CIRRUS TALK Vol 3
January 25, 2021
14 – 15.30 CET – Sweden, Norway, Denmark
15 – 16.30 EET – Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia
13-14.30 GMT – Reykjavik
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Hosted by: Martin Sønderlev Christensen, PhD, Head of institute at the Royal Danish Academy, board member of CIRRUS

2020 was a very challenging year for everyone, the effect of the corona virus has been an apparent challenge and has had massive ramifications on our students and faculty ability to do what we normally do. Excluded from campus’, labs and workshops, distanced from each other. Doomed to be Zoomed. We have been partaking in a huge experiment. And one that isn’t over yet.

2020 however was more than the COVID-19 pandemic. we saw #metoo movements reemerging, ethnicity as a topic in movements “like black lives matter”, post colonialism, norm critic, cancel culture. we saw the full effect of fake news and the age of misinformation and surveillance economy, we saw climate change changing as the world globally came to a full stop in the scary light of the pandemic. We saw radical new ways of working and living with distance and massive social compliance. Just to mention a few events. This leaves us looking into 2021 with the sense of a new normal or perhaps even … a time of no normal. A sense of hope or despair?

• How does design and design education adapt to these massive changes and emerging movements?
• How do our students body respond to this in their work?
• How does this affect our organizations? Our curriculum? Our way of teaching?
• In short, what challenges and what opportunities are there for design having left 2020 and entered 2021?

How could the Nordic and Baltics play a significant role in taking design to the forefront of how we move on towards a better world? 

Martin Sønderlev Christensen, PhD, Head of institute at the Royal Danish Academy, board member of CIRRUS, will kick things off with some thought-provoking observations, speculations and even predictions about our near future landscape for design educations and research institution. 

Based on these topics we’ll break in an open space format into smaller groups to discuss different topics, aiming to return with some tangible propositions for how design is og need to be changing,  what role the Nordic and Baltics design community could have in a new to no normal world, and how CIRRUS could help.

Join us January 25, 14 – 15.30 CET/ 15 – 16.30 EET, sign up here by January 24!