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During this workshop, participants will learn the fundamentals of DIY instrument building followed by a practical building session. They will then be introduced to, and get to tinker with various maker-inspired projects and products based around the musical hacking theme. Including Raspberry-Pi, Arduino and Bare Conductive Touch boards.

Book DIY Instrument Making with Hackoustic

Using traditional hand-crafted Brazilian instruments, musician and capoeira master Ponciano Almeida will perform a re-interpretation of Liz K Miller’s musical scores – a new visual notation system generated by repetitive pattern. The performance will be followed by a percussion workshop in which participants will have the opportunity to learn and play some of Ponciano’s rhythms.

Book Percussion Performance and Workshop

Please note this session is a drop-in demonstration.

The rise in popularity of 3D printing and the ubiquitous Internet has prompted much speculation about how the democratisation of manufacturing and the free sharing of information will affect our environments. Charlotte, whilst being a functional experience-focused robot, is one of those speculations. Being open sourced and transparent, it questions the binary relationship between manufacturer and consumer, encouraging modification over dictation.

Charlotte’s movements are determined by light interpreted through 3 sensors located on top of its body. For legs, it has 3 pens that individually attach to form a tripod. Each light sensor controls the movement of one leg that marks the paper with every act. The collective movements of the ‘legs’ create an artistic web, each web a unique record of light at play at that time.

Drop-in during the afternoon to see Charlotte’s participation in the Mass(ive) Elephant Drawing event.

Book Charlotte – Light in Play

18-19 September
Please note this session is a drop-in workshop, no ticket necessary. 11am – 4pm, both days.

Everyone knows Elephant & Castle, or do they?

Work with UAL alumnae Jazmyn Maher and Izzy Smithson to create a giant, collaged memory portrait of the Elephant & Castle. Is what you know, what you can draw? Use frottage, collage, folding and other mark making techniques to evoke a mass portrait of this iconic London location.

Jazmyn Maher is a printmaker and artist, based in South London. Her etchings and drawings take the viewer into a world where the domestic become sublime, and the strange and bizarre invite you into intimate spaces.

Izzy Smithson is an illustrator and artist based in Surrey. Her drawings and print marry colour and line to create joyful, evocative picturescapes. Using monoprinting, collage, and transfer techniques, her work employs 'thoughtful play' as a form of drawing enquiry.

As part of LCC's London Design Festival programme: Uncertainty Playground; FutureMakers embraces making as a form of inquiry in the context of an expanded design practice. Within the confines of an evolving co-created making space practitioners will explore how uncertainty is a manifest part of creative exploration and demonstrate the iterative relationship between idea, material and artefact. A series of workshops, demonstrations and events will bring together diverse practitioners using experimental processes and enabling a public engagement in the material practices of contemporary makers; reusing material, repurposing space, creating new tools and collaborating across disciplines.

Book Mass[ive] Elephant Drawing

Please note this session is a drop-in workshop, no ticket necessary.

Depth Reflection Pixels is a practical demonstration of the idea that complex behaviours can emerge from simple structures and rules, each of these pixels is programmed with the same behaviour, to illuminate when there is something near them. In this way an image is formed that creates a light mirror of the environment.

Join the team from the Prototyping Lab at LCC whilst they assemble the electronic components that will form the installation.

Book Depth Reflection Pixels – LCC Prototyping Lab

Build a DIY Dirty Video Mixer with Dilesh Patel and Andrew Davidson

A Dirty Video Mixer is a lo-fi, easy to built video mixer designed by Dutch artist and maker, Karl Klomp. With it you can mix two analogue video signals for use in live video art, video mixing live VJing and more. During this workshop participants will build a video mixer from scratch and experiment with making live visuals. If you can bring a small box to house the mixer great – otherwise we can provide this along with the rest of the materials you need. Suitable for all levels.

Book Build a DIY Dirty Video Mixer

Part of the Screen Printing as a Vehicle for Design and Function series.

Explore the technical possibilities of exquisite screen printing, with LCC alumnus Dan Mather, whose reputation for producing screen prints with an attention to detail and knowledge of the process, is second to none.

What does it take to become an independent screen printer? What technical knowledge is needed to achieve brilliant results in registration, colour and detail? What do you need to know about your kit – from squeegee shore, to dot matrices, to mesh tension and count, Dan has explored the gamut of producing screen prints by hand. Examine samples, discuss options, and then get hands-on with screenprinting a sample to take away.

Dan Mather is an independent screen printer, graphic designer and lecturer based in London.

Book Exquisite Screen Printing with Dan Mather

Please note this session is a drop-in workshop, no ticket necessary.

Part of the Experimental Light Sensitive Practice series.

The audience may participate by having a portrait of themselves’ shot using our beautiful mahogany and brass 10x12 plate camera. The paper negative output will be processed on site and if interested, participants can then learn how to scan these and convert to halftone files in Photoshop. Facilitated by Esmeralda Muñoz-Torrero and Simon Leibowitz.

Book Image Capture and Half Toning

We make sense of the world through our senses, all our senses. We are sentient beings and that as such, experiences are inevitably multi-sensory. This exploratory workshop invites you to discover ways to document and map sensory perceptions and learn how designers develop their knowledge of sensing and their sensitivity to the sensory world to perfect sensory intelligent designs.

The workshop will begin with a short briefing session in the Lower Street gallery at London College of Communication. You will then be invited to explore Elephant Park, a nearby green urban space, and bring back your findings to LCC where you will be given the opportunity to translate these finding into a sensory map of your experience. Materials and instructions will be provided.

Please bring water and wear comfortable shoes. Avoid wearing strong perfume as this would interfere with the olfactive qualities of the site-specific exploration.

Book Sensory Walk with Valerie Mace and Lucy Thornett

‘Data Deckchair’s’ will be launched at an al-fresco music evening, the first designs in a range of bespoke designs by LCC design graduate Lauren Vaughan, to celebrate the opening of the new Elephant Park at E&C. Each individually designed deckchair has been designed from research interviews with community members who have lived and worked at Elephant & Castle for a number of years. Each deckchair holds unique chromatic and numeric information in regard to country of birth, languages spoken and relationship to the area.

Elephant & Castle has been described as ‘Super-diverse’ in a report by the London School of Economics and this collaborative project celebrates diversity. The deckchairs act as timelines of individual lives and are a tribute to this vibrant, resilient community.

Book Data Deckchair Launch

Join us to celebrate the launch of Uncertainty Playground! The evening will be a chance to see the work, engage with the subjects and enjoy a drink.

Events

6.30pm: Demystification Committee Performance, Upper Gallery
7pm: Greater London National Park City Film Screening, Lecture Theatre C
7.30pm: FutureMakers Workshop, Well Gallery
8pm: Room 2084: Contributor Pitch, Atrium Gallery

Book Uncertainty Playground Launch Event

We’ll be making robots out of macaroni. The motorised pasta bots will slowly navigate their space and connect to each other via the Internet of Things platform, Aether.

Workshop participants will create the body of their macaroni robot according to some basic outlines. The electronic sections and motors will be added and the robot-structure connected to the whole system via the Internet of Things. We’ll be able to control the robots, or leave them to interact and navigate their environment.

We’ll be aligning rudimentary and technical making processes, producing an environment that constantly evolves as each pasta-robot-structure is added to the whole.

Book Macaroni Robots and a System of Things with Rosie Munro-Kerr

No ticket required, just drop-in.

Wednesday 20 September 4.30 – 7.30pm
Thursday 21 September 12 – 4pm

Join artist Emilie Giles and add your personal reflections about Elephant & Castle to an interactive textile sculpture. You will learn how to make a small sensor using conductive thread and felt. Your contribution will bring the artwork alive, triggering sounds from the local area when touched!

A textile sculpture will be created in the space that reflects the feelings and thoughts of local residents of the change happening in Elephant & Castle. Artist Emilie Giles will build the sculpture on day one, creating a draping structure which can be stepped into, or under, by the public.

Members of the public will be invited to record their thoughts and feelings about their area and community. These recordings will be added to the sculpture and can be triggered by other visitors. A mixture of oral history, embroidery and creative circuit making, the project hopes to embody the tone of change which is happening in the area.

Book Micro-residency: Emilie Giles

Part of the Screen Printing as a Vehicle for Design and Function series.

Join specialist technician Lisa Chappell in this morning workshop to answer the following question: What can you screen print with?

Learn about conductive, reactive and alternative inks and how to use them. From glow-in-the-dark, to magnetic, to alternative liquid suspensions, this workshop is about exploring the possibilities of functional screen printing. Will it print? Will it work? Come find out!

All materials provided. Some printmaking experience recommended.

Book Reactive, Conductive and Alternative inks in Screenprinting with Lisa Chappell

Sound is an important component of our lives but it also gives us a sense that we have forgotten to use. The purpose of this workshop is to try to understand an urban green space through its sonic quality. Participants will be encouraged to explore Elephant & Castle from a sonic point of view. In this workshop, we will be listening, recording, then recomposing the sounds of the Elephant.

Acoustic ecology is the study of the relationship between humans and their environments, mediated by sound. It starts by walking and listening to the area we are in. Cities have a poor reputation in terms of sound so we will be trying to investigate what makes the Elephant & Castle different. It will be the sound signals and sound marks that make the area an interesting community of sounds.

Book Acoustic Ecology Walk with Nicholas Marechal

Part of the Screen printing as a Vehicle for Design and Function series.

Join printmaker Ling Chiu for this hands-on workshop on screen printing with conductive, reactive and alternative inks. Learn about how these material investigations can be used in education for art, design and science.

Discover simple solutions to bringing screen printing into the classroom, from using stencils, to eco-friendly cleaning solutions. Discuss the technical and pedagogical challenges of bringing new and innovative making methods into a learning environment whilst making prints using screens, clamps and stencils.

All materials provided. No experience necessary.

Book CPD Workshop – Screen Printing with Functional Inks for Education​

Please note this session is a drop-in workshop, no ticket necessary.

Part of the Experimental Light Sensitive Practice series.

Participants will learn how to produce cyanotype paper by manually applying cyanotype chemistry to sheets of specialist Bergger paper in the darkroom. They will then go to contact print these with pre-prepared acrylic plates and expose these using daylight in the Well Gallery. Facilitated by Esmeralda Muñoz-Torrero and Simon Leibowitz.

Book Cyanotype Paper Making and Contact Printing

Artist Grace Adam will create an experience entitled Colour Navigations: a take on psychogeography, as a way of negotiating, noticing and enjoying our built and grown cityscape. Grace and the group will select colour samples from all over Elephant Park and the surrounding area, which will be displayed in the S*PARK Exhibition at LCC combined with text that will discuss where the colour was found, with references to its social, historical and contextual significance.

With reference to both biology and psychology, Grace Adam's 'Colour Navigations' walk explores colour as a vital way to calibrate the world. Our survival, health and welfare depend on responding to, and understanding chromatic nuances in our environment, an exploration of individual understanding of spaces can enhance our understanding of nature in urban life.

Book Colour Navigation with Grace Adam

Elephant & Castle is a fast-adapting cultural and social landscape. The Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability Research group at LCC have devised an intervention which addresses social isolation while celebrating nature and community. On the morning of ‪Thursday 21 September, the Morris Folk Choir lead by Michelle Woolfenden will celebrate Dawn ‪at 6.14am with an uplifting selection of music with a bird theme: The Wood Thrush Song, The Magpie and Follow the Heron will feature along with other popular songs.

London songbirds start their day as early as possible, and the trees, bushes and rooftops teem with songs and calls. For humans, singing at any time of day can be as valuable and stimulating as exercise. The event will encourage participation and offer passers-by an opportunity to join in. The intervention, part of Uncertainty Playground, will also raise awareness of the plight of the British songbird. The official ‘State of the UK’s Birds 2016 Survey' found that more than a quarter of the UK’s bird species are now recognised as threatened species, at risk of global extinction.

Book Dawn Chorus by Morris Folk Choir

Workshop 1: 10.30am – 1pm
Workshop 2: 5 – 7.30pm

Wild in the City supports the wellbeing of urban residents through connection to nature in London's green spaces, offering experiences in ecotherapy, bushcraft and traditional skills, helping children and adults to connect with themselves, others and nature.

These workshops offer the opportunity to explore our relationship with Nature. The workshops will explore the benefit of nature to emotional health and ways of attaining therapeutic benefit in a city context as well as learning a traditional craft using natural materials.

Book Natural Health Service Workshop with Beth Collier and James Grant

Uncertainty Playground Symposium explores the ideas behind the exhibition, with keynotes and panel discussions.

Keynotes from:
Sarah Weir OBE – Chief Executive Design Council
Dr. Francisco Laranjo – Design Critic, Graphic Designer and Educator
Jan Boelen – Curator, Artistic Director of the Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Head of the Master Department of Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven (NL)

Panels presented by the 4 shows
Possible/Probable Worlds:
A presentation and discussion of future-facing and critical digital practices active at LCC. Participants from the exhibition will present and discuss methodologies and critiques and then engage in discussion with external academics and practitioners. 

S*PARK:
How can sustainability and socially engaged design enrich the lives of communities? 

This panel will discuss the relevance of the public realm in the contemporary city. We recognise the need for design research to respond to the eco-social challenges of our time and proposes environmentally sustainable and socially responsive approaches that enrich human life and human experience.  

FutureMakers:
In FutureMakers we will continue to discuss the role of playing and making as a design practice. Tadeo Sendon of ‘Music Hackspace’ has been invited to talk about the uncertainties and difficulties about maintaining an open and creative space for making in London.

Room 2084:
What is the role of the future archive?

In bringing archivists and design researchers together it aims to discuss the role of the archive. Raising questions of how and why the past and the present are preserved for future generations.

Introductory performance by Pip Thornton

Blog post : Introducing the Speakers

Book Uncertainty Playground Symposium

Part of the Screen printing as a Vehicle for Design and Function series.

Join screen print technician Florence Hawkins for this hands-on workshop screen printing with natural dyes.

Participants will have the opportunity to screen print a design on paper using naturals dyes made from vegetable, fruit and plant matter. By overlaying different colours and depending on their acidity, you might observe some unexpected changes in the end result! This is a playful and experimental workshop in which you will be able to add your own signature/motif to the design through cut out shapes/paper stencils. All materials provided. No experience necessary.

Book 10am – 1pm Screen Printing with Natural Dyes with Florence Hawkins

Book 2 – 4pm Screen Printing with Natural Dyes with Florence Hawkins

23 – 24 September
Game 1: 11am – 12pm
Game 2: 1 – 2 pm

In this era, where the world continues to urbanize and global systems are nearing a tipping point, we need to begin re-evaluating our relationships with the non-human. Animal Diplomacy Bureau's mission is to cultivate better Human – Animal Relations through changing the way we think. The Bureau transforms people into London Birds in a series of mixed reality games to get people thinking about animals within our urban landscapes.

ADB will be running the game Birds in the Grass in Elephant Park. This game tells the story of London Parakeets and our human impact on local birds. Players transform into birds and must survive the perils of the big city. To complete this transformation, each player dons a bird hat and is given the power of Bird Sense. As birds, players will navigate through the city by listening and deciphering bird songs. Like real birds, how you strategize and how you interpret information, will lead you to survival or death at the talons of the falcon.

Book Human – Animal Relational Gaming, Birds on the Grass

Design research at LCC is often informed by engagement with the UAL Archives and Special Collections Centre. Playfully based on the antithesis of George Orwell’s ‘Room 101’, Room 2084 considers the archives of the past, present and potential futures.

Alumni, staff and students will present objects from their own archives to a jury with the aim of being included in a design archive of the future. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, a living archive will be created, allowing for debates around how and why the past and the present are preserved for future generations.

Join us for a presentation and see what makes it into Room 2084.

Book Presentations by Contributors to the Room 2084 Archive

Design research at LCC is often informed by engagement with the UAL Archives and Special Collections Centre. Playfully based on the antithesis of George Orwell’s ‘Room 101’, Room 2084 considers the archives of the past, present and potential futures.

Alumni, staff and students will present objects from their own archives to a jury with the aim of being included in a design archive of the future. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, a living archive will be created, allowing for debates around how and why the past and the present are preserved for future generations.

Join us for a presentation and see what makes it into Room 2084.

Book Presentations by Contributors to the Room 2084 Archive [final]