Impulse 5: Innovation

15.-17.10.2024

Impulses for a new curriculum, part 5 Innovation

As part of the Open Campus project by the iF Design Foundation and Die Neue Sammlung - The Design Museum, the fifth event on the future of design education took place in Munich from October 15th to 18th, 2024. How can design education today be innovative, and how can teaching practices and curricula foster innovative approaches to design? Impulses from the fields of theory and practice were provided by Prof. Dr. Gareth Loudon (Imperial College/Royal College of Art, London), Fumiko Ichikawa (Re:Public, Tokyo), Dr. Delfina Fantini van Ditmar (Royal College of Art, London), and Prof. Dr. Bethan Gordon (Cardiff School of Art & Design). The three-day event at the X-D-E-P-O-T of the Pinakothek der Moderne featured lectures, workshops and a concluding symposium, which was open to the public.

The iF Design Foundation and Die Neue Sammlung have agreed on the joint program "Designing Design Education - Impulse for a New Curriculum“. The program will run until 2025, during which time Die Neue Sammlung is transformed into a public campus. The focus is on practically applicable impulses to advance design education. The selection of impulses is based on findings published in the 2021 "Designing Design Education“ Whitebook. The starting point is the universally expressed view that design education needs to be updated from multiple perspectives. The project aims to provide design educators with a tested set of applicable tools and findings that they can use for their own transformation. The kick-off event took place in October XNUMX. Five events on different aspects of education have followed since, with sixth one planned before the program concludes in XNUMX. Each of these events includes an invite-only part, during which XNUMX-XNUMX invited participants receive impulses as well as concrete suggestions from international experts. These suggestions are based on state-of-the-art science and research and have been tried and tested in teaching - but have not yet been established in design education. The topics are considered and discussed in a concluding symposium which is open to the public.

The approximately 41 participants who attended the Innovation focus event represent the broad spectrum of activities associated with design: teaching and research (predominantly), but also design practice (independent and employed), consulting, management, exhibitions, and journalism.

Innovation Beyond Design

Gareth Loudon, who heads two master’s programs called ‘Global Innovation Design’ and ‘Innovation Design Engineering’ at Royal College of Art, London, spoke about the challenges and opportunities in redesigning the programs’ curricula. The double M.A. ‘Innovation Design Engineering’ aims to create new innovators who will become global leaders in the integration of design, engineering, science, and enterprise to address the complex issues of the present day. To fulfil this ambition, Gareth Loudon and his team conceptualized three phases: foundation, consolidation, and mastery. Loudon argued that students must feel confident and at home in their discipline to unlock the full potential of transdisciplinary collaboration. This confidence enables them to set their own goals and establish professional agency. The program culminates in two main projects that test the students’ abilities and expand them in a practical context. Gareth Loudon underscored that the students have complete freedom in their projects but must make a positive impact on the world. Although this may be challenging at first, with the help of a support system, students of the master’s program have successfully launched start-ups that address issues such as pollution and waste.

To reflect on the possibilities of starting anew, workshop participants then structured their ideal innovation programs to highlight what they deem important for students of innovation to know. Additionally, they were asked about the challenges an implementation of their program would have to face, leading to a discussion of intellectual and economic barriers.

Multi-Layer Innovation

The second speaker, Fumiko Ichikawa from Tokyo, founded the public design education project Re:Public in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquakes in Japan. Born out of a catastrophe, Re:Public aims to address a need for innovation and collective action. Fumiko Ichikawa sees innovation as the transformation of values, routines, and lives in an irreversible manner and rejects simplified ideas of innovation as new technological developments without tangible value to society. To allow for innovative ideas to develop, Fumiko Inchikawa highlighted the connection of place, people, and practice that are foundational to Re:Public’s approach. The organization’s projects always start with familiarizing a group of designers with a place and the people who inhabit it. The goal is not to simply create a necessary product but to bring change to the culture. One example she featured was a digital garbage tracking system that led to a shared responsibility and collective action to reduce carbon emissions and respond to problems in real time. Ichikawa also highlighted an opportunity for designers: If they wish to find innovative solutions for local issues, they can invite people to participate in the design process, creating an engaged public that offers knowledge from different perspectives.

In the following workshop, Fumiko Ichikawa asked participants to explore the possibility of place-based innovation using maps of the city of Kirishima. In Kirishima, different industries and institutions have created a circular recycling process to eliminate waste. Workshop participants took these ideas further, focusing on textile production and tourism.

Innovation for Planetary Health

Biologist and design researcher Delfina Fantini van Ditmar from the Royal College of Art, London, gave the third impulse, focusing on regenerative design. She claims designers need not only to be less damaging to the environment but also to implement health back into an eco-social system. Building on Anthony Fry’s ideas on temporality, design is conceptualized as both a creative and destructive process that needs to address the different futures it erases and creates. Crucial for this process is thinking about design systemically and decentering humans in the ecological network. To illustrate this regenerative design process, Delfina Fantini van Ditmar presented successful projects that connect technology and a positive environmental impact. Like the other speakers, she underscored the importance of transdisciplinary collaboration and being rooted in a locality. Achieving this understanding, Delfina Fantini van Ditmar has had great success with exposing her students to working designers that are changing their approach to design to be more sustainable. Consequently, students not only gain a first-hand experience of materials and spaces, but also get an idea of how to achieve commercial viability while enhancing eco-social resilience.

With the emphatic claim that design has the opportunity to reconceptualize and replenish futures, Delfina Fantini van Ditmar encouraged participants to think about how regenerative design can be taught and which experts they would invite to do so.

Spaces for Innovation (Beyond Education)

The final impulse of the workshop was held by Bethan Gordon, Dean of the Cardiff School of Art and Design. She presented her ideas for a holistic curriculum experience that fosters creativity for innovation to follow. Faced with the prospect that 65 % of design jobs will no longer exist in ten years’ time, educators today must prepare students for a lifelong learning process and train them to be highly adaptable. Redesigning the curricula at the Cardiff School of Art and Design, Bethan Gordon came up with a framework for an interdisciplinary learning experience consisting of three pillars: First, students need to be grounded in their subject, to then collaborate with other students in the field, to finally connect theory and practice with each other to find purpose. To support students’ various ambitions, the school supports them in their open avenues of becoming practitioners, academics, or entrepreneurs. Like Gareth Loudon and Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, Bethan Gordon underscored the importance of a sense of belonging to a discipline and the creation of collision points. Additionally, she highlighted the goal for students to take risks, which she supported by shifting from a grading system to a pass/fail system and encouraging continuous reflection that allowed students to learn from their transdisciplinary collaboration. To address the challenges transdisciplinary work poses, Bethan Gordon called for changing the culture around collaboration and developing a common language for everybody to relate to the subject at hand.

In her workshop, she encouraged the participants to reflect on innovative processes and ideas they were already engaged in and how marginal gains in various areas might bring forth further change.

All impulses are also available as a short version on our YouTube channel.

iF Design Foundation on YouTube

Feedback from participants

Maria Fröhlich

Daniel Braun

Karen Nennen

Bettina Maisch

The symposium

A symposium open to the public summarized the results of a learning-intensive day of workshops and invited the audience to participate in the discussion.

Each event of the series ends with a symposium, which is open to the public and takes place at the X-D-E-P-O-T of the Pinakothek der Moderne, where the findings of the workshops are shared and discussed with the audience. After a brief introduction by board members and hosts René Spitz and Annette Diefenthaler, Gareth Loudon summarized his learnings from starting a curriculum from a blank page and creating an environment that gives students the freedom to explore and a foundation to do so expertly. Fumiko Ichikawa then highlighted an inclusive approach to design that invites the public into the design process. Afterward, Delfina Fantini van Ditmar shared ideas on regenerative design and how students can impactfully learn from practicing designers in the field. Finally, Bethan Gordon provided insight into how innovation can be provoked as a result of a modern learning experience. She underscored the importance of enabling students to take risks and continuously reflect on their design process.

An outlook on the Campus Project by iFDF x DIE NEUE SAMMLUNG until 2025: Upcoming events

The Director of Die Neue Sammlung, Prof. Dr. Angelika Nollert, concluded by thanking the panel and audience for the many thought-provoking ideas. There will be another event in the series in 2025: The March (18-20.03.2025) workshop and symposium will be dedicated to the theme of "Creativity". And on November 20.11.2025th 2023 the results of the whole project, which has been running since 20, will be presented in a bilingual book. If you are interested in participating in the invite-only workshops, please subscribe to our mailing list here (see below for newsletter registration). We will then invite you in due course. Participation is free of charge, the number of places is limited, and confirmations will be issued in the order in which registrations are received.

Speaker »Innovation«

Gareth's interest is creativity, combining ideas from anthropology, psychology, engineering and design, and has led international transdisciplinary research projects both in academia and industry. Gareth is Professor of Creativity and Head of Programs for the MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering and MA/MSc Global Innovation Design at the RCA, which are run jointly with Imperial College London. Previously Gareth was Associate Dean (Research) at the Cardiff School of Art and Design. He has also worked for Apple and Ericsson Research in the design and development of new software and computer embedded products. Gareth is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

 

Fumiko Ichikawa is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Re:public, a “think & do” tank based in Tokyo, Japan. With a passion for fostering innovation and collaboration, Ichikawa has played a pivotal role in empowering diverse creative talents and organizations across Japan. Clients include local governments of Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Kobe, and Satsuma Sendai; companies like Hitachi, Sony, and Fujitsu; national governments, Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry (METI) and Ministry of Environment.

With local governments, Ichikawa designs and offers programs for local SMEs to identify their purpose and to create business for the sustainable future. She serves on the Social Venture Committee, reflecting passion for supporting social entrepreneurship. Fumiko also serves as a board of director for fog inc., a circular design firm and restaurant in downtown Tokyo.

 

Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, PhD, is a Research Professor at the Center of Applied Research for Art, Design and Technology (CARADT), focusing on Biodesign and More than Human Perspectives. She also co-directs the UKRI-funded Becoming Regenerative Lab. Delfina holds a BA in Biology and completed her PhD at the Royal College of Art in the School of Design, where she has taught in the MA Design Products, MSc/MA Innovation Design Engineering, and MA Fashion programs.

She co-founded the Design Research Society (DRS) Special Interest Group on Design and Ethics. In 2021, Delfina was selected as one of the Future Observatory Design Researchers in Residence (DRiR) at the Design Museum, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Her practice focuses on ecological thinking, reflective practices, epistemological paradigms, and alternative futures. Motivated by her interest in ecological thinking, systemic responses to environmental collapse, and inter-relations, her critical work explores material ethics of care and the paradigm shifts needed in design. In her teaching, she encourages students to reflect on epistemological paradigms, envision alternative futures, think systemically, and critically analyze the broader implications of their decisions.

Delfina has participated in the Royal College of Art's School of Design transdisciplinary module The Grand Challenge, the Design Futures elective, and the Across RCA (Climate group). Since 2018, she has also been a course lead in the RCA Executive Education program.

 

Bethan's career spans academia and industry, she has become recognized for her design thinking, usability testing, and professional inquiry that has influenced CSAD's curriculum design, local design and manufacture companies, Wales curriculum reform in compulsory education to her latest contribution in supporting England's political agenda to safeguard design in their compulsory education system.