Welcome to our first full digital degree show. We are delighted to be able to introduce you to the work of MSA over the 2019-20 academic year. What a year it has been!
Our School remains resolutely international and we have maintained contact with all of our students scattered across the globe by the coronavirus pandemic. It has been challenging, but met with the professionalism and imagination that we admire in our colleagues and students.
We at MSA express our solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, we recognise the historic and present-day connections between struggles for justice across the globe and speak out against racism, police brutality and state violence. We are acutely aware of the structural issues which have led to the continued inequality, for BAME students in all spheres of education. In Architecture this has been highlighted through the activities of the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust. We as a school are committed to working to address the known disparities of BAME student access and outcomes in our programmes. We also will be working to support the development of programmes which address issues of equality and diversity across all areas of our teaching.
This year we moved up one place to 8th in the QS Global Ranking for schools of architecture. We started the year with a transition in leadership, welcomed a number of new colleagues to our growing school and extended our vertical ateliers to connect final year undergraduate students with the research led agendas of the post-graduate areas.
MSA staff have also been busy preparing for the Research Excellence Framework review. All of our staff are research active and we are proud to be contributing three of nine Impact Case Studies to the Manchester School of Art Research Centre (MSARC) submission to REF2021 - this is demonstrable of the extents and value of our engagement both within the city region and globally. The strong academic and practice-based research connects with a wide range of research informed design teaching and learning projects that characterise our School. Our impactful research is generated through a longstanding commitment to real world issues and exploring the contribution architectural design and research can make to addressing global and local challenges.
This digital exhibition is a hugely positive response to the current challenge. It could not have been accomplished without the cooperation and input of our entire staff and student body. The resilience and tenacity of the whole School has made this possible. We believe that enabling such a digital presence has provided an exciting opportunity to make MSA even more accessible to our friends and partners around the world. We hope that you enjoy viewing the highlights of these works in our maiden digital degree show.
We look forward to being back on campus in the near future to a new and innovative normal. We are ready to extend a warm welcome to everyone in September, whatever the circumstances and are working hard to develop new and innovative ways of teaching and learning. We thank you for being part of this unique digital event and hope you enjoy exploring the amazing work on display. We also want to thank both staff and students for supporting each other to make this possible in such a challenging time.
Professor Stefan White
Professor Ola Uduku
Professor Stephen Walker
June 2020
