Material Encounters
Exploring how art and design practice functions as research is tied deeply into an understanding of materiality. Residing at the intersection of theory and praxis, Material Encounters reflects on how we navigate and understand the world by considering how ideas and experiences are translated and embodied into form and often transformed from one state to another.
The cluster is composed of researchers from a variety of disciplines whose work traverses, challenges, and blurs the boundaries between spatial, visual, tactile, time-based, and digital practices including architecture, fine art, design, textiles, jewellery, performance, and photography.
Latest from Material Encounters:
Zoe Hillyard, Senior Lecturer BA(Hons) Textile Design and RAAD researcher, reflects here on a collaborative textiles project with Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.
On 24th October 2025, the exhibition Things of the Least: Lively Exhibition Making with Children under 3 was opened at Manchester Art Gallery. Things of the Least is a 3-year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It explores the ways very youngest children can actively contribute to exhibition-making, transforming the public space of the gallery.
For the past three years Becky Shaw has been a co-lead on Just Heat, an international research project that explores people’s experiences of energy change since 1940. The focus of the project was to explore how the social, political and emotional meaning of home heating could inform current change.