Talks & Events

Join us us as Dr Stephen Knott, director of the Craft Study Centre, speaks about his doctoral thesis on Amateur craft as a differential practice, carried out under the auspices of the V&A and the Royal College of Art and was supervised by Glenn Adamson (V&A) and Hans Stofer (RCA). This research was the basis for his important and influential book Amateur Craft (Bloomsbury, 2015), and he has also produced a number of other significant research outputs including chapters, papers, co-edited volumes and curation. In 2022 he co-curated the Craft Study Centre’s Presence and Absence, an exhibition that sought to decolonise narratives of studio craft and highlight absences in the Centre’s collections. He is currently in the final stages of completing his new book, Making in Free Time (Bloomsbury).

Join us for the annual City Lit Visual Arts open day. Throughout the day, at our HQ in Covent Garden, you will have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the full range and variety of our art and design subjects on offer.

Join us as Hettie Judah introduces the topic of ‘motherhood’ addressing the construction of motherhood as an ideal in visual culture, and the strategies through which women artists have subverted it. While the Madonna and Child is one of the great subjects of European art, we rarely see art about motherhood as a lived experience, in all its complexity. In her new book and exhibition, Hettie Judah’s Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood addresses this blind spot in art history, asserting the artist mother as an important – if rarely visible – cultural figure. As well as delving into the mother as an art historical subject Acts of Creation explores lived experience of motherhood, offering a complex account that engages with contemporary concerns about gender, caregiving and reproductive rights.

Join us as award winning Henny Beaumont talks about her practice exploring and promoting inclusion in art. As a political cartoonist and graphic novelist, Henny’s graphic memoir Hole in the Heart was selected in top ten novels about motherhood of all time by Mumsnet. Wonderful, astonishing drawings… A masterclass in the sorrow and joy of being human-Meg Rosoff. Her political cartoons and illustrations have appeared in The Guardian, BBC, Society of Authors, Counsel Magazine, Canary, The Morning Star, as well many as other publications.

Join us us as Professor Claire Wilcox speaks about the many exhibitions she has curated during her career at the V&A Museum, including Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (2015), Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up (2018) and Fashioning Masculinities: the Art of Menswear (2022).