Test Unit 2018 Agile City Glasgow, Art & Design Summer School News
Test Unit 2018 Glasgow – Agile City
Art, Design & Architecture Summer School in Strathclyde, Scotland
8 + 4 May 2018
Test Unit 2018 Glasgow – Agile City Development
17th –23rd June 2018
EXPLORING CROSS-DISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO CITY DEVELOPMENT
Test Unit 201 Glasgow, Scotland
Friday 4th of May 2018 – This year’s summer school – the first of its kind in Scotland – will challenge international art, design and architecture participants to turn talk into action by testing ideas in public space.
Past Test Unit event
photo © John Devlin
Test Unit 2018 Glasgow – Agile City, Scotland
Based in the Glasgow Canal area in the north of the city, an emerging district now going through significant change, Test Unit aims to be a method of active enquiry and learning for the area.
Test Unit Occupation event:
image courtesy of Agile City
Each year the project takes on a vacant site or building and through a week of collaborative experimentation, the summer school participants will take ideas from conception to realisation through a week long build-test-learn development cycle.
Test Unit event
image courtesy of Agile City
Participants of the summer school will be working in 4 groups, each led by an industry leading facilitator. Turner Prize winning practice Assemble will explore how mainstream cultures of construction impact on our shared experience of the city and experiment with how building things together may offer a way of thinking differently about our environment. Baxendale will be sourcing local material which will become a tool to map/register the social, cultural and economic condition of the area and construct a new scenario for the occupation and use of the site.
photo : Eoin Carey
STEALTH.unlimited will playfully ‘hijack’ the canal area and explore how to form and run a co-operative prototype organisation that is to govern the area in the time yet to come. A Feral Studio will examine alternative education structures and consider what an independent creative learning environment, embedded in place and context would look, act and feel like.
The 2016 and 2017 Test Unit programmes saw over 70 participants from Glasgow, Dundee, Germany, France, Palestine, USA, Malta and South Korea collaborate on the design and build of a temporary events space on the banks of the canal, which hosted creative workshops for families, a café-bar and provided the launchpad for a huge, folded paper submarine, created by local community members with German artist Frank Boelter. A video documenting the 2016 project is online here.
This year’s programme will be supported by a professionally-led events programme, including expert speakers from the fields of design, architecture, city development and education.
Applications are now open for the summer school; students, graduates and professionals from the fields of art, design and architecture can apply to take part via this link.
photo : Eoin Carey
Test Unit is a project conceived and produced by Agile City with strategic from Baxendale and A Feral Studio. The project‘s role and position within the area of north Glasgow has progressed through close partnership working with Igloo Developments and Scottish Canals and other key strategic partners including the Glasgow City Council. Test Unit aims to build on the work and investment that has gone into the area over the last 3 years – including £1.3M from Scottish Government’s Regeneration Capital Grant Funding (RCGF) and the new £6M National Theatre of Scotland headquarters.
The programme is kindly supported by Scottish Government’s Making Places Initiative, Heritage Lottery Fund, Climate Challenge Fund and Scottish Enterprise.
Agile City director Rob Morrison says:
“As a post-industrial city, Glasgow has an abundance of vacant and derelict spaces, many of which can be found in North Glasgow. Test Unit builds on extensive research and public consultations in the area, and has been designed as a process which enables quick and low cost prototyping, utilising the knowledge, experience and ideas of a fantastic team of people from across the world. This year’s Test Unit will be based out of Civic House, which is currently being developed as a live learning space for inclusive city development, and a hub for the Glasgow Canal area.”
Listings Information
Test Unit 2018 – Summer School and events programme Civic House, 26 Civic Street, Glasgow G4 9RH
17 – 23 June 2018
@AgileCity_ / #TestUnit
Test Unit 2018 – Agile City Glasgow
Background:
Agile City explores inclusive city development through projects, events and research. We aim to support critical dialogue, experimentation and cross-disciplinary learning. www.agile-city.com
Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, whilst retaining a democratic and co-operative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales, both making things and making things happen. www.assemblestudio.co.uk
STEALTH.unlimited (Ana Džokić and Marc Neelen) have never been intrigued with the “industry” of producing urbanity. Instead, they noticed they have some talent at provoking “simmering” spatial issues to get articulated.
That is often in a situation where they shake up groups or communities, to get them imagining what their future horizon could be. It has brought them to make debates, workshops, spatial interventions, exhibitions etc. in quite some places. www.stealth.ultd.net
Lee Ivett set up and runs Baxendale which has received regional, national and international recognition. The practice has been selected for BIO50 Biennial of Design Slovenia, Hello Wood Hungary, is one of 93 practices chosen by the Architecture Foundation for inclusion in their recent publication; New Architects 3, and he is a consistent Glasgow Institute of Architects Award winner. www.baxendale-dco.com
A Feral Studio is a designer and design tutor who works on a range of projects and activities including; graphic design commissions, artworks, event production, curation, learning and teaching, talks, and self-initiated projects. He curated the 2014 exhibition ‘Its’s Not Very Nice That’ at the Lighthouse, Scotlands Centre for Architecture and Design, which surveyed a cross section of contemporary politically engaged communication design activity.
Civic House Civic House is being developed as a learning space for inclusive city development. It will provide workspaces, workshop, cafe and venue that will host a programme of activity that support cross-disciplinary learning, experimentation and critical dialogue.
Agile City is a project office exploring inclusive city development through research, events and projects.
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