Time & Value: Work, Fashion, Culture

This public seminar will explore issues around value and the materialisation of time through an examination of the temporalities of fashion, cultural worth and the algorithmic management of work.

Please join us at the Banqueting Hall at Chelsea College of Arts, 16 John Islip Street, London, SW1P 4JU

Friday 9 October 2026

14.00 - 16.30

Participants and organisers:

• Caroline Evans, a fashion historian and Professor Emerita at Central Saint Martins
• Phoebe Moore, Professor of Management and the Futures of Work at Essex Business School, University of Essex
• Patrycja Kaszynska, Senior Research Fellow, UAL
• Erling Björgvinsson, Professor of design, HDK-Valand
• Dave Beech, Reader in Art and Marxism, UAL
• Elena Raviola, Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Professor in Design Management
• Carol Tulloch, Professor of Dress, Diaspora and Transnationalism, UAL

Abstract:

This seminar will look at how value and time have been materialised in art and design, from the organisation of human activity by clocks and calendars to the temporal dimension of food, clothing, work, leisure, the built environment, and so forth. Time is a vivid lens through which to understand value, often expressed as the difference between quantitative and qualitative time, but also as separators of private and public time, work and leisure, sacred and profane time. How are imaginaries of value expressed, implied and materialised in different experiences of time? How are temporal regimes enforced, negotiated and resisted? How do imaginaries of value operate trans-generationally and change over time?

Image Credit: Dave Beech (Tess’s pillow at the dairy farm in Thomas Hardy’s novel “Tess of the D’Urbavilles”, pencil drawing, 2026)