Connecting the world's creatives
Trans-National Creative Exchange (TNCE) is an international platform supporting the most exciting, emerging creative talent from Europe and China. It’s helping both professionals and students develop and work in partnership, blending ideas and cultures in innovative ways.
Launched in 2015 and led by Southampton Solent University, the project is bringing together international partners including our own Solent Showcase Gallery, Cork Institute of Technology, Wandesford Quay Gallery, The Hague University of Applied Science, Recontre Audiovisuelles and China Academy of Art/Shanghai Institute of Design.
“International projects like this one are essential to the University; they're essential to the student experience,” says Peter Lloyd, Director of Solent’s School of Art, Design and Fashion. “To work in a bubble is pointless. We need to work nationally, internationally. This is a global business, and the sooner students are exposed to that, the better.”
I'm very interested in western culture - this is a good chance for me to experience it. The other artists, they help me open my eyes, and open my mind.
Liang Chaoyu
It’s a platform with a broad and multi-disciplinary mandate, bringing together creative thinkers with artistic, audio visual, entrepreneurial and technological expertise to create, experiment and collaborate.
In summer 2016, software engineering students from The Hague University of Applied Sciences spent a week working with Solent graphic design students to develop a gallery app using the latest near field communication technology (NFC) to bring artist information and other supplementary information to your phone as you explore the gallery.
“The cutting edge technological and creative expertise within the partnership is pivotal, developing digital products to reach new and wider audiences.”
Peter Lloyd, Director,
School of Art, Design and Fashion, Southampton Solent University
By August 2017 TNCE aims to have also organised touring physical and digital exhibitions in five different countries, delivering new work to new audiences, creative conferences. The first of these launched out of the summer 2016 summer residency, bringing ten creative graduates from China, the Netherlands, France and Ireland to Southampton.
This amazing opportunity gave the lucky creatives space, support and freedom to lead their own research and explore their practice on a collaborative international platform.
Starting at Solent’s Showcase Gallery, the resulting exhibition has toured to Ireland and the Netherlands, and will be heading to France and China in 2017.
A second residency is also in the works, and in summer 2017 two Solent students will have the fantastic opportunity to join peers from TNCE’s other partner institutions in China.
“Projects like this make all of us better practitioners, whether we're staff or students,” says Kate Maple, Curator of the University’s Solent Showcase Gallery. “The opportunity to connect with different people brings mutual understanding and enrichment, and with that brings mutual respect and value.”
