Costume curation knowledge exchange: A case study on experimental pedagogy

This article demonstrates how the consideration of costume can be a catalyst in developing curatorial/cultural programming approaches and, in reciprocation, how curatorial/cultural programming choices expand costume dissemination by means of atypical audience engagement and activation. The article contributes to costume discourse by elevating costume as a teaching and learning tool in a related discipline (curation) and by revealing how costume can be recontextualized and renewed for interactive public reception, going beyond costume as garment/artefact to expand the area of costume curation itself. The underlying research evaluates the pedagogical approach that steered an industry–academia project within an emerging area of arts and culture-related practice in higher education (HE), referred to as mutually beneficial ‘knowledge exchange’ (KE). The aim of the partnership project was to move a traditional fashion curation curriculum towards the performance-related realm of ‘cultural programming’, expanding students’ experience of real-world working practices and outputs, potentially leading to a richer range of employment opportunities upon graduation. As such, MA Fashion Curation and Cultural Programming students from London College of Fashion (LCF) at University of the Arts London (UAL) created three costume-based interventions as part of the yearly performance festival at the internationally renowned Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). Framing four main research observations with Meyer and Land’s 2006 theory of ‘threshold concepts’ in parallel with the principles of KE practice, both being portals towards new understandings and knowledge, this research additionally contributes to KE scholarship by addressing the need for more analytical case-studies involving students. More widely, this costume study evidences how KE scaffolds the discursive, collaborative teaching practices that are already a signature pedagogy of art and design (Shreeve et al. 2010), and suggests that KE might be vital to the growing demand for new models of creative education (Comunian et al. 2015: 17) that develop industry–academia communities of practice.