The Royal College of Art is turning its attention to the people who usually keep its workshops, studios and offices running. Its new exhibition, HIDDEN October 2026, gathers work by more than 50 members of the college's technical and professional services staff, whose own artistic practices rarely reach a gallery wall. The show runs from 27 to 31 October at The Hangar on the Battersea campus, is free to enter, and follows an earlier edition held in February.

The range of work on display is deliberately broad. Visitors will find painting, photography, sculpture, jewellery, ceramics, book illustration, posters, sound installation, film, performance and bespoke engineering side by side, reflecting the very different skills that staff bring to their day jobs. A private view on the evening of 29 October will include live performances by some of the exhibiting staff, alongside a presentation from the college's Sonic Architectures group.

Among the featured projects is a brass sculpture by graduate technical assistant Madeleine Lacroix that combines the form of a Klein bottle, a surface with no clear inside or outside, with the intense blue associated with the artist Yves Klein. Technical coordinator Florence Richardson contributes a work imagining preparations for a grand ball inside an abandoned Edinburgh school, built from archival traces, moving image and original composition.

Programme administrator Tess Piggott brings her millinery practice to the show with a hand-blocked snowflake hat made from sinamay, feathers, Czech glass pearls, metal elements and Swarovski cabochons. Together, the exhibits make a case that the expertise behind an art school's teaching extends well beyond its academic staff, and that the technicians and administrators who support students are themselves practising makers.