Abstract

For the artist or designer, glass offers a myriad of creative potential. Glass as a material forms a significant strand of the canon of art and design practice, with uses ranging from large-scale architectural projects to plinth based gallery works. Glass artists and designers are traditionally trained in the UK through university programmes in art and design faculties. Here they learn how to control and manipulate glass in order to express their creative concerns. A growing trend in this sector is the development of research degrees (Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy), which allow a focused investigation of technical or conceptual aspects of creative practice. This approach is distinct from what might be termed the ‘scientific’ model -
although it does borrow from this at times. The driver for this kind of research is to provide new knowledge useful for artists and designers using glass. The University of Sunderland is one of the UK pioneers of creative research and is also well known for its glass department – one of the biggest and best equipped in Europe. This presentation offers case studies from a rapidly growing research community of MPhil and PhD researchers who are blending the haptic and tacit skills of ‘designer makers’ with approaches
from other fields such as; science, engineering, industry, and computing as well as Fine Art and Design. It is hoped that this presentation might lead to new collaborative research strategies that utilise communities with overlapping interests like ‘glass technology’ and ‘glass art’.