The museum has influenced teaching and research across art and design at Brighton with major opportunities for our students and staff, including the involvement of our V&A-based professorship. The university has in turn influenced the museum's curatorial and museological approaches to contemporary design, raised the profile of design policy and stimulated professional and public engagement with design through international exhibitions and events including Cold War Modern: Art and Design in a Divided World 1945-75 (2008) and Postmodernism: Design 1970-90 (2011).
Education through design understanding is prominent in the relationship between the two institutions. The university's work with the V&A has resulted in an influence on curation, publications and educational events around the museum exhibitions. These reach new student and professional audiences and demonstrate the intersections of art and design in a social context as well as fostering engagement with cultural industries.
The partnership has enabled research into the optimisation of design and art resources for educational purposes, allowing the University of Brighton to effectively extend students’ learning space. Contributing to strategic development in art and design education, the results of this collaboration can be seen in the evolution of audiences' engagement and the broader understanding of material culture on a national and international scale.
Between 2005 and 2010, the V&A in collaboration with the Faculty of Arts, set up the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design (CETLD) together with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Royal College of Art (RCA). The CETLD was developed to extend the educational and research opportunities and reach of all partners, focusing specifically on object scholarship and object-based learning explored through and across the archives and collections of all partners.
