Welcome note

Welcome to our blog, covering the Design Council / HEFCE fact finding visit to Europe.
As part of the process to develop and implement recommendations from the
'Cox Review of Creativity in Business', and following a successful mission to the US in 2006, a group of academics and policy makers are visiting universities and design firms the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland. We were looking at multidisciplinary centres and courses that combine management, technology and design in order to develop creative and innovative graduates and businesses. Insights and information from the visit will inform proposals that UK universities and regional bodies are developing in response to the Cox review.

Monday 17 September 2007

Mike Goatman

KaosPilots. I loved the place its like art and design schools always were, the atmosphere is about creativity. Then the presentation that Christer made was very impressive, precise sentences and the work examples he gave included the design for a football team, this is an example of doing what everyone’s talking about, not just theorising. It gave a very good example for the ‘creative hothouse’ for one thing its got an inherently attractive element.

Designit is a professional multi-disciplinary design consultancy with high aspirations and a well honed presentation of modern concepts in the client environment. They plan to have 400 designers worldwide by 2016. ‘Bandwidth’ focus, ‘avoid group think’ ,’clients are a source of innovation, we only deliver part of the success’.

Zentropa Works. ‘Take on hard problems’, ‘create multidisciplinary teams’. ‘Film referenced ‘Dramatic Innovation’ Very interesting based on challenge, and mixing people and what they do, This is an interesting model for stimulation of professionals. ‘ A balance between freedom and constraints, children create more with lego than if they’re given a lump of clay’. The idea is to take people from where they are, their knowledge is important, and put them in a challenge position. The ‘Hero’s journey’ going through interest, drama, disaster, rebirth, and application back to context. Workcamp 07 did this with students from various disciplines over a four week period based on this based model.

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