Design Thinking and Working with Artists: Collaborative and Creative Solutions

Workshop Presentation
Simon Dodi,  Holly Power,  Catherine Nicholson  

Learning at the V&A is a catalyst for imaginative enquiry and fosters creativity using collections, galleries, and exhibitions. We develop and deliver exciting, inclusive, and engaging learning programmes that activate the V&A collections to our audiences. Our approach is through ‘Designerly Learning’, meaning programmes are co-designed and iterated with target groups to create programming that best meets the needs of our audiences. Recently, the launch of the Adobe Creative Residency Programme has enabled the Team to increase access to creative education, especially targeting audiences who are facing barriers to engagement. This programme has enabled us to embed three full-time artists working alongside our programme in a co-working process with V&A learning staff and target audiences. Through this workshop, we discuss and explore the design-thinking principles and methods that have enabled us to work in innovative ways with our new creative residents and the challenges we have been able to overcome in our process. We take participants through our iterative and collaborative practice with scenarios we have faced in programming, emphasizing an awareness and need for inclusivity and equity. We offer a generative workshop for others to learn and prototype their ideas and see how we can creatively problem-solve through inclusive principles at depth and scale. Overall, we aim to demonstrate how co-design and design thinking methodologies enable a democratic approach to creative challenges and problem-solving.