Huddersfield Arts Gallery and the University of Huddersfield’s School of Art, Design and Architecture

ROTOЯ is an on-going programme of art and design exhibitions, public events and talks at Huddersfield Art Gallery, founded on a partnership between the gallery and the University of Huddersfield’s School of Art, Design and Architecture.  The programme began in 2012, and is supported by Arts Council England funding.

The ROTOЯ programme began with a series of exhibitions featuring the transdisciplinary work of art and design staff from the University of Huddersfield. This showcased a community of artists, designers and curators whose ideas and connective practices migrate and span artistic production, techno-design research, craft and cultural studies.  The programming later opened up to incorporate artists working on themes directly relevant to the practices and research being explored by university staff, pertinent to the students, and of significance on a societal level.

ROTOЯ is located at the pivot between art and design disciplines and society, where points of intersection and engagement are considered and debated from multiple perspectives. The programme signals a unique partnership between Gallery and University in Huddersfield to present a broad spectrum of practices and dialogues. Each exhibition features a number of public events in the form of artist/designer and curator talks, student ambassador tours, reading groups, film screenings, publications, dance interpretations and public engagement workshops.

The aim of ROTOЯ is to work with various communities, professional agencies and arts organisations to effect change and support new development and thinking within art and design practices, cultural policy, urban and economic strategies. We believe that long-term commitment to place making, working in a creative, responsive manner brings about stronger communities that are more connected and mobile and, consequentially produce socially engaged practitioners.

ROTOЯ has contributed to the debate, and helped shape the thinking on cultural leadership and place making for Huddersfield and the wider region. We are committed to making all forms of art and design accessible to as many people as possible. ROTOЯ is also committed to working with Kirklees Council to explore how partnership working and cultural leadership can be used to reinterpret and rejuvenate Huddersfield’s cultural offer and heritage. In this respect, ROTOЯ aims to contribute to the transformation of the town into a cultural venue.

Using ROTOЯ exhibitions and accompanying activity as a vehicle, the University of Huddersfield School of Art, Design and Architecture is conducting research into cultural value in the arts and how people engage with contemporary art and design, in particular, exploring the distinctive ways in which members of the public are able to encounter and interpret new art and design works, using different ways of measuring public engagement across these disciplines – focussing upon research into:

• the social and cultural value of art and the transformative claims surrounding it
• the value of different types of arts organisations, alongside their role in fostering some of the most challenging artistic/design practice
• cultural policy that seeks a forward-looking model for assessing the broad public value (or loss of value) that can result from the decisions taken by funding bodies
• what gives the arts legitimacy in the public realm within an overarching framework that seeks to maximize public good and to promote the vitality of arts as an integral and essential part of civil society.

We welcome contributions and participation to continuing research on public engagement and cultural value in the arts.

For more information please contact Dr. Anna Powell: a.powell@hud.ac.uk, Professor Steve Swindells s.p.swindells@hud.ac.uk or Sarah Pennington S.Pennington@hud.ac.uk.