After months of workshops, visits and collaborative exchange, the Arts SU Collaborative Residency cohort is now exhibiting at the SU Project Space, Camberwell. 

What began as a collaborative residency built around shared experimentation and dialogue beyond course structures gradually evolved into this group exhibition. The programme encouraged students to test ideas collectively through skill shares, peer crits and conversations with external practitioners.  

Over the past five months, the cohort met regularly to reflect on their individual practices while exploring how collaboration might reshape them. Early sessions focused on questioning assumptions and identifying shared interests. 

   
Image 1 & 2: Cohort meetings and collective planning sessions. 

A visit to the MA Fine Art Open Studio at Central Saint Martins offered insight into works in progress and individual studio practices. Observing how other artists develop their works encouraged further reflection within the group. Alongside this, members of the cohort led skill-sharing sessions to exchange practical knowledge about materials and techniques across different disciplines. 

Image 3, 4 & 5: Visiting MA Fine Art studios at CSM and a printing skill sharing session. 

Artist talks also contributed to shaping the exhibition. During a session with Seyi Adelekun, the cohort discussed world-building, installation and collaborative practice. Seyi's reflections on working with communities and navigating multidisciplinary production opened up conversations about responsibility and authorship. 

In a two-day workshop with Keiken, students moved between embodied exercises, discussion and experimentation. The workshop encouraged collaboration as an active and lived process of world-building, rather than simply a conceptual framework. 

 
Image 6: Experimenting with the wearable silicone womb during the Keiken workshop. 

The group also visited Saatchi Lates to experience contemporary installations within an institutional setting. The visit prompted conversations around scale, audience interaction and playfulness in exhibition-making. 

As Term 2 wraps up, discussions shifted towards collaborative production and installation planning. Ideas developed through dialogue were translated into physical form within the SU Project Space at Camberwell. 

 
Image 7: Installation at the SU Project Space, Camberwell. 

game.PLAY reflects the cohort’s shared enquiry into collaboration, experimentation and interdisciplinary exchange. The exhibition brings together works shaped by months of conversation and is now open to the public at the SU Project Space in Camberwell College of Arts until 19 March 2026. Come by and see where the dialogue and collaboration have led! 

Written by Angelica Fung, Student Exhibitions Assistant 

A note from Aisling Ward, Arts Programmer: 

The Collaborative Residency Programme grew out of conversations with students who were searching for opportunities to develop their practice beyond the boundaries of their courses. At UAL, where students are spread across six colleges and many different courses, opportunities to collaborate meaningfully with peers outside of their immediate programmes are limited. There is rarely dedicated space, time, or funding to support that kind of cross-college, interdisciplinary exchange, and yet it is something students consistently told me they were looking for. 

I started thinking about what I could offer through my role at Arts SU. I had previously curated collaborative residency programmes outside of UAL - projects that brought artists together across disciplines, gave them resources and time to develop work, and trusted the process. I wanted to create something similar for students: a programme with some funding, access to space, and enough structure to support genuine collaboration, but enough openness to let the students shape it themselves. 

Now in its third year, the Collaborative Residency selects ten students through an open call, bringing together students from across UAL's colleges, courses, and year groups who would likely never cross paths through their studies alone. Over five months, the cohort meets regularly for skill-shares, peer crits, exhibition visits, and activities they organise together, before presenting work in the Arts SU Project Space at Camberwell. 

This year's cohort spans painting, music production, graphic communication, illustration, computing, sculpture, fashion film, and beyond. They arrived without a predetermined project or shared brief, only a willingness to make something together. What the residency asks of them goes beyond creative output: learning to collaborate, to share authorship, to give and receive feedback, to support each other through the process. These feel like some of the most important skills for life after graduation, and some of the hardest to practise within a course structure alone. 

The exhibition at Camberwell is one outcome of that process. The connections formed here, we hope, are another. It’s been a privilege to see how the group has developed over the last five months. The amount of care and dedication shared between them has been a joy to witness, and I’m excited to see how they continue to grow, make, and support one another beyond this residency. 

Visit game.PLAY at Camberwell College of Arts until the 19th March 2026