A warm welcome to the 2009 Royal College of Art Show Part Two – our exhibition of Design, Communications and the Humanities, and a glimpse of the shape of things to come. Surprisingly, there still aren’t many exhibition spaces in London where visitors can see and experience contemporary design and communications created by up-and-coming practitioners. The RCA is certainly one of them.

A Chinese friend of mine gave a lecture a couple of years ago, about the aspects of Britain that were most highly regarded in China. There were two above all, he concluded. One was financial services. The other was design and engineering. At the beginning of this year, he contacted me again and wrote, “Correction: just one!”

Design isn’t the icing on the cake; the first thing to be top-sliced when times get hard. It is, as many commentators have said over the past few months, essential to all our futures. And, as my friend added, so is art and design education – a sentiment recently echoed on the other side of the world by Michelle Obama when she spoke at the opening night of American Ballet Theatre: “My husband and I,” she said, “believe strongly that arts education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be the nation’s leaders of tomorrow.”

She was thinking, as was my friend, of the sorts of graduate who say, “Why not?” rather than, “Why?” The sorts of graduate who, even when others are in the slough of despond, will have a strong belief in the future; not as any kind of feelgood factor, or in an uncontroversial or unchallenging way. Instead they will believe that doing something about it, and making a difference, is a worthwhile thing to attempt – especially trying to humanise and find a sensible way through an extremely complex world of technology; a brandscape. They’ll have their finger on the pulse of contemporary culture; they’ll be flexibly minded, multicultural – they will think of cultures rather than culture – good at setting their own agendas and solving their own intellectual and visual problems, highly motivated and full of attitude, completely at home in the digital universe, excited by an unpredictable world where the goalposts keep shifting and products are made of thin air, and in tune with future trends. More than all these, they will have a profound belief in the possibilities of the future.

“What’s the point of design?” the founder of the Arts and Crafts movement William Morris was once asked, just after he’d delivered a lecture on ‘The Useful Arts’ in Birmingham. His reply? The point of design, “is to give us hope”. Art and design students are already five times more likely to be self-employed than any other university graduates – and they are particularly good at constructing worlds around themselves in very entrepreneurial and improvisatory ways. Worlds where products and services seem to be blending together; where in-house has turned into in-system; where there’s no longer a stable idea of function; where design isn’t just something you do to things, it’s something that happens in a cultural and economic context; where there’s a sense of stimulating industry rather than criticising it or even serving it; and where designers and communicators can become strategic thinkers in the world of business. Because, as the last decade has shown us, the creative industries want above all to be stimulated with strong creative ideas.

People tend to ask, “What do you make?” This is, of course, usually a reference to how much one earns, or how big one’s bonus is, or how generous is one’s expense account. If you’d asked this of an art and design student, say, 20 years ago, he or she would probably have replied, “I make things, and I make them very well.” But if you ask this of one of today’s students – whose work is exhibited in this SHOW Two, and described in this catalogue – he or she would probably say, “I make a difference.” And they’d be right. Which is why they have a particularly important role to play in difficult times – as Franklin D Roosevelt realised when he launched the Works Progress Administration, part of the New Deal, in mid-1930s America.

This Introduction is written in very different circumstances from last year’s. I wrote this time last year of a buoyant economy, of RCA graduates entering a world that increasingly welcomed them with open arms, of the visitors queuing up to see the work of the College. I’m sure this year’s SHOW Two will attract just as many visitors, if not more – but it takes place against a background of deep instability, a completely new experience for students who have graduated over the last decade. Whether their work will reflect this – and whether the practices of the designers and communicators and writers who are exhibiting in it will be significantly affected – only time will tell.

One thing remains certain. The College’s annual Shows have in recent years become a major fixture in the calendar of art and design. There’s a growing public interest in – a passion for – design across the spectrum, and not enough places to see it. The RCA Shows are the culmination of our postgraduate students’ studio work and research: a series of individual exhibitions amounting to one big exhibition, a glimpse into the ideas factory of the College itself, an opportunity to open our doors to the public even wider than before, a testing of research ideas and a calling card on behalf of all the talented exhibitors who are in the process of launching themselves into the worlds of design, communications and the associated humanities.

There has been a lot of discussion about public value lately, discussion that has had extra urgency at a time of diminishing resources. We hope the RCA Shows 2009 will – as ever – contribute, and tangibly, to this discussion. RCA students consistently produce exciting and challenging work, and many will already have achieved recognition in top national and international competitions. We remain committed to nurturing originality, creativity, innovation and professionalism within our walls: the words creativity and innovation have become the great clichés of public policy in recent years – here, they are real. The SHOW is always a powerful visual demonstration of the latest ideas of students who have studied, researched and practised here, and for all of us it is the highlight of the year. So it is with very great pleasure that I present the work of the postgraduates completing their work at the Royal College of Art in summer 2009. A total of some 416 students from over 39 countries will be exhibiting from six courses.

When I graduated from a traditional university, my final year work was read by three examiners – and my aunt, actually – and that was that. When RCA students graduate, in addition to their examiners, their work is seen by – exposed to – thousands of members of the public. I’m not quite sure how to define the term public value but I’m sure these Shows are a good example.

In this catalogue you will find the contact details of our graduating students. Unless styled as MPhil or PhD students, in other words as research students, the individuals whose details can be found in the following pages are all final year Master of Arts students. Some have chosen to make a short statement about their particular themes and interests and some have indicated their future plans on graduation. The images shown here are a combination of pre-Show and Show work. You can find an online gallery of this work, plus student CVs and statements, by visiting our website www.rca.ac.uk.

My sincere thanks go to all those who have supported the Royal College of Art – the institution, its courses, its equipment, its projects, its prizes and its students – throughout the academic year 2008/9: in particular The Conran Foundation, which is an educational charity aiming to promote a better understanding of good design and visual culture, and which is very generously sponsoring this year’s Shows – for the fourth year running – enabling them to happen in such a professional way. We have never before had such a perfect match between sponsor and SHOW.

The Trust’s mission is precisely the College’s mission as well. Without investment from the private sector, supplementing our public income, the College would be a poorer place in many more ways than one. And investment it is: investment in the future, and especially important in difficult times. Not short-selling or playing the market or building a casino inside the bank, but solid investment in the future. Many of the individual exhibits, and the specific environments in which they are presented, have been supported in this way. Others who are supporting this year’s SHOW include Interbrand – who have helped us make our strong case to government – and the Financial Times, our much-valued media sponsor. Also, the Helen Hamlyn Trust, which gives very generous support to our Helen Hamlyn Centre devoted to ‘design for our future selves’ – one important thread running through this year’s SHOW embodied in its prestigious Design Awards.

This is the last time I will be writing a Rector’s Introduction to the RCA’s Summer Show catalogue. After a professional lifetime at the College – as, successively, tutor, senior tutor, professor, Pro-Rector and, since 1996, Rector – I have decided it is time to move on. My successor is Dr Paul Thompson, who currently directs the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of art and design in New York – an excellent choice. He will be taking over in the summer.

My time as Rector has coincided with a welcome new emphasis in the public sector on the key importance of the ‘creative industries’ and of innovation, and the College has taken full advantage of this shift. So I leave it ‘on a high’, in excellent condition. Also in my time there have been very significant developments in Design, Communications and the Humanities, too many to list here. To name a few: there has been the rise of Design Products, the evolution of Design Interactions, the coming of age of Industrial Design Engineering, the re-orientation of Vehicle Design as a much more thoughtful department, and the pioneering of a cultural approach to Architectural education. In Communications, the re-definition of ‘Graphics’ and ‘Illustration’ for the digital age and the radical extension of the discipline’s boundaries; and the move centre-stage of Animation – model, drawn, painted, computer. And in the Humanities, the foundation and development of the History of Design, Conservation and Curating Contemporary Art. Across the College – and especially Design – there has been the rise and rise of the Helen Hamlyn Centre, and the foundation of InnovationRCA, our bridgehead to the worlds of business and industry. The College in 2009 is a very different place from the one I took over as Rector in 1996.

A few months ago I was able to announce a donation of £5 million from the James Dyson Foundation towards the building of our completely new campus in Battersea – which will in the end accommodate all of the Fine Art departments and, in time, Applied Art as well, in addition to a large lecture theatre, a gallery and start-up units for graduate designers. This is the single largest donation from an individual in the long history of the College. What better symbol of the dynamic relationship between art and design, something the College has stood for since 1837. And what better antidote to the current gloom?

This SHOW Two is another. Warm congratulations to the graduating students of summer 2009. We all look forward very much to hearing about their achievements, about the difference they have made, over the coming years – as we undoubtedly will, whatever the economic climate.

They have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Professor Sir Christopher Frayling
Rector and Vice-Provost
Royal College of Art