Going Global is an overview and collection of Philipp Heidkamp´s activities in the process of design and design education as a global topic – at KISD, for KISD and with the Cumulus Association
Read more Read lessI am frequently running workshops abroad in the field of Interface / Interaction Design, Human Environment Interaction, City as Interface as well as Culture of Digitalization
In those domains my focus is on cities, citizen, communities, mobility and food.
Cumulus is the only global association to serve art and design education and research. It is a forum for partnership and transfer of knowledge and best practices. KISD joins Cumulus since 2002, Ans since some years we engage in the work of Cumulus in working groups, through our track „Emerging Formats“ at the 2019 Rovaniemi conference and since then with my Work as Executive Board Member of the 7th Board (2019-2022) and my role as Vice President of the global network. This challenge will give a lot of new opportunities that will be shared here as well.
Global Design Initiative (see also the website under construction).
The Global Design Initiative is founded by the Global Design Faculty driven by five international, globally oriented art and design institutions based in London, Cologne, Singapore, Taipei, and Tokyo. It brings together like-minded people, mainly global design education leaders who believe in new approaches in dialogue and exchange.
Once again, this board meeting in mid-February 2020 was absolutely well organized, an efficient use of time and resources and a lot of opportunities to encounter the local scenes and communities.
We kicked-off our 3 days together with a morning visit to the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Kim Robledo-Diga, Deputy Director of Education Cynthia Smith, Curator of Socially Responsible Design, shared insights with us about the exhibitions, dynamic educational programs and immersive experiences that the museum’s team puts together to expose their audiences — but also many school-age children throughout the US who might never visit the museum’s premises in NYC — to the societal impact of design. Cynthia offered a reflection of the emerging trends she is spotting in how designers continue to practice design at the intersection of social concerns.
With a portfolio of exhibitions such as Design with the 90% (2017) and By the People: Designing a Better America (2016), Cynthia has been extending the work of many of us in the field with shows that bring a new awareness of these critical practices to a broad public of stakeholders. Our conversation with everyone from our board focused on the role of design education today globally and, to quote Cynthia, the ability “designers have … to bring vision to what’s already there. They take what might be seen as a problem and transform it as an asset to the community.” (Cynthia Smith, cited in We are Museums, 2019).
Back at The New School, we worked together on a multiplicity of operational decisions that will continue to shape the growth of our association, ranging from our review of new institutional member applications and future conference hosts for 2021 and 2022; meetings with representatives of prospective partner organizations; budget and financial planning; and last not but least, our ongoing work in strategic planning. Since our first board meeting as a team last October in Medellín, we have organized our board in sub-committees tackling priority areas that will amplify the value our members find in belonging to the Cumulus family.
The NYC board meeting was designed to help us crystallize our goals for the Cumulus Strategic Plan 2019–2022 to be presented to all members in our upcoming General Assembly next June in Rome.
Some of us had and took the chance to attend the new exhibition COUNTRYSIDE, THE FUTURE by OMA at the Guggenheim, an excellent and outstanding exhibition.
And New York offers, of course, the chance to meet different colleagues not only from Parsons, but also from design studios (e.g. IDEO).
Thanks to Mariana Amatullo, our Cumulus President, for summing it up so clear for this month´s new (and new designed) Cumulus Newsletter.
