THE CIRRUS SYMPOSIUM 2009 IN THE UMEĂ… INSTITUTE OF DESIGN (UID)

UMEĂ… UNIVERSITY – HOSTED BY THE MA DESIGN PROGRAMME
MASTER DESIGN EDUCATION
VIEWED IN THE PERSPECTIVE OF PROFESSIONALISM
Thursday January 29 & Friday January 30, 2009

After two successful symposiums in 2007 and 2008 the Cirrus teachers continued their dialogue about the MA education in Design. The insights gained in previous meetings indicated that, it was necessary to develop a debate and further discuss models of education, in order to engage with the pressing issues occurring in contemporary design.

New challenges are facing design!
Design is fast becoming one of the fundamental fields in the development of innovation and modern industry. The demands on designers are increasing and the question arises if the
design educations are following suit. Some of the Nordic design schools have a strong tradition for industrial collaboration and aim at preparing their students to work with industry in In-House offices or private consultancies. Should we all be doing this? How much should considerations for professionalism influence the quality and content of our educations?
There is a general agreement in the Cirrus schools that we should consider a diversity between the schools instead of everyone trying to do the same thing. As stated at our last meeting, the master educations are being developed in almost all of the CIRRUS schools and discussions have demonstrated a clear need for coordination between members and with other actors globally in design education.
The schools in the CIRRUS network have varying policies:
• Build on strong Nordic crafts tradition.
• Develop an academic, research, educator goal.
• Concentrate on educating highly professional designers to meet the growing demands in Industry.
This symposium attempted to challenge our views of ourselves as designers and design educators.
The aim was to map a number of pertinent “possibilities” at the fringes of contemporary design. To this end, this time, we resolved to examine and discuss:
• Responsibility to the profession
• Response to technology and industry
• The growing academic challenge
• Socially Responsive Design in a professional context

STRUCTURE
We followed our now well-tried symposium spirit with the aim to create an intimate occasion, with opportunities for formal and informal dialogues.
The conference took place on Thursday 29 Jan with: coffee and registration – plenum to start the symposium and a tour of the host institute that is always informative for delegates from the other schools.
The rest of the day was split into two parallel sessions ending with a dinner for all delegates.

On Friday 30 Jan there were presentations from members of CIRRUS of models of Nordic MA’s followed with a panel and questions from the previous day. Then summation and farewell.

May 11, 2009   Posted in: Reports and Proceedings, TEACHERS CONFERENCES