As I was writing this post my colleague Louise Valentine posted a blog about the research she was presenting with researchers Jo Bletcher and Saskia Coulson at the DRS conference last week Making The Case: collaborative concept development of products and services for a new design museum. Their paper concludes with six values that have emerged from their collaborative research so far and they point out that these values often go unspoken.
I haven’t thought about the values that I live and work by for a long time and it is easy to forget that values (whatever they may be) are at the core of every individual and therefore every relationship we build whether personal or professional. The paper was refreshing to read and it had ‘resonance’ with me through their honest insight into a new domain of collaborative research. It made me think what I was really writing about was ‘trust’.
I wanted to write this post as a thank you to LCR Hallcrest who have supported my research over 8 years but it is also about the essential nature of this relationship without which my research and practice wouldn’t be possible.
They are a unique company based in Connah’s Quay near Chester where they manufacture colour-change labels, thermometers, liquid crystals and leuco thermochromic dye systems and a range of other specialist products and bespoke marketing material. They also have a small R&D site based in Poole.
The relationship began in 2006 when I moved to Scotland, Galashiels, to start my PhD at the School of Textiles and Design, Heriot Watt University. My supervisors Sarah Taylor and Prof Robert Christie had already made contact with the company and they had agreed to support my PhD with materials in kind and a cash top up to my AHRC doctoral funding. I could never have imagined I would still be in regular contact with them 8 years later and that it would be the beginning of building a highly supportive relationship with LCR.
I can only think this on-going relationship is based on trust. They are generous with time, information and have often hosted me at their Chester factory and at their R&D site in Poole. I have gained material knowledge through literature, study and working extensively with thermochromics but that has only been the half the story, the other half is LCR, allowing me to visit regularly, keeping in contact, sharing knowledge of the materials and their continual investment in me. This has meant I have had access to an amazing first hand material laboratory for 8 years! When I visit I always come away having seen a material that has completely new or different properties. This first-hand interaction with a niche company and building of a longstanding relationship has been the essential ingredient to what I do. I trust their knowledge, support, and experience of a unique material base and they trust that I will challenge the convention of that material and present it to the world in a different way and I am a continual pest (in a good way)!
The ingredients that went into building this trusting relationship I’m not entirely sure about but it has something to do with luck, the kindness and vision of the Managing Director, but also about sustained contact, enthusiasm for a material and its potential and a professional relationship. And now I am also a customer!
The Pop Up Workshop 