MEETING OF TEACHERS IN ICELAND, JANUARY 2010
The conference plenum, all participants on a rolling chair so they could socialize. Jóhannes Þórðarsson goes through proceedings.
In January was held a very stimulating meeting in the Iceland Academy of the Arts. Cirrus thanks the Icelanders for a very smooth and entertaining program.
This report will only note the main points. The most important part of these meetings is that teachers meet and compare notes about all kind of issues, often quite outside the themes of the meeting. Therefore the program is deviced for many opportunities of informal encounters.
There were many themes touched upon in the plenum sessions, but the main parallell sessions concentrated on:
1. Design Innovation for Gender Equality. This session was chaired by Sóley Stefánsdóttir, research project leader with Hildur Fjóla Antonsdóttir from the Gender Equality Training Programme at the University of Iceland.
The session did actually create a blog website for cumulating material about the issues. It was also decided to continue with this as a development project for the coming year and run a working group meeting in Stockholm.
Here is a link to the website and the project description is also there.
2. Post Crisis, How does it affect the Design Schools? Chaired by Dóra Ísleifsdóttir lecturer in graphic design, Iceland Academy of the Arts with Jonathan Romm, dean, Oslo School of Architecture and Design.
Here is a short report from the session
3. A Common Master Program in Design, chaired by Tine Kjølsen, head of the graphic design department in Danmark Designskole with Jóhannes Þórðarson, dean of the design and architecture department in the Iceland Academy of the Arts.
Tine Kjølsen has written a draft for a common MA that can be downloaded here. It was decided to continue the work in a smaller working group and report in the next general assembly in September.
The programme, other than the parallel sessions included the following:
First morning:
Jóhannes Þórðarson, dean of the department of design and architecture welcomed all to the conference.
Hjálmar H Ragnarsson, rector of the Iceland Academy of the Arts opened the meeting with short info about the history of the institute and the outlook for the coming years in view of the financial situation in Iceland.
Halldór Gíslason, leader of Cirrus thanked the Iceland Academy for the invitation on behalf of the network and spoke briefly about the philosophy of the Meeting of Teachers as a place for people dealing with especially development of MA education to compare notes and experiences.
Tine Kjølsen, head of graphic design in Danmark Design Skole spoke about the work done in the session in Copenhagen last September to develop a common MA program in some form.
Teo Enlund, professor at Konstfack in Stockholm went through the experiences that he has had in a Common Europen Master Program. Here is his presentation.
After the sessions the respective groups gave their findings.
Morning of second day had the following:
Jóhannes Þórðarson gave an outline of the proposed MA program in the Iceland Academy of the Arts
Lorraine Farrelly, associate head of the Portsmouth School of Architecture, University of Portsmouth in England gave an outline of the UK system and the MA program that she has been involved in consolidating.
The social program is a fundamental part of such a meeting and was very well planned by the organizers, evenings and a trip in the crazy Icelandic storm on Saturday.
February 5, 2010
Tags: design, nordic, nordic-baltic Posted in: Reports and Proceedings
