Christoph Lindner, President and Vice-Chancellor of the Royal College of Art

22:08Claire:Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So what were you working on there? Were you working specifically on sort of developing design of cities and different aspects of that? Yeah. So some of the books that I worked on there included a book called Paris Amsterdam Underground, which was about counterculture in those two cities from the 60s onwards and the exchange between them. So how did counterculture and I forget what the subtitle of the book was Paris Amsterdam Underground, essays on cultural subversion. Wow. Okay. Diversion. and something else. But it was about countercultural exchanges and how did the sort of student revolutionary and philosophical revolutionary moments in Paris in the 60s and 70s influence Amsterdam?

22:53And how does that way of thinking, countercultural way of thinking about culture express itself in the fabric of the city, in the built environment, in the art scene and so on? So that was one kind of project. But also at that time, I was getting quite interested in globalization.

23:11Claire:Yeah. So I was interested in how in urban environments, particularly looking at art and visual media and architecture, that we had sort of two simultaneous phenomena. So one is that globalization was making cities look more and more like each other. Yeah, absolutely. So this would have been in what, the 90s? No, this would have been around 2010. 2010, okay. Yeah. So you've had a lot of, yeah, homogenization going on. Absolutely. So globalization as a way of just creating homogenized aesthetics that can just be replicated in a kind of soulless, almost lazy way around the world. But then at the same time, how globalization is creating more and more transnational exchange.

23:57So the movement, the migration of artists and creatives between countries, between cities around the globe also means you have much more circulation of diversity of practices and so on. And so I was just interested in trying to untangle a little bit or understand how that same phenomenon, globalization, the interconnectedness of places, was both having a flattening effect, but also a diversifying effect.

24:26Claire:Yeah, interesting. Did you become professor when you were at the University of Amsterdam? Were you a professor and then moved there? Was it in media and culture? Yeah, more or less. So that was my first full professorship, but I had been teaching as an associate professor, as a lecturer, as a tutor, as, you know, all these other roles. And then at Amsterdam, the university, at least in my experience, was so supportive of its academic staff and really encouraging us to work together, to be collaborative, particularly in the field of the Faculty of Humanities. Yeah. And so when I arrived, I was the professor of English literature, which is an amazing opportunity.

25:09And I love that. But it became kind of awkward because I wasn't publishing on literature.

25:14Claire:Is that not where your true passion lies? I wasn't teaching literature. I was teaching visual culture, media culture. Yeah. I was doing courses on kind of, you know, film and architecture. And I was running research groups focused on cities and urbanism and those kinds of things. And so that's how I was able to move into broadly and to become a professor of media and culture. Media and culture. Which felt good. And then I moved to Oregon where I took on my first deanship. And one of the reasons I moved there is the community I was joining brought together all of the areas that I was interested in one place.

25:51Oh, wow.

25:52Claire:Okay. So I had art history and visual culture and architectural history. There was design. There was an art school. There was architecture, historic preservation. There's public policy, planning and management. And it just felt like this was everything in the world that I was interested in in one place. And the opportunity to be part of that community and to play a leadership role in that community made it worth leaving Amsterdam, which did break my heart. Very hard to leave the city of Amsterdam. But I've never been to Oregon, so I don't know much about that sort of side of things. But it's obviously west coast of the state.

26:30Claire:It's a big move. It is a big move. Oregon is a beautiful place. Yeah, I can imagine. And on a personal level, what made it really fun is a move for our family and our children who were about nine and 12 at the time. Wow. So they've pretty much grown up in Amsterdam and considered that to be their home at the time. Absolutely. They went to school in Dutch and we uprooted them and took them to Oregon. And they loved it. They absolutely loved Oregon. Were they up for it at the time or did they push back? They were. They were. They were used to traveling, used to moving. Right. But Oregon for us felt like such a wild place because you have this really dramatic rocky coastline.

27:09You have these old growth forests with trees that just look like they're kind of from the Jurassic era. Wow. You have beautiful mountain ranges, volcanoes, some of which are still active. Wow, really? Lava fields all over the place. And then you have these high desert plains. I mean, the landscape of Oregon is absolutely stunning. And then within that, this wonderful research university with this great creative community made it a very attractive place.

27:37Claire:God, yeah, that must have been amazing. So what did you focus on there? How long were you there for? I was there for three years before I moved to London. And there were two focuses. Well, there were many, but there were two that are worth sharing. Yeah. One is what we did together in the college where we created the College of Design. Yeah. And one of the fun parts of naming the college, it's the last thing we did. So we worked on creating a college, but we didn't give it a name. And towards the end of the process, we held a kind of naming party where we just invited all of the faculty and staff to come together and use whiteboards and just play around.

28:12Did you? What could we be called? And we had some really fun, outrageous, nonsensical names, all kinds of outrageous names. Yeah, of course. But at the end of the day, design, that one word, design, became the thing that we had most in common.

28:28Claire:It sums it all up, doesn't it? Yeah. So, you know, I wouldn't say it's the perfect name. I wouldn't say, you know, fully describes what everybody does in a very diverse academic community. That's probably not possible. But design is a word we could land on together and we could agree on together because it can be expressed and experienced in so many different ways. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I love about it. It's a misunderstood word, but it does sum up so many disciplines. It does. And then the other thing that I did just on a personal academic level was experiment by launching something we called the University of Oregon Slow Lab.

29:11And it was just an experimental space in which what I tried to do is bring together creative practitioners and more theoretically oriented academics to explore together

29:26Claire:what it meant to be slow and to do things slowly in a world and in a university system that was relentlessly accelerating. Oh, interesting. And so what was the value of slowness in a fast world? Did you come up with an answer? Yeah, unfortunately, I think the conclusion after a few years of working on that is that slowness is just another dimension of speed, of our culture of speed. That slowness is just another way of being fast. and what typically happens is that we use slowness to create short, momentary, ephemeral moments where we can disconnect from our cultures of speed, whether it's the workplace, transportation, the economy, technology, social media, whatever it is.

30:17We create these moments of slowness so that we can survive all of the speed that is inevitably waiting for us.

30:27Claire:Yeah, okay. So there is no escape from speed, but you can survive speed if you can also create some moments for slowness. But at the same time… That's just when you think things through. It doesn't mean to say it's slow. It's just not skirting at that fast rate at the top, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I published two books that explore this academically, one called Inert Cities. So it's thinking about urban spaces and the notion of inertia. So what happens when things stop moving, stop working, pause, decelerate in cities? Yeah. And the other book, and they're kind of a pair, is called Cities Interrupted.

31:05And it's thinking about the idea of interruption. So how can slow creative practices interrupt the conditions of speed in contemporary cities? And what we started to notice, and these are collaborative books. There's lots of different chapters, but lots of different writers. Yeah. These are both collaborative books. But in both books, what emerges is that there are many creative practices that are consciously, deliberately, strategically trying to interrupt the speed of cities.

31:34Claire:Really? Okay. And in the process, doing so to help nourish the bonds of community. Yeah, okay. Communities need a little bit of interruption and disruption in cultures of speed. Oh, interesting. Right. I'm going to check these books out. In Art City, Cities Interrupted. Yeah. I'm going to read those. That's fascinating. So what drew you to London? So what drew me to London was the opportunity to join the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. Yeah. And University College London, the larger university that it's part of. What an exciting move after what you've been studying in Oregon. That's, yeah.

32:09Absolutely. And I'll share a story, which I don't know if my colleagues at the Bartlett know this. I mentioned it briefly when I was leaving at the leaving party.

32:17Claire:Yeah. but throughout my career at various moments I would come home to my wife and say all right I have an idea I really really want to just study cities culture creativity I want to drop everything and just move to the Bartlett and do a new PhD and start over wow okay and this would happen about every five years. And she would say to me, just hang on a second, throw away everything and don't quit your job. Why do you want to do another PhD? So I can write about these things. And she would remind me, you have the freedom to write about whatever you would like to write about. You can research and teach whatever you want.

33:00So if you want to do that, just do it. You don't have to wait. You don't have to quit your job and you don't have to go and do another PhD.

33:07Claire:Yes, good advice. But for me, the Bartlett always represented the ultimate academic home of urban activity thinking. Built environments. Yeah, absolutely. So when that came up as an opportunity, which feels like it's a once in a lifetime thing. Yeah. I kind of describe it as the sort of job where it doesn't matter where you are on earth. It doesn't matter what's happening, what you're doing. If you're given the opportunity to lead the Bartlett, you drop everything and you do it. Yeah, of course. And you jump all in and you just give it a go. Absolutely. And it turns out that my moment at the Bartlett was the COVID moment, the pandemic moment.

33:44So I joined about six months before the first lockdowns. Wow. And I was just getting to know colleagues, students, our programs, when everything came grinding to a halt and flipped online.

33:56Claire:Did that change? So obviously it changes teaching methods and structures and all that kind of stuff. Did it change the research of the built environment? Because it changed everything, didn't it? Did it change the output of what you're doing? Absolutely. So lots of my colleagues started working on projects, thinking about how COVID was impacting cities and communities. And also post-COVID, how do we bring vibrancy and culture back into our communities where a lot of that has suffered. How do people feel safe? How do people, yeah. And how do people reconnect? You know, in COVID, so many people had social, family, professional relationships, broken.

34:36Absolutely. And so there was a need for repair, for reconnection. And I did a bit of work on that myself. Just as COVID was hitting, together with a colleague Gerard Sandoval at Oregon, we published a book, a collection of essays called Aesthetics of Gentrification, that was looking at how gentrification has an aesthetic dimension.

34:57Claire:Yeah, okay. And the aesthetics of that don't just help you recognize and interpret when gentrification is happening, they also create the aesthetics of this process, create the conditions that facilitate gentrification. Interesting. But then what I was observing in my own neighborhood in northwest London is that under lockdown, there was a new form of gentrification happening, which was gentrification by stealth. Because all these businesses closed, they shuttered, they weren't open. And what no one could see is that behind the scenes, behind these doors, businesses were disappearing. They were folding.

35:34They were closing. New tenants, landlords, businesses were coming in.

35:39Claire:So the opportunity that creates is massive. Absolutely. And so when lockdown ended and the neighborhood came back to life, suddenly it had completely changed. Yeah. And about five to 10 years worth of gentrification had occurred in about one year because no one could see it. Definitely. No one could observe it. No one could resist it. No one could critique it. Yes. And so it happened by stealth. Ah, that's really interesting. I've got a lot of reading to do after this interview. It says, aesthetics of gentrification. Yeah, completely. I feel like we could do this into a series of podcasts. I'd love to be able to talk more about your time at the Bartlett.

36:17Claire:So you were at the Bartlett until? For about five years. Five years, indeed. Until I moved over to the Royal College of Art. So that was as president and vice chancellor? Absolutely. And I'm very lucky, very, very lucky to have had lots of the jobs that I have. Yeah. And in the same way that I never in a million years thought I would have an opportunity to be dean of a place like the Bartlett. Yeah, absolutely. Never in a trillion years. Yeah. What I've ever thought, I have an opportunity to lead the Royal College of Art. Yes. And so when that became an opportunity, there was no question about doing it.

36:59And it has been the most exhilarating. People ask me, what's it like? And the word that best describes it is exhilarating.

37:06Claire:I can imagine. I've been here for about an hour and a half, and I completely agree with the exhilaration. It's an amazing place. And our students just bring so much creative potential talent. Hope, future facing, it's amazing. Absolutely. We had our convocation ceremonies earlier this week at the Royal Festival Hall right on the River Thames in the Southbank Centre. And one of the things I love about the graduation moment at the Royal College of Art is you look out over, you know, we have about a thousand students per ceremony. So we have 2 ,500 students in total. but you look out over a thousand creative students who are all about to go out in the world and do something.

37:46Wow. Yeah. And it just makes you believe that the future is going to be better. Yes, absolutely.

37:52Claire:That's fantastic. And I love that. It's very inspiring. Do you have, as the head of the Royal College of Art, did you come with an idea of what you wanted to create? Do you have like a sort of, I don't know what I'm saying, mantra of what you wanted the RCA to be? Or do you kind of go with it and adapt at the time or a bit of both? That is a great question because I spent a lot of time thinking about that before I joined. So there's no point joining and becoming the president of the Royal College of Art if you don't have ideas for the place. Of course. Yeah. But you're joining a community. You're joining a place that's been around for nearly 200 years.

38:31Yeah. And our staff community is so committed and passionate about this place. They know it and understand it so well. And so what I've tried to do in my time here is to come with some ideas, but not to impose them, but to share them.

38:51Claire:Yes. And to throw them into the mix. Yeah. And as an academic, I really do believe in the value of debate. Yeah, definitely. And so if an idea is good, if it has merit, it, others will recognize it and it will bubble up and it will surface and it will get support and it will get traction. So because of my role, I'm able to share ideas quite a bit, but I also try to make space for colleagues to also share theirs. So we can bring a bunch of ideas, put them on the table and together decide what we as a community, as the stewards of this place want to do with the Royal College of Art. And I also think of the Royal College of Art as an intergenerational project.

39:35Because we, the current staff, have inherited from our predecessors.

39:39Claire:Yes. And at a certain point, we'll be handing it on to our successors. And universities need to be around for hundreds and thousands of years. And so a big part of what we think about is not just what the RCA is now, but how do we make sure we put it on a path to be successful, meaningful, impactful, influential 50 years from now, 100 years from now. Yeah, completely. It's not just today. Whether that's with the physical environment you're building for the future or the ideas you're releasing into the world. One of the ideas that I've been talking about a lot with colleagues here is the challenge of affordability for universities.

40:25Claire:Yes. So not just the RCA, but all universities, The financial challenge for too many people is a real barrier. It's huge. So how can we help remove that barrier for as many people as possible in the UK and around the world? What we want is if someone has the creative potential to study and succeed at the RCA and go out and make a difference in their practice, whatever form that takes, we don't want the cost of education to stop them in their tracks. Yeah. as it would do for a lot of people and a lot of points along education. What have you done? What's the... So what we're trying to do is partner with philanthropy to create more and more scholarships.

41:10We want to raise as much money as we can in the form of scholarships that go straight to our students that allow them to come here. Fantastic. And if you talk to our scholarship holders every year and you ask them, you know, what difference has a scholarship made?

41:22Claire:Yeah. And they can tell you beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking stories about where they were and how unachievable the RCA looked. Yeah, of course. Because of cost. Moving to London, affording the fees, the materials, all of the things that make a university look. Yeah, I feel like it's not a place for them. It's not a place for them. Yeah, absolutely. And so scholarships just wipe that barrier away, just remove it completely and give the support that students need. And it is difficult to study if you're also trying to hold down one or two jobs. If you don't know how you're going to afford your paint or the material for your sculpture or whatever it is.

42:07Claire:Yeah, your food. Your food, housing, all these kinds of things. So we really try to connect as many students with scholarship support as possible. Yeah. And our goal over time is to grow that substantially. What sort of percentages do you look at at the moment? You've got two and a half thousand students here? We have two and a half thousand students and we are currently able to give out between five and seven million pounds of scholarship funding. And we'd like to, we try as far as possible to give out scholarships that cover the whole cost of education. Wow. Now, that's not always possible, but that's our goal is as much as we can to support all of a student's needs.

42:53Yeah. So that they can be successful all the way through and graduate.

42:58Claire:That's brilliant. So how much does one student need of it? So is it most courses are two year courses? Most of our courses are one year courses. And that is a big, big change that we made about three years ago. Brilliant. Moving from a two year master's program to a one year master's program. And we did that for a couple of reasons. One is that we wanted to reduce the time because what we were hearing from a lot of students is that the extra year, the two years was a barrier. So, you know, taking a break from work or maybe refocusing and having caring responsibilities at home or family, whatever it is, or moving from another country, one year makes it much more possible for students than two.

43:47It also then reduces the cost of the degree.

43:50Claire:Yeah. So the amount of time that you need accommodation while studying, it's one year of fees instead of two year of fees. Absolutely. So it also reduced the overall cost of education by about 40 % to do one of our degrees. And what we've seen as a result is a real widening of the students who apply to us. So we're getting many more students from many more kinds of backgrounds. That's fantastic. Which is exactly what we're trying to achieve. That's exactly what you need. Yeah, completely. That's really impressive. I'd love to talk about it a lot more, but I think we'll have to sort of sadly bring it to a close.

44:26But as a final question, could I ask you about what tips you have for young people on how to make an impression? Of course. Happy to share some thoughts. Yeah. And the first thing I would say is that if you want a creative life, a creative future, go for it.

44:46Claire:Yes. And that creative life can take so many different forms. It can explicitly be about art and design. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what places like the RCA are here to do and help you do. Yeah. But you can be creative in every field. I think politics can be creative. I think, you know, medicine is creative. I think property development is creative. Yeah, absolutely. So there are, if you want to be creative, go for it. And also embrace the fact that you can explore and develop that interesting creativity in so many different ways. Absolutely. If you want to be a creative professional in a traditional art and design field, of course, it's going to be tough because those are our fields where the career progressions are not always immediate or linear.

45:38But also, I think that's what makes it very exciting. More and more, our graduates have non-linear careers, but those non-linear careers reflect how their interests develop. And so that's the other thing is whatever you study in a creative discipline, you're not locked in to just that discipline. You can use that as a foundation from which to take your interest, your expertise, your career in so many different directions. So be open to the unexpected and sometimes even unintentional ways in which your career can, what would be the right word?

46:17Claire:For me, it's about that sort of winding path of, I'm sure most people don't follow, or I certainly haven't followed a linear path to where I wanted to get to. And very few careers are linear anymore. So that'd be one thing, embrace that. And secondly, most of us need help and advice and mentoring and support along the way. And one of the values of coming to a place like the world college of art is that when you graduate you're part of an alumni community you're part of 30 000 people all over the world who went to the rca just like you did who care about the next generation of creative people yeah who want to help who will make time for you answer questions and so ask for that help ask for that mentoring yeah lots of people will be very happy to give it to you.

47:08And that can give you insight into the job you want, or the company you want to create, or the company you want to join, or the city you want to move to.

47:17Claire:So important. People do want to help. Yeah. I don't think I realized that when I was younger. And I think you've got access to so many amazing people. Christoph, thank you so much. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed speaking to you today. It's been fantastic. great fun and as someone who hosts a podcast it's so much fun to be on the other side of the table answering questions so I really appreciate that thank you oh you're very welcome thank you