Delightful Fun: A Cedric Price Thinkbelt for Our Times
October 2024 – March 2025, various venues.
Curated by Dr. Ana Bonet Miró, Martín Brown and Prof. María Martínez Sánchez.
Delightful Fun: A Cedric Price Thinkbelt for Our Times is a touring exhibition and series of associated events in several UK Schools of Architecture, celebrating the legacy of British architect Cedric Price (1934-2003).
Two original market stall prototypes from the Drawing Matter Collection, designed by Price and never exhibited together before, serve as the centrepiece of the exhibition. Displayed alongside these prototypes are facsimiles of drawings from three projects—Fun Palace (1961–75), Potteries Thinkbelt (1964), and Westal (1987–89)—and a range of ephemera, including broadsheets, exhibition catalogues, postcards, montages, photographs, and offprints of articles.
Recordings of Price’s lectures fill the space with his presence and ideas, while film excerpts from the Fun Palace introduce the work of radical theatre producer Joan Littlewood, mastermind of the project and a key interlocutor in the development of Price’s architectural ideas. These artefacts provide a glimpse into the diversity of Price’s practice and the interdisciplinary conversations that animated it. Importantly, the curation also reflects the various collections and archives, both in the UK and abroad, where his work can be encountered today.
In the spirit of Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt project, this initiative aims to stimulate discussions about a selection of pedagogies and practices at each school that are resonant with Price’s design principles. These include the provision of user-centred designs that increase choice, encourage change, do more with less, make time visible, and create responsive designs that delight the communities they serve.
The exhibition will travel to: RGU, Aberdeen (October 2024); ESALA, Edinburgh (November 2024); GSA, Glasgow (December); University of Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent (January 2025); BCU, Birmingham (February 2025); London Metropolitan University and University of Westminster (March 2025).