The future of EAD: rejecting dogma through providing safe spaces for insightful reflection
As President of the European Academy of Design, Professor Leon Cruickshank helped host 3 international online events to help shape the future of design research. As part of the ongoing growth of the European Academy of Design (EAD) as a design research organisation fit for now and the future, it was an enormous pleasure to connect with the design research community through a series of three events.
Event 1- EAD is 30 years old: how can the culture and heritage of EAD help design research flourish in the next 30 years?
Event 2 – Not business as usual: our challenges in design research and society: surveying ongoing agendas.
Event 3 – Discussing tactical responses to authoritarianism.
With participants as far east as Japan and as far west as the pacific coast of Mexico, these events were an opportunity to come together and discuss some of the most pressing issues in design research and start to reimagine how design research can be a positive force in society and how EAD can continue to be responsive in supporting the needs of design researchers. It was heartening to see the insightful contributions from academics ranging from PhD students to semi-retired senior professors of design research and all points in between. A heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed, you really made this a special series of events.
One of the clear outcomes of these events is that there is an appetite for more activities that provide a safe, supportive and productive space for nuanced exploration and debate. Where contrasting ideas can be explored in a positive mutually respectful context, where polarisation and dogma are alien.
As such, we are planning a programme of monthly events to build on the success of these three activities. We will be publishing an invitation to these free events on the EAD website; if you would prefer a more active notification, please join our Linked In group.
Thank you to all of EAD for continuing to make us the agile, responsive kind organisation that we are. And lastly, we have exciting news about the next EAD peer-reviewed academic conference coming up very soon: again, watch this space.
Leon Cruickshank