Event Design

Municipalities, corporate institutions, festivals, community and arts organisations are increasingly looking for people with skills that straddle our various disciplines to create events that activate public spaces and bring people together in unique ways.

This specialisation will prepare students for creating unique event designs that reimagine and reinvigorate public spaces. It will provide students with an introduction to the theories, contemporary policies and design praxis governing place-making practices, pop-up events, temporary installations, street art, festivals and opening ceremonies.

Students will learn how to design for both small-scale interventions and larger events in collaboration with municipalities, corporate institutions and community organisations. The subject will provide students with an opportunity to meet a variety of experts working in the field as well as create an event-design specific portfolio (documenting both practical and hypothetical work) for future employment.

In order to complete the Event Design specialisation, students are required to complete both of the following subjects:

ABPL30069 Installations and Happenings (Offerered in November)

This subject explores the potential of small-scale events and temporary spatial interventions to reimagine public spaces. From street art, pop-up parks, temporary installations, guerrilla gardens and street performances, it examines a diversity of political tactics and place-making tools that designer-citizens use to activate and revitalise urban spaces. The subject will include a series of lectures with accompanying readings, workshops, site-specific research and experience-based tasks. Students will be exposed to a number of hands-on strategies for working across sites and communities to uncover the social, cultural and environmental conditions of place. This will provide inspiration for students to realise their own small-scale and temporary spatial interventions that foster dialogue, build social capital and address critical global-to-local issues.

PERF30001 Public Event Design (Winter Term)

This subject will commence teaching during the first week of July, and classes will run for a period of 1 week.

This subject looks at the design and planning of events from the early court masques of Inigo Jones through to the large-scale public ceremonies of the modern Olympic Games. It explores opening ceremonies, public parades, marches and celebrations, static installations in public spaces, events in festivals, temporary venues built in public spaces and immersive environments, whereby city spaces and structures are repurposed for performance.

The subject examines how designers, employing the medium of public event and spectacle, reimagine public space, taking something familiar and transforming it into something surprising, unexpected and remarkable. Against a backdrop of six lectures with accompanying readings and research this material provides a context for the student to develop their own hypothetical, ephemeral design project in a series of six design studios.

PERF30002 Performance Creation: The Buxton Project

In partnership with Buxton Contemporary, students will be immersed in the process of creative curation as they develop a public performance inspired by the exhibition and collection.

Students will work collaboratively within an interdisciplinary team to consider, curate and perform an innovative live performance experience. They will engage with various artistic and technical production domains such as music performance and composition, visual art, dance and movement, dramaturgy, set and costume design, lighting design and realisation, sound design and realisation, digital media and projection and stage management