DESIGN SCHOOL: The Future of the Project

This project will establish an international research network exploring the future of the Design School, through a partnership between Northumbria University School of Design, Charles Stuart University, Australia, the University of Southern Denmark, and the Design Museum London. By examining the contemporary situation of the Design School from a global perspective, the research network will explore how the structure of design learning and teaching, research and practice, is being transformed by a number of internal, external, and contextual factors and the implications of these changes for future iterations of the Design School. The network will explore the nature of the contemporary Design School and examine the rich and diverse situations that exist in design production, both in theory and practice, and the character of the studio/history/theory interplays that prevail in contemporary Design School life, asking whether Design Schools are shaping a new type of designer, or if tomorrow's designers will emerge from other professions such as business, health care, education, and computing, where design 'thinking' is now regularly applied. This research network is proposed at a time when governments and markets across the world are actively reshaping the university and hence the Design School. In a time of rapid and intensive change, the network will foster new international relationships to shape the Design School of the future. The key aim of the proposed research network seminar series is to explore the future of the contemporary Design School informed by international perspectives from high level invited speakers from design education, culture and industry by asking: * How can a Design School in the age of the Anthropocene best prepare future designers for this complex world? * How can the Design School maximize the potential opportunities suggested by this future, uncertain world at a time of rapid and intensive change? * Having changed the planet how should the Design School react to the planet changing us? The research network will hold 3 symposiums reflecting 3 significant turns in the contemporary Design School. The first will focus on the current issues surrounding the Design School including the development of countless private Design Schools, increased distance learning, and national policies surrounding design education pursued by government across the world. The second symposium will focus on the increasingly close relationship between the Design School and the Cultural Sector. The third symposium will examine the increasingly intensive relationship between industry and Design Schools that will stimulate debate over future Design School policy and private companies' agendas. The collaboration between the research team in this international network will permit the network to bring together representatives from the expanding landscape of the Design School, which includes growing numbers of public and private educational providers franchising internationally, the design museum sector (also franchising internationally), representatives from the booming international design festival circuit, representatives from the emergent, mostly transdisciplinary postgraduate Design Schools, representatives from the editors of the mostly online design media, and influential practitioners engaged in design education. Since many of these influences are external to the discipline's traditional Design School model, but are shaping the learning of the designer, the 3 symposiums will generate the first advanced understanding of the probable trajectory of the Design School. The value of this research is in its rigorous examination of the future of the Design School. The audience for the 3 events will be international and comprise faculty heads and deans, museum directors, design educators, key design practitioners, festival directors and curators, publishers, members of the design media, and postgraduate students of design.