The collections of the Crafts Study Centre cover a diverse range of materials from ceramics, furniture, textiles to lettering and calligraphy. They are supported by very significant archives, from craft studios as well as craft organisations. The Director of the Museum of Arts & Design, New York Dr Glenn Adamson has called the Centre 'Britain's memory bank for craft' with the word bank suggesting 'a vault containing untold riches'.
The vault has been opened for this exhibition by an individualistic group of Academic staff from the University for the Creative Arts. Some have specialist knowledge of modern and contemporary craft, and some are experts in other fields of practice such as contemporary photography and fine art. They have selected a compelling and idiosyncratic body of work for the exhibition, drawing across the whole range of the collections, but observing them and writing about them with critical insight and sometimes personal accounts. It is a means of looking at the collections in an entirely new way.
Academic Choice presents work selected by Mark Little, Professor Lesley Millar, Adrian Bland, Debra Allman, Colin Holden, Professor Simon Olding, Jean Vacher, Professor Anna Fox, Dr Terry Perk, Jamie Dobson, Professor Trevor Keeble and Richard Hylton.