Connecting the Dots: Networks of Design and the African Diaspora

The work documented the networks on dress and the African diaspora that have taken place since 2005 in Zambia, Stuttgart, and London. This collective approach to the subject is unprecedented, and as a contributor to all these events I had the unique opportunity to report on connect the network of ideas that mediated from the various projects.

Carol Tulloch

Research Interests

Art and Design History; Black Visual Culture; Material Culture; African Diaspora.

Peer Esteem

Recent consultancy activity includes V&A / Heritage Lottery funded project, 'Capacity Building and Cultural Ownership - working in partnership with diverse communities' (2004-5); 'Beyond Desire', exhibition, Mode Museum, Antwerp (2004); Michael McMillian's 'The West Indian Front Room' exhibition, Geffrye Museum (2005); London Museums Agency and the exhibition 'Local Heroes' held at City Hall, London (2003).

Profile

Carol Tulloch is TrAIN Senior Research Fellow in Black Visual Culture, based at Chelsea College of Art and Design and the Victoria and Albert Museum. A dress historian and graduate from the joint V&A and Royal College of Art Masters in Design History programme (1995-97), at which she won The Basil Taylor Travel Bursary, Carol Tulloch has written about and curated numerous exhibitions on dress and the African diaspora, and was Curator of the Archives and Museum of Black Heritage Project (AMBH). She has previously been awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Board Small Research Grant and has been a member of the Fashion and Modernity Research Forum at Central Saint Martins College of Art (1999-2000).

In 2004/05, she co-curated the highly acclaimed 'Black British Style' touring exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum and edited the accompanying book 'Black Style' - the first exhibition in the UK to explore the style and fashion of black people in Britain and their impact on British culture over the past 50 years. She is currently researching her forthcoming book, 'The Birth of Cool - Dress Culture of the African Diaspora' - an investigation of the profound influence Black style has had on the history of dress in the twentieth century (due May 2008, Palgrave Macmillan).

Current Research - Statement

"My current research is the book 'The Birth of Cool: The Culture of Dress in the African Diaspora'. This is a self-authored work which is the culmination of a number of years study around the relevance of dress to the development of black identities in different parts of the African diaspora. The research for the book formed much of the ideas for the recent V&A national touring exhibition 'Black British Style', which was curated by Shaun Cole and myself, and the accompanying book 'Black Style' edited by me. Birth of Cool presents a series of case studies of individuals and groups from either Britain, Jamaica or North America to illustrate how their dressed selves express their sense of selves within the society they inhabit."