First Year Experience: Archive Anecdotes

We at the Archives and Collections have recently been reflecting on the fantastic creative work that our first year students produced as a result of engaging with the Archives and Collections earlier this academic year.

Semester One saw the start of the brand new First Year Experience, beginning with the cross-disciplinary “Co-Lab 1” with the theme “Being Human”. Each discipline initiated their research on this theme by visiting a selected archive or museum in Glasgow. You can see a video showing what the students got up to on GSA’s Vimeo channel here.

At GSA Archives and Collections, we welcomed visits from both first year Communication Design and Textile Design students who looked at a broad range of material which didn’t always relate directly to their creative discipline. Back in the studio following the archive and museum visits, the students reflected on the information they had gathered and produced a body of work in relation to the theme of being human. Several of them kindly shared their creative journeys with us during a group interview following the project.

We will be sharing eight of these stories on our sister blog The Hatchery in the following weeks, complete with photographs of the student’s final pieces. For those that don’t know, the Hatchery is a blog which showcases how artists, writers and creatives have used the collections of Glasgow School of Art Library, Archives and Collections to inspire, challenge or expand their practice.

We’re so delighted to add these blog posts to the First Year Experience legacy and look forward to seeing what ideas next year’s students come up with!

 Images courtesy of Stephen Keane – many thanks Stephen!