DesignLab Nation at Cliffe Castle Museum: Celebrating Historic Collections Through Sustainable Design
In 2024, I worked as the lead artist on a DesignLab Nation project at Cliffe Castle Museum in Bradford. DesignLab Nation is part of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) National Schools Programme, which connects schools with museums and creative professionals to inspire the next generation of designers and makers.
Working independently in partnership with Bradford District Museums and Galleries and the V&A, I collaborated with students from Co-op Academy Priesthorpe, Dixons Trinity Academy, and Titus Salt School. The Design Challenge invited students to create a nature-inspired modular artwork using recycled materials. Their brief was to respond to the breadth and diversity of the District’s Collection and produce work for display during Bradford 2025 City of Culture.
The project began at Cliffe Castle, where I guided students through the stained-glass, Natural History, and Geology collections. Through observational drawing and collage, they explored abstraction, pattern, and positive and negative space.
We then visited the V&A South Kensington, where students expanded their understanding of colour, composition, and form. In the Islamic Middle East gallery, I led a collaborative collage workshop, transforming these ideas into stained-glass-inspired light projections.
Back at Cliffe Castle, students experimented with recycled plastics, fabrics, weaving, heat application, and printmaking to test opacity, texture, and structure. In school, they refined their modular designs into a cohesive installation.
Alongside this, I completed two lamps inspired by the students’ observations and creative responses. The lamps and all student outcomes were displayed in the Breakfast Room at Cliffe Castle Museum.
Project images by Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Olivia Johnston, phil Jackson, Naseem Darbey. 2024/5 DesignLab Nation projects was made possible through the support of the Adobe Foundation, Sarah Nichols, and Oak Foundation.
