Opening Statement

The 'Opening Statement' presented at the 14th International Illustration Research Symposium by the chair, Dr Rachel Emily Taylor.

On 22 and 23 November 2024, the Illustration Programme at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London (UAL), hosted the 14th International Illustration Research Symposium, 'Illustration & Heritage: Sharing Histories to Draw Out Futures'. The symposium explored active processes of heritage-making through digital, institutional, and communal archives and collections, illustrative and co-illustrative methodologies, the making and giving of a ‘voice’, understanding and communicating artefacts, and looking at architecture as a historical material, among other practices.

The 14th Illustration Research Symposium was held at UAL’s Chelsea College of Arts and will include panels, papers, and posters by practitioners and researchers from the fields of illustration, heritage, architecture, anthropology, and more. The symposium considered principles including inheritance, displacement, collective memory, subjectivity, and plurality. How do contemporary illustrators participate in historical narratives and give voice to people and communities — remembered, obscured, and imagined — through their work?

The 14th Illustration Research Symposium included keynotes from Dan Hicks, curator and Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Yeni Kim, illustrator and Associate Professor at Hongik University, and Chris Lee, graphic designer and Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute, as well as panels on heritage-making as a form of knowledge production, illustration, AR, architecture, and materiality. Speakers included English Heritage, Royal Museums Greenwich, Lamya Sadiq, Catrin Morgan, Rudy Loewe, Amy Goodwin, Jaleen Grove.

The symposium was curated in response to 'Illustration and Heritage', by Rachel Emily Taylor, published in 2024 by Bloomsbury Press. It was organised in partnership with Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, the Association of Illustrators, and Illustration Educators.

The symposium was led by Rachel Emily Taylor, supported by Billie Muraben, Bryony Quinn, Abbie Vickress, Dr Amy Goodwin, Adrian Holme, and Clare Lowther.

• Organisation
• Organisation