SEE Curriculum Development Funded Project: Access Through Tools

Awarded SEE curriculum development funding in September 2014, a team of students, tutors and technicians from LCC's School of Design came together to curate and deliver a programme of workshops and events called Access Through Tools. The project was a collaboration between LCC School of Design technicians and BA (Hons) Design for Graphic Communication, MA Graphic Design and Diploma in Professional Studies students and tutors. The ethos of the project was to facilitate students to plan, curate and deliver their own festival. Genuine co-production was an underlying value from the outset. 

The title took its name from the Whole Earth Catalog, a proto-internet, print-based cultural phenomenon that sought ‘to make a variety of tools accessible to newly-dispersed counterculture communities’. The festival goals were to explore the construction of knowledge through design production: showcasing tools, processes and materials integral to the making of art and design. The festival comprised workshops, lectures and an exhibition, featuring Daniel Eatock, James Langdon, Peter Nencini, Audrey Samson, New North Press, Peter Bilak, Colophon, Daniel Charny and many others.

Student feedback:

‘I’ve made so many contacts now… that if I go out into the real world, I am happy to speak to anyone now for a project, for a chat… As a whole we’ve got more confident in the fact that we can do it ourselves. We don’t need a tutor holding our hand or standing over our shoulder making sure we’re doing it right - we just do it.’

‘ATT has let me explore other areas and has pushed me from thinking about being a designer, to being a practitioner. ATT has taught me to really think about what I want to do when I graduate…It changed us from students to practitioners… We learnt real life experiences, rather than just learning typography and design and basic student stuff. We learnt answering emails, going to meetings and getting together and organising how we talk to people and presenting ourselves to practitioners and getting their support and just knowing people in the college and I think that’s worth a lot more.’