V&A/RCA History of Design (MA)

The V&A/RCA History of Design programme marks its 40th anniversary this year, as the first ever postgraduate centre in our field. Every year, each graduating cohort creates a symposium and publication. Often based on their dissertation, these celebrations of their work are entirely student-led, from thematic concept to format, and from management and team working to writing and delivering the content. This RCA digital showcase provides a further place where students can choose to select work from across their time here to represent themselves and their practices.

This work is also powerfully representative of our work in general in the V&A/RCA History of Design department. The cultural span and array of methods and approaches reveals the unique power of design history to engage objects, design, making practices and people in new ways. Through the material (and sometimes the immaterial), a new understanding of history’s relevance is felt, in the most extraordinary events and treasures as well as the most everyday yet important things it is possible to imagine.