World 209, Exploration A

The top section of a collaged timeline, starting with the 1843 opening of the Nottingham Government School of Design from the ashes of which came Nottingham Artizans Institute of Craft.

In World 209, the Nottingham Independent Arts School is a thriving institution focused on people, planet and possibility. It offers space: space to think and space to make and share skills. The school is deeply integrated with the local community and guided by a focus on care and cross-disciplinarity.

As this timeline shows, its origins lie in 1845, when local people came together to build a revolutionary institution, Nottingham Artizans Institute of Craft, which was open to all. Throughout its history it has maintained this inclusive ethos and adapted to changing times, welcoming discussion, debate and disruption in the pursuit of social and environmental justice and creativity for the people of Nottingham.

Listen to a (rather rough and ready!) explanation of the timeline, recorded by those who compiled it:

This Exploration was contributed by Elsa Ball, Sally Cooke, Tom Fisher, Rick Hall, Fo Hamblin, Joyce Lee, Joshua Lockwood-Moran, Alex Vincent Turner, Amy Twigger Holroyd, Sue Walton and Lorraine Warde, with input in the preparation phase from Amanda Briggs-Goode, Toby Ebbs, Tom Godfrey and Simon Holroyd (located in Nottingham, UK), developed in tandem with a World by the same group, using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the authors and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.

Many thanks to the Sparrows’ Nest library and archive and the NTU 170 years website for invaluable resources used in the prototype.

Does this World remind you of something?

I am keen to hear about any historical or contemporary real-world examples – whether individual practices, subcultures or mainstream activities – that this fiction brings to mind.

Please share any such examples using this form. Thank you!

Published by Amy Twigger Holroyd

explorer of Fashion Fictions