
Key details
Date
- 21 July 2025
Author
- RCA
Read time
- 1 minute
A new three-year research project is bringing together universities from Brazil, South Africa and the UK to explore the history of graphic design for street protests.
Key details
Date
- 21 July 2025
Author
- RCA
Read time
- 1 minute
Graphic Design Histories for Creative Dissent: Archiving and Ethical Challenges will focus on the timely subject of graphic objects of street protest for global movements, defining and critically engaging with histories of creative dissent since the 1950s in Brazil, South Africa and the United Kingdom to reveal graphic design’scapacity to both address and exacerbate social crises and inequalities. The project will examine case studies of protest movements ranging from Women’s Liberation to anti-apartheid and LGBTQIA+ activism.
Funded by national funding bodies UKRI, FAPESP and NRF through the Trans-Atlantic Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities, the project will look at protests across the political spectrum and examine the distinctions between the modes of visual communication for communities of resistance in Brazil, South Africa and the UK. At the same time, it will explore how cultural memory around the development of struggles for democracy might perpetuate archival work in the future.
Combining graphic design history and practice, the project will collaborate with experts in art history, philosophy, political science, media, critical archival studies and cultural and religious studies. It will bring these perspectives together through case studies spanning 70 years, alongside design-led workshops, talks and other events, to investigate the influence of creative material forms of dissent and to share best practice in developing rigorous and ethical archiving practices.
This project will advance knowledge of protest movements, by demonstrating the role of designed material in consciousness-raising, identity formation and in the articulation of opinions and demands, supporting future democracies, built on fair governance and trust, and creative outputs from the research will include a documentary film, publications and a research website.
The Core Members of the project and their partner institutions are: Harriet Atkinson (University of Brighton, United Kingdom), Priscila Farias (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil), Thandi Gamedze (University of the Western Cape, South Africa), Deirdre Pretorius (University of Johannesburg, South Africa), Lee-Shae Scharnick-Udemans (University of the Western Cape, South Africa), and Teal Triggs (Royal College of Art, United Kingdom).