With Breakell, Whitworth first presented some observations on the émigré content of the University’s Design Archives at a workshop in Barcelona co-organised with the Design Archives at RMIT, Australia, whose focus was ‘building curatorial collaborations across continents’ (2013). This proved to be the beginning of a fruitful area of investigation, drawing on content from the five, and now six designers whose papers are deposited with us. An over-view considering the significance of this matrix of archives appeared in the Journal of Design History 28:1 (2015) pp.83-98, where some initial findings in relation to the development of these parallel and overlapping careers was presented. In 2017 we were invited participants in a panel discussion, Borders are for Crossing: Design, Art and Migration in the 20th and 21st Centuries, organised by the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, to accompany their exhibition ‘The New Line’. In an extremely engaged and lively debate following the presentations, connections were drawn between migrant flows in the 1930s and the present day, especially in a post-Brexit environment.  

At the same time we began an engagement with the Jewish Museum, London, which has resulted in our being the largest single lender to Designs on Britain, the exhibition that opens this autumn and runs until April 2018 in this central London location. As collaborators, Whitworth and Breakell, on behalf of the Design Archives, have contributed to the shaping of the accompanying catalogue, which contains a co-authored contribution, ‘A valuable stimulus to design development’: six emigres designers at the University of Brighton Design Archives (with Breakell); as well as the conference that will take place at the V&A in November, at which Whitworth will speak.