simon's blog

More Education

sorafferty — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:24:31 +0000

I will be presenting a paper at the 11th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education in Brighton next week. The paper, “Capacity for sustainability: The changing contexts of design education”, will build on a previous paper I wrote with Hannah Curtis on ecodesign activities in Welsh Universities. This paper will present a theoretical framework of skills and competencies for ecodesign. The intention is to present a theoretical framework to engage in discussion with leading academics to understand how this framework can be taken forward.

I will post the paper and presentation next week after the conference. I am also looking into different methods to visualise the framework in a more dynamic way.

education..

sorafferty — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 08:40:47 +0000

Some interesting education projects happening in the UK. We need to see more of these!!

The Real Work Experience is a project that works with design graduate to build their capacity and awareness of social design

Consurgo is a social enterprise that provide a platform and space for recent design graduates to meet with professionals and discuss their future…

Emerging Economy Report

sorafferty — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:44:06 +0000

I just stumbled across this report by the Centre for Knowledge Societies. It describes itself as an essential business tool with a focus on India, China, Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Brazil.

I can’t full access the report yet but I have asked to order it. Between now and then I would recommend that you review their site.

is slow beautiful?

sorafferty — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:53:12 +0000

Slow is an emerging discussion coming out of the Slow Food movement over the last number of years. The principles of Slow appear to resonate with many people and we now have discussions on Slow Food, Slow Cities, Slow Design, Slow Fashion etc. I gave a presentation on Slow Design this weekend at a “Slow is Beautiful” event in Drumalis house in Larne, Northern Ireland. The event was a weekend of discussion and debate around the theme of Slow and how it relates to various aspects of peoples work and lives.

In my discussion I wanted to focus on our relationships (as designers and consumers) with products and how these relationships can allow for dialogues around slow. I also drew on the various perspectives of people such as Ezio Manzini, Carolyn Strauss and Alastair Fuad Luke to question the emerging principles of Slow Design. I wasn’t interested in providing answers as much as hopefully opening questions….

Among the other speakers were Alma Clavin who gave an insightful presentation on the connection between the ecological design of urban spaces and well-being. Alma is currently writing up her PhD at Oxford Brookes on this topic and had many interesting perspectives to offer. Another speaker was Jules Pretty that gave a magnificent talk (without notes or slides) on the context of place, memory and human connectivity to the earth.

Slow is an interesting theme. It draws much debate because of the various literal and semantic interpretations of slowness. Some people have drawn parallels to the principles of “transition” and have suggested that slow may lack the sense of urgency required to deal with the potential dilemmas of climate change, emerging communities and resource depletion. What I like about the principle of slow is that it can transcend the resource allocation and conservation perspectives of sustainable design and open new opportunities for creativity and humour.

This is a copy of my presentation..

Designing transitions

sorafferty — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:08:44 +0000

There has been a renewed groundswell on local sustainability discussions and actions on food, economics, communication and mobility. The transition towns movement seems to be an amalgamation of a lot of previous strands of grassroots activity. I still see conflicts in the localism vs. globalism strands of debate. I can’t help but feel the localist perspective is like the old “cut and run” strategy i.e. the wealthy and comfortable retreating from an increasingly unstable world….

Putting that aside, I was happy to see Jody Boehnert of Eco-labs open up the discussion on transition and design. While it may well be a reformulation of old processes it will be interesting to see over the coming years if the vocabulary of transition will move the agenda in new directions.

Read Jody’s paper here

6 billion others…

sorafferty — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:26:13 +0000

In 2008 you will be able to listen to the thousands of testimonies which have been collected, and add your own testimony to the site. In the meantime, take a look at the project, the team, and some interviews that have already been made.

i like this

My recent presentation on design education and sustainability

sorafferty — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:05:12 +0000

I recently presented a paper, on behalf of Ecodesign Centre Wales, at the 10th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona.

This conference, in partnership with the Design Society and the Institution of Engineering Designers (IED), brought together representatives from education, government and industry with an interest in sharing new perspectives on design education.

The theme of the conference was ‘New Perspectives in Design’ and the questions underlying the theme included:

How can educators better reflect industrial perspectives?
What is the modern student’s perspective on design education?
Can we consider our curricula from a future perspective

You can read the paper that I was presenting here

open tables

sorafferty — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:13:50 +0000

As the description says “Open Tables is a software application and a spatial environment, which researches and facilitates collaborative working between individuals and groups.”

In short, it is a really interesting and exciting collaborative platform.

more here

doing good DEEDS…

sorafferty — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:08:16 +0000

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…

Lift 08

sorafferty — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:50:50 +0000

I know I’m really late with this but all the videos from Lift 08 have been posted. There is a growing number of great conferences these days such as TED, Picnic (you can view Picnic videos at Dik.nul) that are generous with sharing videos from the conference.

so, in your spare time watch some….