The Value of the Copy

This paper discusses the Value of the Copy (VoC) project, a hybrid teaching initiative undertaken as an alternative to traditional student exchange programmes, piloted between October 2022 and May 2024. In contrast to the traditional exchange of individual students this initiative was between student and staff groups and introduced students to inter-institutional research and knowledge exchange. The project was a collaboration between Central Saint Martins (CSM), École des Beaux-Arts de Paris (BA), Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK), and Glasgow School of Art (GSA). It aimed to activate historic plaster cast and reprographic study collections as dynamic teaching resources and utilise them as expanded studios through cross-cultural, online and on-site collaboration. Students engaged with fire-damaged casts (GSA), politically vandalised remains of casts (KABK), a historic and publicly neglected cast and copies collection (BA) and 1960’s paper squeezes of Roman typeface (CSM). This paper identifies essential elements, challenges, and proposes a sustainable model for future networked projects. VoC offered students an opportunity to engage deeply with historical artefacts and their contemporary relevance, overcoming barriers to physical mobility through virtual means and using collections as expanded studio spaces. This exploration was not only educationally enriching but serves as a prototype for remote and hybrid international arts education in the post-pandemic, post-Brexit context. Outcomes included exhibitions, digital outputs, pedagogic insights, research funding bids and a renewed understanding of collections as active pedagogical tools. The project encouraged the exploration of questions around authenticity, reproduction, institutional legacy, and contemporary reinterpretation through the lens of student-led research and inter-school collaborative production.