As part of the Open Campus project by the iF Design Foundation and Die Neue Sammlung - The Design Museum, the final workshop on the future of design education took place in Munich from March 18th to 20th, 2025. How can today’s design education 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. Sascha Friesike (University of the Arts, Berlin), Prof. Dr. Anna Abraham (Torrance Center for Creativity and Development, University of Georgia, Athens), Prof. Dr. Hye-Jung Eun (Neoma Business School, Reims), Sandy Speicher (Design for Good, San Francisco) und Maarten Hemmen (Breathwork Coach, Cologne). 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 2021, 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 XNUMX "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 2022. Six events on different aspects of education have followed since. On November 2025th 30 the results of project will be presented as a book. Each of the workshops includes an invite-only part, during which 40-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 36 participants who attended the Creativity 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.

Sascha Friesike, Head of the part-time Master's programme “Leadership in Digital Innovation” at Berlin University of the Arts, opened the Creativity workshop with a guided group discussion. In addition to definitions of creativity, he focused on the question of how we can promote creativity in others. This is a concern for both lecturers at universities and students who will become the leaders of tomorrow. As today's challenges demand complex and original answers more than ever, the promotion of creativity is essential. Sascha Friesike questioned the long-standing definition of creativity as something both new and useful. Usefulness is often included in idealised design processes, but is ultimately less of a deciding factor This can also be seen in practice: designers both purposefully try to solve problems and play with intriguing ideas whose benefits are not initially apparent. In addition to character traits that are beneficial to creative work, divergent thinking is a prerequisite for creative action, according to Friesike. In order to generate new ideas, anything between physical activity and quick drafting can be useful and productive. With the help of the Amusement Park Theoretical (APT) Model of Creativity, Sascha Friesike emphasised how the working environment and certain character traits can promote or hinder creativity in specific contexts.

Building on the discussion, Anna Abraham from the Torrance Centre for Creativity and Talent Development underpinned ideas on creativity with findings from neuroscience. She stated that there is no brain region that is exclusively responsible for creative thinking. Rather, creative thinking is a way of thinking that contradicts the way our brain is primed to work. The brain functions primarily via receptive-anticipatory loops in order to make decisions quickly and efficiently. The creative process, on the other hand, is characterised by generative-exploratory loops which involve the brain dynamically. Anna Abraham also criticises the definition of creativity as something new and original that is also useful. The creative process itself is much more important than the usefulness of its result, and non-conformist, marginalised or childlike expressions of creativity must also be included in a precise definition. Including usefulness, appropriateness and usability as secondary factors would ultimately be more precise. The process also differentiates human creativity from AI. Even if the final product sometimes appears comparable, the process is completely different. In order to encourage and empower students to be creative, teachers need to create a framework that enables a variety of approaches and empowers students to work independently.

Hye-Jung Eun from the Neoma Business School in Reims addressed precisely this point and discussed psychological barriers that prevent us from thinking and acting creatively. Especially in collaborative situations, people often self-censor their own ideas before they even have a chance to discuss and develop them. The lack of creative self-efficacy as well as anxiety and stress caused by internal and external pressure block us from being productive. Hye-Jung Eun emphasises that creativity is not an innate ability, but can be fostered by an affirming environment. Self-confidence and self-efficacy are a reason to continue prioritising creative work in the future. In her research, Hye-Jung Eun investigated the connection between creativity and gender. She found that there are no significant gender-specific differences in terms of creative abilities. However, women feel more pressure and fear to be creative compared to men. Social perceptions lead to less support in their social environment to pursue innovative ideas. As a result, they are more likely to doubt their abilities and avoid leadership positions. The social perception of successful innovators is also gendered: men are often stylised as geniuses, while women are characterised as particularly hard-working. Hye-Jung Eun is in favour of breaking down these barriers and calls on us to ask ourselves whether we are giving up on unconventional ideas too soon.

Sandy Speicher from Design for Good went on to show the obstacles designers can encounter in the field. In an increasingly complex world, design has to fulfil the needs of many people. New projects must function in existing contexts while providing a new impulse. For projects such as the redesign of a prison for young offenders in the USA, design teams therefore face both emotional and conceptual challenges. Sandy Speicher describes empathy overwhelm as a condition that blocks the development of new ideas. The emotional confrontation with the difficult situations of people for whom new spaces are being designed ties up capacities. Sandy Speicher recommends tackling this feeling directly by building relationships with people who will interact with or move within their projects, addressing visible problems and passing on overlooked needs. In addition to the emotional level, there is also cognitive overload and ambiguity paralysis. The former is triggered by a prevailing flood of information in which both an overview and limited resources such as time and attention are lost. Here, Speicher recommends focussing on experts and their research. Sandy Speicher also mentions the risk of being overwhelmed by the abundance of options and the impossibility of finding the right answer. Concentrating on the design process itself and turning to speculative design processes can be a solution here. In conclusion, Sandy Speicher emphasises that feelings of being overwhelmed and ineffective are also partly learned and that formulating a question and finding a community help us to get back into a creative mode.

The final impulse came from a different direction: Maarten Hemmen is a breathwork and ice bath coach that specialises in the physical mechanisms of stress and overwhelm. Physical activity as a balance and stimulus to develop new thoughts is commonly recognised. However, Maarten Hemmen emphasised that the body is too rarely consciously perceived and signals of stress and overwhelm are often ignored. A systemic understanding of the human organism gives us the opportunity to regain control. Breathing offers opportunities to become calmer and more attentive. The breathing process is one of the few physical processes that we can consciously control. According to Maarten Hemmen, the number of breaths per minute has increased significantly over the past century due to stress. In order to be creative and create with purpose in the long term, stress can be contained through conscious breathing and exercise.

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

The symposium

A symposium open to the public summarised 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 Annette Diefenthaler and René Spitz, Sascha Friesike presented various models of creative processes and compared them with general ideas. Anna Abraham shed light on the neuronal processes behind creative work. Hye-Jung Eun then explained which psychological barriers can stand in the way of female and male designers and how these lead to different perceptions of design by women and men. Sandy Speicher underpinned the barriers described with various social stress factors that can arise in an increasingly demanding complex design process. Finally, Maarten Hemmen gave a practical impulse for avoiding and controlling stress through breathing.

An outlook on the Campus Project by iFDF x DIE NEUE SAMMLUNG: Book presentation

The Director of Die Neue Sammlung, Prof. Dr. Angelika Nollert, concluded by thanking the panel and audience for the many thought-provoking ideas. On 20.11.2025 November 2022, the findings of the entire project, which has been running since XNUMX, will be presented as a bilingual book.

If you are interested in attending the book launch on 20 November 2025, please subscribe to our mailing list here (see below for newsletter registration). 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 "Creativity"