation and participation with a contemporary and diverse audience. The Gleneden Post-War Design Archive is a collection of approximately 1000 historic design sheets, hand drawn in pencil and coloured with gouache paint, conceived to aid commercial production of jacquard woven cloth in a factory Carlisle, England, called Gleneden between 1955 and 1990. The archive was last commercially owned by Collins and Aikman and was donated to the University of Huddersfield in 2005 as a resource for teaching and is now homed in their Heritage Quay Archive, which has stabilised its condition but limited access to it. This paper reports on projects designed and instigated by the author whose work in academia intersects the roles of artist, researcher, and teacher. It documents a methodology of practice that began by capturing 100 design sheets photographically providing access to a portable resource from which personal practice can develop. New work emerges work from workshops where co-creative activity and the participation of various communities of identity, interest and experience are essential in the creation of the designed outcomes. Visual recordings of both the Gleneden archive and the new art and design work are stored digitally online so they can be utilised as materials for pedagogic enquiries and as part of a functional interactive archival resource.

Period	12 Feb 2026
Event title	Zeitgeist 2026: An International Conference on Cultural, Spatial & Sensory Futures of Art, Design and Architecture
Event type	Conference
Organiser	World University of Design
Location	Delhi, IndiaShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International