Awaken: New Textiles Inspired by the Archives & Collections at the Glasgow School of Art

The Archives and Collections Centre (ACC) at The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) exists as a resource for the study of art, design, architecture and education. It comprises a wide range of material from School records, textile pieces, garments, pattern books, posters, artworks, architectural drawings, plaster casts, photography and a collection of works by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The Awaken exhibition was an output from a research project undertaken involving staff from the ACC, the Department of Fashion and Textiles, and the Centre for Advanced Textiles (CAT) at GSA. The project examined the conceptual possibilities of re-interpreting archive material for contemporary fashion and textile related design work. This was underpinned by an explication of the creative process characteristic of this specific approach to design. The following questions directed the project: • To what extent will the ideas produced be derivative or unoriginal? • Will we be re-interpreting, reproducing, initiating, appropriating, parodying or deliberately abstracting? Or will archive material simply act as a prompt, a trigger, or ‘fodder’? • How will working from archive material differ from our normal working practice? • Will we be collaborating with the originator of the archive piece? • To what extent will we make sense of the original artefact by working from it? Awaken involved case studies with fashion and textile practitioners working individually and collaboratively. Data collection methods involved the practitioners observing, recording and reflecting on responses and processes using creative process journals (CPJs) and focus groups to stimulate critical reflection, share, question and articulate issues associated with the research. The exhibition assimilated the resulting fashion and textile artefacts, CPJs extracts and original archive material to disseminate the project to a range of different audiences. The exhibition was held in the Mackintosh Gallery at the GSA, 24th January - 28th February 2009. A seminar for archivists accompanied the exhibition. The project and exhibition were documented and discussed in a post-exhibition publication (ISBN 978-0-9560317-4-7). The project and exhibition have also been disseminated via conference papers