Mary Featherston AM and Emily Floyd will be presenting their instructional work, Round Table (2017-) in The Playground Project Melbourne. Their presentation will address this work and other collaborations. 

SPEAKERS:

Mary Featherston AM is an interior designer specialising in the design of learning environments. The focus of Mary’s research and practice is the relationship between young people, contemporary learning theory and the design of supportive physical environments in cultural venues and schools. She has collaborated with leading Australian and international educators, architects, school communities and policy makers to develop highly participatory design processes and innovative physical environments. Her work has been widely awarded and published. Mary has collaborated with several activist groups to develop new services for families and children: Community Child Care and Community Schools in the 1970s and the Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange in 1995. In 1982 Mary successfully campaigned for the establishment of Australia’s first Children’s Museum in the Museum of Victoria and was subsequently commissioned to develop and design several interactive exhibitions.  

Mary is an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University. In 2020 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to the arts, particularly to interior and industrial design. In 1965 Mary formed a life and professional partnership with Australian designer Grant Featherston, they were inaugural inductees into the Design Institute of Australia Hall of Fame and they are represented in the collections of several State Galleries and the National Gallery of Australia

Emily Floyd is an artist and educator, working in public art, sculpture and printmaking. She is renowned for her text-based sculptures and pedagogically inspired works that combine a strong focus on visual qualities with an interest in the legacies of Modernism. Emily's family were toy makers in traditional European styles, working with carefully crafted wood. She learned the skills and use of machinery, which are reflected and used in many of her sculptural works. Her practice engages a wide range of disciplines, including social activism, design and typography, literature and cultural studies, community participation and public education. Intersecting public space with a carefully considered aesthetic approach, she creates bold spaces for public engagement and interaction. In addition to the aforementioned work with Featherston, Floyd is exhibiting in The Playground Project Melbourne, as series of prints, titled Ripple, 2015 and a new billboard commission. Floyd is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Chaired by:

Associate Professor Kathy Waghorn 
Hailing from Aotearoa New Zealand, Dr Kathy Waghorn is co-director of HOOPLA, a Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) based ‘ultra-local’ practice carrying out urban research for place advocacy. HOOPLA are engaged with how people know, use and value places, and how places can be re-imagined and re-purposed. Their work is always grounded in specific places and the histories, people, and transactions that construct these places. HOOPLA’s work is discussed and documented in Kathy’s PhD ‘Practising a Feeling for Place (RMIT, 2017). In her design teaching Kathy generates communities of practice made up of learners, teachers, practitioners and researchers working with community partners. She is committed to the development of architectural education, where design-making is understood as a social and ethical practice set within the complexity of the city.