Ed Vaizey MP announces Parallel Practices residencies

At an event to launch the Crafts Council’s new innovation programme, Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, announced the four teams selected for the Parallel Practices residencies.

Parallel Practices is a pilot project of residencies partnering makers and medical/scientific researchers developed in partnership with the Cultural Institute at King's. The programme aims to demonstrate the mutual benefits and value of collaboration between researchers and makers and stimulate learning and innovation through a focus on the body, materials and processes.

The following four residences will take place between 22 September and 22 December 2014: 
• Matthew Howard, lecturer in robotics at theDepartment of Informatics and Karina Thompson, textile maker, will stimulate debate about the nature of stitch in the 21st century and show its value in cutting-edge robotics.
• Thrishantha Nanayakkara, principal investigator of the Laboratory for Morphological Computation and Learning from the Department of Informatics, Les Bicknell, book artist, and Naomi Mcintosh, jeweller, will explore extending current soft robotics through model-making and look at ways of controlling movement and articulation of objects in order to build new structure.
• Richard Wingate, Principal Investigator at the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King’s, and Celia Pym, textile maker, will explore ‘mending’ in anatomy and the relationships between care and caretaking in textile repair and studying anatomy.
• Richard Wingate and Tamsin van Essen, ceramicist, will approach anatomy from a new direction, encouraging a focus on the different layers of material and emotional and dimensional processes.


Deborah Bull, Director of Cultural Partnerships at King’s College London said:

‘By pairing makers with academics, this innovative programme promises to inspire new perspectives with the potential to deliver both research breakthroughs and new approaches to creativity. These are exactly the kind of partnerships between the sector and academia that we are intent on exploring at King’s and I’m particularly excited to see the range of academic disciplines involved’.