Our goals

1. We will generate new knowledge and insights from research.
2. Our teaching excellence will be continuously informed by new research knowledge and insights.
3. We will translate new knowledge, skills and insights to bring about economic, societal and cultural benefit through UK and international partnerships and collaborations.

Across our four Schools, we will generate new knowledge and answers, aligned to the RCA’s strategic research priorities, by delivering substantive research programmes.

Provide new insights and leadership to four twenty-first challenges:

• Mobility and urbanism (through the Intelligent – Mobility Design Centre, Computer Science Research Centre, and City Design)
• Climate crisis and the circular economy (through Architecture, City Design, Environmental Architecture, and the Textiles Circularity Centre)
• Ageing populations and inclusivity (Helen Hamlyn Centre and Design Age Institute)
• Design & AI (AiDlab, Computer Science Research Centre, and Robotics)

Across our Research Centres, deliver planned research and knowledge exchange activity and income by 2027, generating excellent interdisciplinary research in:

• Inclusive design and ageing
• Future mobility
• Material science and the circular economy
• Computer science and AI

Deliver three major cross-College and interdisciplinary research and knowledge exchange collaborations, including AiDLab, and scope a new research-led, interdisciplinary initiative addressing the climate crisis by 2024.

Contribute to the challenge of climate change through a bold new initiative with a national or global partner by 2027.

Enhance our doctoral research culture by attracting PhD candidates in fields directly aligned to the RCA’s strategic research priorities. We will increase the funding available to support our doctoral students, securing studentships from industry and philanthropic sources alongside our existing UKRI studentships by 2027.

Establish a public-facing forum for building and showcasing evidence of the impact of arts and humanities research on enhancing and humanising our understanding of complex social, cultural, and technological problems.

The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design

The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design uses design to address societies’ most challenging social issues, working with a range of organisations to create impactful projects and solutions. Led by Director Rama Gheerawo, the Centre’s work is focussed across two research spaces (Age & Diversity and Healthcare) and two impact areas (Inclusive Design for Business Impact and Inclusive Design for Social Impact). The Centre has worked with Government, business and the third sector on over 300 projects to date.

AiDLab

AiDLab is the world’s first research platform focused on the integration of Artificial Intelligence with design. The Lab was jointly established by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the RCA. With funding from Hong Kong’s Government’s Innovation and Technology Bureau, AiDLab has established a new creative cluster of AI in design and conducts interdisciplinary research that drives innovation and sustainability, making a positive impact on both industry and society. AiDLab brings together a diverse mix of leading researchers and practitioners from its founding institutions to conduct research in three thematic programmes: Ergonomic and Inclusive Design, Innovation in Product and Service Design, and Intelligent Fashion Design and Quality Control.

Textiles Circularity Centre

The Textiles Circularity Centre sits within the Material Science Research Centre and turns textiles, crop residues and household waste into renewable materials for use in textiles, new supply chains, design and consumer experiences. The Centre will stimulate innovation and economic growth in the UK textile manufacturing, apparel and creative technology sectors, whilst reducing reliance on imported and environmentally and ethically impactful materials, and diversifying supply chains. The Centre is the result of a four-year award of Åí5.4m and is one of five circular economy centres funded by the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centres Research programme. It is led by the RCA’s Professor Sharon Baurley, with Professor Phil Purnell (University of Leeds) as co-director, working in collaboration with Cranfield University, University of Cambridge, University College London, University of Manchester and University of York.

Increase the number of Master’s and Postgraduate students to 3,000, with a focus on attracting talent from diverse and differing academic, social and ethnic backgrounds.

Adapt and evolve our teaching to provide:

• A new delivery framework for our MA as an accelerator to widen access and opportunity.
• A suite of new credit-rated flexible learning models which differentiate RCA taught programmes internationally.
• New MFA, MDes, MBA/MBus, and revalidated MRes programmes as standalone or a sequential second-year of study at the RCA starting from 2023/24.
• MA units in Design Robotics and Gaming, ensuring that our students graduate and eventually lead growing industries.
• A redesigned AcrossRCA – a perennial student favourite – as a formal credit-bearing unit of study.

Enhance the quality and outcomes of taught programmes with new insights and knowledge harvested from research outputs and built into MA pathways.

As a result of this plan, more than double the percentage of Black British, People of Colour and postgraduate taught students and postgraduate researchers from underrepresented backgrounds.

Ensure that the RCA student experience is at the heart of what we do, through evaluation responses to student feedback, particularly in relation to community, campus and inclusive practice - with the aim of constant improvement.

Ensure that the RCA continues to nurture a disproportionately high percentage of critically acclaimed artists, curators, writers and design historians.

The Terra Carta Design Lab

The Terra Carta Design Lab was launched in 2021 by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales and Sir Jony Ive in partnership with the RCA, as part of the Sustainable Markets Initiative. It invites RCA students and recent alumni to develop credible and sustainable solutions to the climate crisis through creative collaboration between art, science, design and engineering. Young and emerging architects, designers, scientists, engineers, historians, writers and artists are tasked with addressing the damage being done to our planet and creating solutions that draw inspiration from and give back to nature.

New Economic Model for the Ocean (NEMO)

The RCA Grand Challenge is an annual initiative through which interdisciplinary teams of students from across the School of Design combine science with design to address some of the world’s most intractable problems. The RCA partnered with Extreme E for the Grand Challenge 2021/22 alongside Logitech and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The theme of ‘a New Economic Model for the Ocean (NEMO)’ investigates environmental sustainability, plastic pollution, loss of marine habitat and new ocean economies.

Academics from the RCA’s School of Design travelled to Kangerlussuaq in Greenland to install data-gathering equipment on Extreme E’s floating operations hub, the St Helena ship. The equipment will monitor and collect vast amounts of data about the world’s oceans as the ship travels to the forthcoming Extreme E race locations. This will provide students and research staff with real world scenarios and vital data to inform workable solutions.

Lexus 2040 Student Project

In September 2021, Lexus launched ‘Lexus 2040: The Soul of Future Premium’ in partnership with the RCA’s Intelligent Mobility Design Centre, which leads on research at the intersection of people, mobility and technology. The design project for the RCA’s Intelligent Mobility MA students was established to explore how luxury transport might evolve towards the middle of the 21st century. The programme ran for four months, during which time students researched future scenarios to produce informed design perspectives about how and where the Lexus brand might evolve. The winner was Richard Newman with his ‘ALTO’ concept, a personal flying machine which encapsulated the company’s forward-looking spirit.

Sir Frank Bowling Scholarships

The RCA’s new Sir Frank Bowling Scholarship will support 24 UK MA and MRes students and one PhD student every year from Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage, or mixed Black African and Caribbean diaspora heritage, across MA, MRes and PhD study, from 2022. The scholarships will be worth Åí21,000 each, covering tuition fees and contributing to living expenses, and are supported by a donation from the RCA’s own funds. Scholarships will be awarded each year, to support an increasing number of students, and will apply to all areas of the RCA’s postgraduate study – arts and humanities, design, architecture and communication. These scholarships form part of our commitment to spend 8% of our total expenditure annually on student support and scholarships.

Wayne Binitie & Polar Zero

Wayne Binitie is an RCA PhD student and the artist behind Polar Zero, an immersive exhibition on display at the Glasgow Science Centre during COP26, which injected an artistic and cultural dimension to the climate negotiations at the event. The centrepieces of the exhibition were a cylindrical glass sculpture encasing Antarctic air from the year 1765 – the date that scientists say predates the Industrial Revolution – and an Antarctic ice core containing trapped air bubbles that reveal a unique record of our past climate. Polar Zero was a collaboration between the British Antarctic Survey, global engineering and consulting firm Arup and the RCA, and was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Contribute to the creative and other industrial and research sectors internationally through dissemination and translation of our postgraduate taught/research and faculty research findings into real-world impact in industry, the third sector, society and culture.

Scale up knowledge-exchange engagements from predominantly short-term, student-led projects to larger-scale and longer-term research-led collaborations with major external partners that build on our unique creative and innovative approaches. Establish College-wide facilities for knowledge exchange with external partners, including the Snap Visualisation Lab, with an operating plan to achieve financial self-sustainability within five years.

Deliver a pipeline of new start-ups into the UK economy, supporting an additional 20 start-ups per year through InnovationRCA’s incubation and acceleration programmes, backed by a new Åí3m Design and Impact seed fund.

Build recognition, value and investment in the creative industries through research and knowledge exchange. Contribute to the Government’s Innovation Strategy and encourage support for the creative industries.

The Tyre Collective

InnovationRCA spinout The Tyre Collective is a pioneering clean-tech start-up leading in the capture and monitoring of tyre wear pollution to improve air quality. They aim to develop the first on-vehicle device to capture tyre wear, at the source, to prevent harmful particles being released into the environment. The Tyre Collective’s technology uses electrostatics and airflow to attract tyre particles, which can then be reused in new tyre production and inks. Founders Hanson Cheng, Siobhan Anderson, Hugo Richardson and Deepak Mallya graduated from the RCA’s MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering programme in 2020. They were awarded the Environment Award at the 2020 Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition and are 2022 winners of the Terra Carta Design Lab.

Ananas Anam

Ananas Anam is the company behind Pi.atex, a new alternative to leather using natural fibres extracted from the waste leaves of pineapple plants. Ananas Anam was incubated as a start-up venture in InnovationRCA. This material represents the first sustainable attractive alternative to leather and can be used for fashion bags, footwear and furnishings amongst other future applications. The innovative venture was founded by social entrepreneur and designer Dr Carmen Hijosa, who has a strong track record in design and manufacture of luxury leather goods as co-founder and designer of Irish-based Chesneau Leather Goods. The development of Pi.atex marks the culmination of five year’s research undertaken by Carmen for her PhD in Textiles from the RCA.