During the London Design Festival I took a break from the city to visit Brighton and the 360 Degrees “Charting New Territory in Sustainable Design Education” seminar. This was part of the DEEDS program of events spread out over the weekend.

There was always the risk that it would be a spiral of navel-gazing among design educators – but this wasn’t the case. The arguments have been mostly won – sustainability is finally a sustainable social, business and policy priority. How can it be a meaningful in an education context?

The leading questions of the seminar were:

Can design education be a positive change agent, or does it merely follow practice?

• Does it have the power and means to make the tables turn, in radical, inspirational and efficacious ways?
• What are the mindsets, methods and materials that will give rise to a new culture in design education and practice?
• What are the drivers and gains of breaking new ground in sustainable design education?

There were a number of encouraging submissions to the DEEDS podscape covering a range of issues. The most interesting were from Clare Melhuish on gender issue in sustainable design, Marco Quaggiotto on knowledge cartography, Adam De Eyto on professional design training and Lili Larreatea on ecodesign games.

Keep an eye on the DEEDS podscape as they promise to launch the pods by the end of the year…