Research at the RCA enjoys an international reputation attracting high quality staff and students and helping to generate major funded projects. It plays a key role in the development of research in art and design. In the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise carried out by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the RCA received the highest score (5) for art and design.
As far back as 1951, Robin Darwin, then Principal of the Royal College of Art, envisaged that Research would come to underpin the academic life of the College. A little over half a century later, his prediction has come to pass. Almost 200 MPhil and PhD students have graduated from the RCA since 1995 – the College currently has around 100 research degree students (12 per cent of the total student body) and plays a key role – nationally and internationally – in the development of research-based education in art and design.
RCA research falls into four broad groups: Applied Arts, Design, Communication Arts and Fine Art, forming an alliance of making and curating, writing and documenting. The College is unique in its juxtaposition of art in a design environment and design in an art environment and in its advancement of knowledge in the principles of art and design in their specific relation to industrial and commercial processes. Our interdisciplinary structure has facilitated our rapidly expanding research profile, as has our commitment to individual research practice, enquiry and output of international excellence.
RCA research students are part of a cohesive staff and student body – sharing studios and workshops with MA students and participating in work-in-progress seminars and other programme-based activities while benefiting from their own comprehensive central and group-based Research Methods Course. The course offers a range of workshops, seminars and mentoring services to enhance and develop the transferable and career skills of our diverse postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers. The College is committed to developing each individual’s research practice while offering a flexible, inclusive structure and a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach. In 2007 the RCA was commended by the Quality Assurance Agency for its research leadership and management, including high-quality research training.
We also recognise the need for a global approach to studying. Supervision by leading international specialists at the RCA and at partner placements is available in the key areas of research undertaken at the RCA. Postgraduate and research students have the opportunity to work with staff who are at the forefront in a wide range of highly relevant research.
Our research students and staff work as individuals, in groups, and with partners and collaborators inside and outside the College, developing extensive relationships with world-class academics and commercial institutions. They are vital players in the creative and cultural industries – areas at the heart of social and economic success in the UK.
The RCA’s academic life is enhanced by extensive relationships with other world-class institutions – academic, museum and industrial – including Imperial College London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Science Museum.
In addition to Research Council, public-sector and trust-sponsored projects, collaboration with business is an increasingly important component of the College’s contribution to the creative economy. Business partnerships have included projects with Apple Computer, Philips, Hewlett-Packard, Interval (California) and IDEO Product Design. The Helen Hamlyn Research Associates Programme provides an ideal platform for industry to work with new design graduates on research and development that responds to social and commercial imperatives.
The strength of the RCA’s funding model is the balance between Research Council funding, trusts and foundations and industrial support. Since 2001, the income from commercialisation activities has increased considerably, a result of our investment in InnovationRCA, a dedicated IPR manager post and the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. The UK Higher Education research funding league tables placed the RCA as a leader within the visual and performing arts sector for funding from industry, charity and the UK Research Councils in 2006. In September 2007, the THES and Research Fortnight listed the RCA as the institution with the greatest incremental increase in external funding nationwide with a 60 per cent success rate on the previous year.
The belief that knowledge can be generated, and questions answered, through analytic scholarship, iterative experiments and innovative examples of artefacts and designs, underpins the College’s developing research projects and disciplines. Our reputation for groundbreaking research has been developed over the course of the RCA’s 150-year history. We remain committed not only to our own continuing standards of excellence and those of the students, present and future, who pass through our doors, but to the central role art and design must play in today’s – and tomorrow’s – world.