Over the last months, I have been repeatedly involved in conversations around the relation between design education and the world’s challenges. How does design education contribute to dealing with big challenges such as poverty, hunger, people’s displacement or environmental disasters?
Some conversations will approach design education as a space for developing the design capacity of individuals. According to this perspective, the contribution of design education to world challenges is through the development of professional designers that have the skills and knowledge to address such large and complex world challenges.
There is another conversation that I most interested in. According to this perspective, design education is a mechanism for introducing design skills and knowledge to local communities, and within the public, private and third sector. The contribution of design education to world challenges in that respect is through the development of a social infrastructures and culture. Design education is a space that helps people to connect or indeed collaborate with each other in order to design and embed social innovations in their local buildings, products or services.
The Empowering Design Practices project, (http://empoweringdesign.net), which is an AHRC funded project that the design group at the OU is leading, is clearly aiming to develop such as an educational program where the focus is placed on the design capacities of local communities and third/public sector organisations.
Our Q61 BA/BSc Design and Innovation at the OU by and large, seems to me, shares a lot with this second perspective of design education as a mechanism for infusing design skills and knowledge in the every day life of people although the emphasis is still on the individual rather than a sector or community.
If you have any thoughts or examples please do share them with us!
Credit: featured image courtesy of Empowering Design Practices
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