Excerpt of an interview with Nina Paim, on the archived website of the 26th Biennale of design in Brno (2014).
BB : You came across hundreds of assignments while preparing the exhibition. Do you think there are good assignments and bad assignments? Do you have a favourite assignment?
Nina Paim : Perhaps the most surprising discovery was a series of assignments from Central Saint Martins, which I received through different sources, mainly from Maziar Raein and Richard Doust (who both taught at the CSM). It turns out Saint Martins has been keeping a record of all assignments by asking teachers to fill out a “template form” containing a reason for setting/purpose, learning objectives, the brief itself, learning outcomes, schedule and codes (the latter is still a cryptic category to me). Every two weeks all tutors were asked to put up two new briefs on the “wall of briefs” (which will generate a pool of approximately 20 to 25 briefs). Students would then choose one or more briefs from the wall and attend the briefings and crits lead by that teacher. Students could do as many or as few briefs as they wanted – they were evaluated by their portfolios at the end of the school year. It’s a very nice collection and the assignments themselves are very instigating: one could do an exhibition only with those!
Pictures: two examples of Project Briefs from CSM: “Deface a symbol of our time”, by Richard Doust, 1973; and “Atrophy? no, invention”, by Geoff Fowle, 2004-05. Depicted in Taking a Line for a Walk, 2014.