Professor Lorraine Gamman (Director)

Lorraine Gamman is employed as Professor in Design Studies, in the School of Graphic and Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, London, where she has taught for over 15 years. She is also Co Director of Design Against Crime (DAC) at the University of the Arts London, which she set up in 2000, and which was validated as a new Research Centre by the University in 2005.   She is currently Vice Chair of Designing Out Crime Association ( DOCA ), and a member of the Home Office's 2007 "Design and Technology Alliance" ( www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/ crime-strategy-07).   She also works as an independent assessor for a variety of research councils.

Lorraine Gamman is currently co-directing several collaborative externally funded research projects on bag and bike theft. These aim to use research to create pragmatic design resources, as well as new designs against crime. Design innovation generated by DAC projects is user-tested, prototyped with industry and applied in the real world to prove efficacy, prior to being disseminated more broadly.

Gamman wrote her PhD on shoplifting at Middlesex University in 1999. She has published widely on design including articles on DAC as "socially responsive design" (with Adam Thorpe). Her publications on crime include I n the Bag - Get Smart Quick about bag theft, pick-pocketing and street crime, ( 2000 currently being revised for 2007 publication). Gone Shopping, the Story of Shirley Pitts, Queen of Thieves (Penguin 1996, film rights sold to Channel 4 in 1997). On visual culture publications include Female Fetishism: A New Look (with Dr. Merja Makinen, L&W Pubs 1994) and The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Cultur e, (with Dr. Margaret Marshment TWP Pubs, 2000) and numerous articles. Her work has attracted research funding from the - Design Council, the Home Office, Department of Health, British Transport Police and Transport for London (TfL), and more significantly from the Arts Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as well as the Engineering Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC). 

Gamman's most recent publications include papers on   "Liberty Versus Security" (co written with Adam Thorpe)   presented to the European Academy of Design conference in Izmir, Turkey, 2007, and 'Design Against Crime as Socially Responsive Innovation?' - presented at the July 2007 ECCA conference and the international Crime Science conference (both at UCL).

Lorraine can be contacted on: l.gamman@csm.arts.ac.uk

Download Dr. Lorraine Gamman's CV

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Professor Paul Ekblom (Associate Director)

Paul Ekblom read psychology at University College London, where he also gained his PhD. Most of his career to date has been spent as a researcher in the UK Home Office, centring on crime prevention. He was involved throughout crime prevention's rise from obscurity to widespread recognition by practitioners and policymakers in central and local government and beyond.

Paul initially worked on a range of individual crime prevention studies, practical demonstration projects and consultancies, including police truancy patrols, shoplifting, a feasibility study of the 'Crime-Free Car', drink and disorder in small towns, and crime on the London Underground.   He then spent several years conceiving and orchestrating the industrial-scale evaluation of the impact and cost-effectiveness of the UK Government's Safer Cities Programme on burglary, whose results strongly shaped the subsequent national Crime Reduction Programme.   His own contribution to that Programme was (with policy colleagues in Home Office and DTI and the Design Council) to plan, commission and guide a range of initiatives on Design Against Crime (including Royal Society of Arts Student Design Awards, research by Salford, Sheffield Hallam and Cambridge Universities on the state of DAC in teaching, practice and industry and a range of guidance and support material emanating from that).   He also (with Prof Ken Pease) inaugurated and advised the UK Foresight panel on Crime Prevention.

Paul has had extensive international involvement with EU, Europol, ICPC and UN, and was Scientific Expert on a Council of Europe initiative on Partnership in Crime Prevention.   His recent Home Office responsibilities focused on horizon-scanning, advising on Design against Crime initiatives (including advising on the production of Safer Places, the ODPM/Home Office guidance on planning and crime) and supporting the development of crime prevention as a professional discipline through a rigorous and systematic conceptual framework, the Conjunction of Criminal Opportunity (www.crimereduction.gov.uk/learningzone/cco.htm), and a wider, process-based schema for capturing and transferring knowledge of good practice, the 5i's (www.crimereduction.gov.uk/learningzone/5isintro.htm).

When the opportunity arose to expand his involvement in Design Against Crime by joining the Research Centre at Central Saint Martin's, Paul made the transition to academia without hesitation.   He is currently also visiting professor at the Adelphi Research Institute for Creative Arts and Sciences at the University of Salford and the Applied Criminology Group, Huddersfield University, and Associate of the Jill Dando Institute, UCL.

Paul can be contacted on: p.ekblom@csm.arts.ac.uk

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Adam Thorpe, Reader, Socially Responsive Design (0.6) Director Bikeoff; Associate Director Design Against Crime Research Centre

Adam Thorpe is a research led designer and Associate Director of DAC, as well as Director of its Bikeoff.org initiative. He is also currently Reader in Socially Responsive Design, in the School of Graphic and Industrial Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design where he has worked since 2003. His research activities with the DAC Research Centre are practice-led and design focused. He has applied research findings to create numerous anti crime products, most recent designs include a range of anti theft bike parking stands delivered in 2007.

Adam is interested in socially responsive design that embraces innovation and communication, and has contributed to the development of research methodologies that seek to maximise stakeholder value - through application of DAC principles. Also research dissemination strategies that utilise market intervention to promote best DAC practice via product benchmarking. A notable output of this market interventionist approach, developed with Lorraine Gamman, is the Karrysafe range of bags and accessories (www.karrysafe.com) that has been distributed internationally, exhibited at numerous international design events, and received extensive international media coverage valued at £870,000 (Design Council estimate). His work has attracted research funding from the - Design Council, the British Transport Police Transport for London (TfL), and Camden Council; more significantly in 2007 from the Arts Humanities Research Council (AHRC) /Engineering Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC). "Design for the 21 st Century" forum.

Adam Thorpe is co-founder and design partner of Vexed Generation Clothing Ltd. (est 1996), Karrysafe Ltd. (est. 2002), and Broke Bitter & Twisted (est 2002), companies he continues to co direct and design for. He is currently developing a new range of urban mobility clothing (2007) and has previously collaborated with Puma International AG on a range of global Urban Mobility clothing and accessories, which include co-designs of the Puma "anti theft" Bike, (2005).  

Adam can be contacted on adam@vexed.co.uk

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Marcus Willcocks (0.5 Research Fellow, Designer)

Marcus' research specialisms are in public space, environmental interaction & new urbanism. He is a practising designer and consultant on projects in the Spain and the UK and has been involved in practice-lead research with Design Against Crime since 2000. He has recently initiated a DAC research stream into cultures of bicycle theft and use in Japan (http://mwdesign.typepad.com/bikeofftokyo) and is managing strands of the DAC Grippa products evaluation project (AHRC) and of Bikeoff 2 research (AHRC/EPSRC), in Barcelona. He is setting up a further research cluster linked to mapping methodologies of community consultation among selected practitioners from design, architecture and social science backgrounds.

Since 2003 Marcus' research with Thorpe, Gamman and the DAC team, has created visual evidence about the relationships between cycle theft, habits of use and design of provisions. This work has fed through to Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police, the Ayuntamientos (city councils) of Barcelona and Terrassa and others and published by Perpetuity Press. He completed work on Grippa project (anti-theft furniture and accessories, AHRC), with a funded position researching and designing in collaboration with Dr. Lorraine Gamman, Jackie Piper and Chris Thomas. This work was awarded a top nomination for INDEX 2005 (Denmark) and was selected as part of the SAFE exhibition at MoMA New York (October 2005).

He has Bright Sparks funding for 2007-8 with Rosanna Vitiello, from the Gunpowder Park 'arts, science and nature programme', to conduct practice-led investigation into the visual codes which impact perceptions of unknown places. Some of Marcus' previous research into visual codes and perceptions of space has also been funded on separate occasions, by projects with INEFC Sports Institute (2005-8 Barcelona) and URV Universtiy, Tarragona (2006-7) and also published by Palgrave Journals (London) and exhibited by La Capella (Barcelona).

Marcus trained in Product Design (Central Saint Martins, London) and later completed a Master's degree in Design and Public Space (Elisava, Barcelona). His focus is how design can respond to ways people naturally interact with objects and environments, often beyond anticipated activity. His freelance and consultancy commitments include visual consulting and field research into the relationship between sport, public spaces and social networks, with the Catalan sports institute, INEFC; field-led design research into urban growth and social cohesion for URV University, Tarragona; teaching Design and Anthropology students at Elisava and IED, Barcelona; commissioned and group-generated work with the Sparks Partnership (www.sparks-art.com) including a recent installation for the Economist Group (Contemporary Arts Society);   exhibition design for Volvo; domestic furniture for Michael Sodeau Partnership and street furniture for Fitch Design consultancy. He has given papers and run workshops on design-and-interaction; design-and-community; public space-and-priority, and design-against-crime.

Marcus can be contacted at: m.willcocks@csm.arts.ac.uk

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Jackie Piper (Design and Research) on unpaid leave until 2007

Jackie Piper, MA (RCA graduate), is one half of W2 products, (www.w2products.com) a design and manufacturing partnership specialising in innovative materials and project collaborations, with a design studio in the OXO Tower. ‘Magic Plug’, one of the many home products developed by W2 was nominated for an OXO-Peugeot Design Award in 2003. Jackie has worked in both consultancy and as an in-house designer for Polaroid. She has been a senior lecturer on BA product Design at CSM for six years, teaching second and third year undergraduates. Jackie has also exhibited and worked on the DAC Anti theft furniture project since 2000, exhibiting solutions at Designers Block London and Milan, Barcelona, Design Council and RIBA. Her work has appeared in publications, including Icon, Design Week, The Evening Standard and others. She can be contacted at j.piper@dial.pipex.com. Jackie is currently funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board to work as senior designer on the Grippa: Anti Theft Furniture Accessories concept-proofing project.

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Christopher Thomas (Design Research Assistant)

Christopher Thomas was trained as a product designer. He has worked on branded packaging, exhibitions, graphic identity, web design, and product design with a focus on people and the way that the 'object' impacts on the user. As a freelancer he has been involved with clients such as Orange developing new ways of user interaction; Thomas Heatherwick Studio for HSBC; United Biscuits on development of branded products.

At the moment Christopher is involved with the development of DAC Enterprise and developing links with clients/ industry to facilitate new and existing designs to market. He is testing DAC anti-bag theft devices as an extension to the Grippa project in licensed premises in Camden, also to include communication strategy and incident recording to aid research and design development.

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Dani Davies (Centre Administrator)

Dani Davies keeps the DAC administrative and office requirements afloat. She
is originally from Croatia and since living in the UK, has gained a Legal
Secretarial Skills Diploma and has worked as a beauty consultant, nanny and
an extra in a West End production.

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Contact Details:

Design Against Crime Initiative
The Innovation Centre
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Southampton Row, London WC1B 4AP
Tel. 020 7514 7366; Fax. 020 7514 7050
Email. l.gamman@csm.arts.ac.uk

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The DAC Advisory Panel has been set up to ensure the project's relevance and usability by education, industry and the design profession.

The following individuals have agreed to participate, and will contribute to specified stages of DAC projects as a key part of the socially responsive DAC Iterative Research Process:

Andrew Bolton (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
Calvin Beckford (ACPO, Crime Prevention Initiatives Ltd.)
Professor Ronald Clarke (Crime Science at UCL)
Terry Cocks (DOCA & Holborn Police Camden)
Professor Martin Darbyshire (Tangerine Design Consultants)
D.Supt David Eyles (Metropolitan Police Islington)
Professor Martin Gill (Perpetuity Group)
Jayne Gray (Metropolitan Police Westminster)
Ike Gray (Metropolitan Police Camden)
Joe Hunter (Vexed Generation)
Professor Gloria Laycock (UCL Jill Dando Institute for Crime Science)
Tracey Morgan (Director of the Network for Surviving Stalking)
Emili Padros & Ana Mir (Emiliana Design)
Dr. Tim Pascoe (Business Development, Perpetuity Group)
Dale Russell (Russell Studio)
Gordon Semple (CPDA City of Westminster / Metropolitan Police)
Mark Simpkins (BBC/Freelance Community Sofware Specialist)
D.I Brian Howat (British Transport Police)
Chris Vernall (CRL)
Mark Whitworth (DOCA)
Guy Yunghanns (QuikTrak Networks)

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