Community: The Best Show in Town? The Millbank Atlas as Locally-Engaged Practice

Abstract

How to catalyse curiosity in students and educators at a time when there is so much uncertainty? What can we take for granted - even get excited about - when crisis is the new normal? In response to these questions, our paper explores ‘the local community’ as a vital context for learning, action and impact through art and design education. We seek to understand what this means based on ‘The Millbank Atlas’ as an example. This ongoing project brings together researchers, students and local residents to trace the neighbourhood of Chelsea College of Arts. It creates meaning through conceptualising this locale as comprised of reciprocal relations between the College and surrounding businesses, residential blocks, civil society groups, transportation links, infrastructure, amenities and further aspects of this built and natural environment.

This year, second and third year students of BA Interior and Spatial Design (Studio 07) progressed the Atlas by using practice-based research to create maps and other cartographic experiments that identify distinguishing characteristics of Millbank and address challenges raised by local stakeholders. A recent exhibition of this in the Cookhouse Gallery (21-28 January 2017) proved much more than a presentation of student work. Displaying locally-engaged practice has great potential to reflexively perform community in ways that cannot be anticipated in advance. We aim to explore some of these with reference to The Millbank Atlas exhibition as a learning environment and tool for community-led change.