WHAT IS THE OUTPUT OF THE PROGRAMME? WHAT DO PARTICIPANTS CREATE?

The proposed outcome for our participants will allow them to view their creative practices from a fresh unexpected perspective and extend it in scale, scope and modes of engagement into the territory of architecture, systems thinking, critical design, sociology, philosophy, music, film, performance of politics, and experiences. Students are invited to observe, explore, collect, examine and extrapolate the ordinary in institutions through the design of products as events, experiences, systems, film, and musical reenactments.
We want our students to go into societies’ institutions – companies, health services, government departments etc. – and to use their creative drive to change these institutions and make them serve society better, rather than have their creativity crushed. We want them to provoke events, projects and experiences in these institutions which make those who work there think and act differently. Our clarion call is: Use your creative urge to action change.

You can read more about this on our academic partner’s website: The Sandberg Instituut

WHAT IS THE STRUCTURE OF THE PROGRAMME?

First year: Short 4 to 8-week briefs, workshops, field visits, practical exercises in collaboration with institutions, experimentation, topical content development, voice/style development, identification of preferred media/mode of production.

– Short briefs with content on socio-technical, science, political systems in the widest sense, within groups and individually (typical 3 or more briefs a year)

– Workshops (performance, narrating, directing, producing, design for public engagement, politics and critical theories, etc.)

– Talk series and radio podcasts organised by the students.

– Field visits (simulators, test laboratories, mock-ups, international conferences, political institutions, entertainment parks)

– Large first-year project: Periods of on-site immersion, ethnographic research (1 week), design response (4 weeks), creating tangible events or performances (4 weeks)

Second year: Development of design events (or series), products, experiences, political outcomes, experimental actions/ experience in collaboration with institutions and experts chosen by the students themselves. This will include the documentation of both the process and result. Final year project, to be developed by the students according to their own agenda and in their own voice, at a site either within an ‘institution’, this can be a reconstructed site – of their choosing.