MA Narrative Environments

Events

Global Alumni Sharing Event

screenshot from a zoom call with 15 participants faces.

MA Narrative Environments recently held its’ first global ‘In Practice’ Alumni Sharing Event, bringing together our amazing graduate community on zoom. The event was an opportunity for alumni to connect with each-other across the world and share the work they have been doing since graduating with current students. Building on our popular ‘In Practice’ interview blog

‘Rooting Failure’ at the Bloomsbury Festival

Recent graduates Paolo Di Gennaro and Sara Coppa’s award winning final project ‘Rooting Failure’ was included in the Bloomsbury Festival as an installation in the Crypt Gallery. Thoughtfully curated throughout the rooms and hallways of the Crypt Gallery, Rooting Failure takes the form of an interactive installation that challenges dominant understandings of failure through an

‘Motherland to Fatherland’ is the Spatial Practices Cultural Equity Award winner!

An old black and white photograph of a woman sitting on a chair and a man in a suit standing behind her.

‘Motherland to Fatherland’ is the Spatial Practices Cultural Equity Award winning project by MA Narrative Environments graduating student Shrutika Jain. The Spatial Cultural Equity Award is given to student projects that embody values, policies and practices that ensure that all people are represented in the development of spatial practice. Motherland to Fatherland’ is an exhibition

Designing Narrative Environments for Critical Heritage event.

MA Narrative Environments recently hosted a ‘Designing Narrative Environments for Critical Heritage’ event in collaboration with UCL Institute of Archaeology, devised and produced by MANE Course Leader Tricia Austin and Colin Sterling, AHRC Leadership Fellow at UCL. Cross disciplinary speakers and guests cast a critical eye on the important role of museums, heritage sites and

Work in Progress Show 2020 – in pictures.

This time last week we welcomed our friends, affiliates and industry partners to the Private View of the MA Narrative Environments Work in Progress Show 2020, designed and built by our amazing second year students to present their work to date. Congratulations to the students on producing such an inspiring and vibrant event! Here it

Daily tous les jours installation at Somerset House 24/7 exhibition

Daily tous les jours – founded by MANE graduate Melissa Mongiat – will exhibit their interactive Leonard Cohen sound piece ‘I heard there was a secret chord’ at 24/7: A wake up call for our non-stop world, a major new show opening this Autumn at Somerset House. “An essential exhibition for today, 24/7: a wake up call

The Design Museum x MA Narrative Environments explore Storytelling through Design.

The Design Museum and MA Narrative Environments came together on  Wednesday 20th February 2019 to host an all day Industry Insights event exploring the relationship between space and stories. A diverse panel of designers and architects shared examples of their work and captivating insights into how to harness storytelling as a tool to narrate and

Find Oliver! An interactive trail for the Dickens Museum.

Find Oliver! Is a 30 minute trail using street lamp posts to disseminate visual and audio clues that incrementally share Oliver Twist’s story, imagined by first year MA Narrative Environment students for the Dickens Museum. The trail covers commercial and residential hotspots, engaging residents, students, workers and local shoppers. The lamp post installations bring awareness

Design for Healthcare: Mateusz Gidaszewski at the Healthcare Leadership Academy.

A focus of MA NE Student Mateusz Gidaszewski’s work at Medics.Academy as a Head of Design and User Experience is the progression of the role of design in healthcare. He recently delivered a successful lecture and workshop about Design Thinking, Experience Design, and Human Centered Design in the context of medicine, for the Healthcare Leadership Academy. 26

WIP Show 2019 : Experiments & Investigations

A big thank you to all those who joined us on Thursday, January 10th for a preview of the MA Narrative Environments Class of 2019’s work to date. Congratulations to our narrative design superstars for putting on such an engaging show featuring so many original and intriguing ideas! The event was a great opportunity for

Design Museum Industry Insights Event: Storytelling Through Design

New Year, new diary! Save the date before you diary fills up for this Design Museum Industry Insights talk exploring the role of storytelling in design, developed in collaboration with MA Narrative Environments students. Head over to the Design Museum for this day event especially for students on Wednesday, February 20, 2019, from 14:30 to 17:00,

Rhiannon Williams on Designing a Feminist Alexa and Feminist Internet’s residency at Somerset House

Exciting things are happening with Feminist Internet, a movement co-founded by a group of artists and designers that include MA NE alumni Rhiannon Williams. Working to advance internet equalities for women and other marginalised groups through critical practice, Feminist Internet has recently been selected for a fellowship with UAL’s Creative Computing Institute and awarded a residency at

The Decorators tables at the Tate Modern Summer Terrace.

Head down to the Tate Modern before the end of September for some communal cooking with locally sourced ingredients and check out The Decorator’s new 15 m long tables at the Tate Modern’s Summer Terrace. The tables are designed to change from bar table, to dining table, to picnic blanket and play host to all

Graduates Rhiannon Williams, Cruz Maria Vallespir and Erica Jensen featured in Creative Unions Show at the Lethaby Gallery

Three of our recent graduates are showing work in the Creative Unions exhibition at the Lethaby Gallery in King’s Cross from 25 September – 27 October 2018. Showcasing the work of Central Saint Martins graduating students whose practice addresses our current socio-political climate, Creative Unions explores how design can further public debate and become an active

Daily tous les jours create a public lab for the future of urban life.

MANE alumni Melissa Mongiat’s studio, Daily Tous Les Jours, has collaborated with Sidewalk Labs recently to create a public lab for the future of urban life. The design transformed the ground floor of 307, Sidewalk Lab’s first experimental  workspace in Toronto, into an interactive space that engages local inhabitants in conversation through games, a generative

MA NE Degree Show snapshots

Two weeks ago today our Degree Show opened, showcasing the wide range of incredible work by our graduating MA NE creative superheros! If you didn’t get a chance to visit the show in person, here are some snapshots from some of the students displays for you to enjoy.

Knowledge Forest / Chi No Mori by MA NE graduate Yuka Kawamoto

Tokyo based MA NE graduate Yuka Kawamoto created an 8 m tall Knowledge Forest / Chi No Mori installation inspired by books and knowledge maps, in Toyama Library. The Knowledge Forest [知の森 – chi no mori] is an interactive design installation which acts as a metaphorical Tree of Knowledge, allowing participants to share their favourite

MANE Degree Show 2018 is here!

The MANE Degree Show 2018 is here, showcasing a wide range of creative talent and imaginative narrative designs. You can find us in The Crossing at the entrance to CSM. Look up and head toward the flock of white shapes! Degree Show 2: Design 20-24 June 2018 Opening Times: Wednesday to Friday: 12-8pm Saturday and

Café Odyssey at the London Festival of Architecture

Café Odyssey is a pop-up coffee shop with a difference set up by 2nd Year MA NE student Ronnie Chou. The Peckham based pop-up café offers free coffee with a specially designed receipt – a map showing local shops and organisations that contribute to the contested narrative of gentrification in and around Southwark. The aim of

Macedonia Field Trip: New Narratives for Skopje

In early May, MA NE 1st years took a field trip to Macedonia for a week to research and envision new narratives for the capital city Skopje. Macedonia is consolidating its identity, having gained independence from former Yugoslavia in 1991. In an effort to establish a distinctive national character in the capital, the current government introduced

MANE student Rhiannon Williams and Feminist Internet featured in Trebuchet Magazine

Feminist Internet is a future-focused collective made up of  16 multi-disciplinary artists and designers, including MANE 2nd Year student Rhiannon Williams, who aim to create an equal and just internet for all. A UAL project, the Feminist Internet originated from a 10 day intensive studio session to re-imagine the internet in a way that does

Work in Progress Show 2018 – in pictures

A big thank you to everyone who came to visit us at CSM for the 2018 Work in Progress Show. It was a vibrant evening where guests had the opportunity to engage with the students, discuss their work and leave valuable feedback.  A huge thank you to all our visiting critics who lead engaging and

Spring Lecture Series: FUNDAMENTALS

We are pleased to announce the return of FUNDAMENTALS for Spatial Practices’ Spring Term Lectures. Fundamentals 2018: The Way We Work, will bring architectural education, labour and procurement into the spotlight! The Thursday evening lectures will be fortnightly and the series will culminate in a Symposium on 2-3 March. Read more and reserve a place

...

This autumn, the Spatial Practices Programme will respond to Head of College Jeremy Till’s Creative Unions ‘Call to Action’ and demonstrate how creativity must continue to know no boundaries in order to play a role in the current political landscape. Our Lecture Series kicks off with a talk from Markus Bader. Markus is Co-founder of

EXILE

A team of MA Narrative Environments graduates, led by 2016 alum Julie Howell and Tom Butler, have just completed a moving and important exhibition design project working with University of Leicester and the National Trust. Many National Trust places were home to, and shaped by, people who challenged conventional ideas of gender and sexuality. 50

diverCity Matchmaking

MA Narrative Environments’ 2017 grad Aga Anastazja Szypicyn presented her final project diverCity – a powerful design critique of the limitations of placemaking through visualisation – to Urbanistas last night. Read more about the project in this book designed by Aga diverCity Matchmaking And check out the next Urbanistas events here

LVMH Future Life Celebration

To celebrate 25 years since the official establishment of its Environment Department, LVMH presented two evenings of talks and presentations in September in Paris called Future LIFE (standing for LVMH Initiatives for the Environment). CSM was the only design school invited to collaborate and as part of a live project, students from MA Narrative Environments and BA

...

grey and orange text image saying creative unions

The doors have opened to Creative Unions at the Lethaby Gallery, on until 21 October. Come celebrate the power of creativity to cross borders! The contemporary world must be defined not by boundary or binary but connection. Sharing the work of this year’s graduating Central Saint Martins students, Creative Unions celebrates the power of designers to challenge isolationism.

Neighbourhood Number 9

What agencies do we need to engage with to ensure we are part of planning decisions rather than living as a consequence of them? Join Micro Museum curator (and CSM Spatial Practices tutor) Ruth Lang in conversation with Finn Williams (Common Office/GLA), Tom Coward (AOC Architecture), Suzanne O’Connell (The Decorators, also MA Narrative Environments alum)

Graduation 2017

CONGRATULATIONS to this year’s graduating class! We can’t wait to see what this amazing group of designers, architects, curators, artists, producers & more collaborate on next.

Spatial Practices Prizes

Congratulations to the winners of the Spatial Practices Prizes supported by Knight Frank: Tom Atkinson MArch, Geetanjali Sayal MA Narrative Environments, and Olivia Sutherill BA Architecture. MA Narrative Environments’ Geetanjali Sayal was nominated for her major project Behind White Storeys . A night walk, with an audio-visual accompaniment, emphasising the emotional resonances discoverable in a much underrated

Degree Show 2017

The MANE Degree Show is is finally here, and we are ready to celebrate a wide range of talents and creative superpowers. Just come and see for yourself. You’ll find us in The Crossing at the entrance to CSM. Look for the flags! We’re open to the public all week: Wednesday 21 to Friday 24

Citizenshop at Tate

2016 alum Nele Vos was invited to show her graduation project Citizenshop at Tate as part of the Tate Exchange’s ‘Who Are We?’ project. Citizenshop is an interactive travelling installation that opposes the neoliberal concept of the acquisition of citizenship by investment, as is offered by an increasing number of governments across the world today. Instead, it asserts

Debate: does user involvement create better designs?

Does participatory design lead to better buildings? How and why do architects benefit from a close collaboration with users during the design process? The third event in our Architecture and Citizenship season takes the format of a debate to understand whether getting the users involved results in better designs. Alum Carolina Caicedo of The Decorators

Alum Melissa Mongiat featured in “Portraits of Visonaries from Montreal”

Narrative Environments alum Melissa Mongiat is featured with business partner Mouna Andraos in ‘PORTRAITS OF VISIONARIES FROM MONTREAL‘ at McCord Museum. Melissa Mongiat is the co-founder of the design studio Daily tous les jours, an interaction design studio with a focus on participation – empowering people to have a place in the stories that are

2nd Year student Sachiko Osawa presents Narrative Environments in Tokyo

Second year student Sachiko Osawa was invited to give a guest lecture at International Christian University, Tokyo Japan, where she graduated from in 2010. She was invited to speak for the students on the Cultural Studies course about Narrative Environments at CSM, and her current major project “Yami-ichi” – a non-monetary art auction. Sachiko was

Work in Progress Show

Work in Progress Show 2017 has been held at CSM and thanks to all who came to visit us! Our show was not just about our work, but also about our visitors’ feedback. A huge thank you to all our visiting critics, and well done second years. Fantastic discussion and debate at the Work In