Leading designers set for leading design city

Published On Mon 1 Oct 2018 by Grant Hill

Hundreds of leading designers from across Europe will head to the UK’s only UNESCO City of Design next year when the University of Dundee hosts one of the world’s most influential design conferences.

The European Academy of Design event takes place in the city in April 2019 and will include a welcome reception at the V&A Dundee. Entitled Running with Scissors, the conference invites designers, businesses and researchers to explore globally recognised challenges including the future of healthcare, Artificial Intelligence, entrepreneurship, inclusivity and ethics.

Dr Louise Valentine, head of entrepreneurship, enterprise and employability at the University’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design and Vice President of the EAD, said, “We’re bringing one of the world’s most influential design conferences to one of the world’s most interesting design cities. Dundee is the ideal location to debate the future of design given its strong heritage, entrepreneurial school of art and design, world-leading design research and its international status as a UNESCO City of Design.

“Running with Scissors might imply recklessness and unnecessary risks incompatible with the ethos of areas like healthcare. However, it can also suggest the putting aside of conventional wisdom and taking risks.

“Designers and design researchers seek to disrupt the status quo in an effort to face the problems of our time, which are increasingly ones of extreme complexity. In doing so, design is itself evolving while running.”

The conference will explore how design and design researchers engage in acts of creative disobedience, taking contrary views to shed new light on challenges. Events will take place across three days and will include a dedicated pre-conference session for the international design PhD community.

Established in 1995, the European Academy of Design is a community of academics and practitioners committed to fostering new and existing relationships, in an effort to increase knowledge of the discipline and deepen understanding of how design contributes to improving the quality of life.

More information is available at https://ead2019dundee.com/.

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Grant Hill
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University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
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Email: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk