This giant cardboard hand is part of the installation Hands On being created by Studio XAG as part of the London Design Festival. Hands On reopens the newly refurbished Arts Gallery at the University of the Arts, for what's described as a whimsically out-of-scale "design afficionado's tea party". Studio XAG are Xavier Sheriff and Gemma Ruse, who graduated from St Martin's a few years back and who have been creating often surreal retail spaces for the likes of Diesel, Bertie, Topshop, Oasis, Odille and Whistles.
Earlier in the week I was talking to Luis De Oliveira of The Tramshed event, about how rough it must be for this year's crop of graduates who will be emerging from a summer break into a harsh environment. "Crap" was De Oliveira's word for it. It was hard enough graduating last year, at the height of the recession, but in some ways things are worse now. With graduate unemployment at around 44% graduates are competing now with increasing numbers of people just like them.
They probably don't want to hear this, but it's not necessarily all bad. De Oliviera started his business in the teeth of the 90s recession. The upside was premises were cheap. As other companies folded, opportunities for newcomers opened up. Subjectively it may have felt like "crap", but it was also one of those moments when things happen.
It's no consolation if you're broke, with a whimsically out of scale loan to repay, but recessions have an upside. The explosion of talent that we saw in art and design in the mid-90s has its roots in two recessions - the early 80s and the early 90s. Both were, in unemployment terms at least, every bit as bad as now. Creative people is they don't necessarily stop being creative just because they don't have a job. For many it was a chance to experiment. In good times there is no gap between leaving college and starting on the grind of your first client brief. In a downturn you have time to play.
Luis countered that the difference between then and now is property. London has simply become too successful. If a business like his finds it hard to find new space for furniture makers in London, what hope does a graduate have? The great goateed move east into Shoreditch and Hackney filled the last of the old industrial spaces. And cheap available space was one of the things that made the creativity of the 90s possible. That's no longer there unless your daddy has very, very deep pockets.
But each era creates its own derelict space. Ours era it's retail. As commerce moves onto the internet, shops close. The effect on local streets has been devastating. Footfall fades, vandalism increases and a downward spiral starts. So maybe empty shops are the new Shoreditch. This would require a new mindset from landlords, who seem to prefer to leave properties empty rather than let them for a peppercorn, even if it means that the value of the property slides. But it would also need a different mindset from designers. Instead of closing the door of your studio, you would need to make it open to the public, and find ways of sharing what you do with the people who walk down the pavement outside. People like Dan Thompson, with his Empty Shops Network, have been doing a great job campaigning to open up derelict shops for the arts. Could that be the big hand struggling designers need too?
