Future Education and Literacy for Designers Erasmus Project

Project Title

Future Education and Literacy for Designers

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Research and innovation

Project Summary

Context
FUEL4Design supports the discipline of Design and its MA/PhD students and teachers in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to productively anticipate critical futures learning needs and change processes through sustained future making.

We live in a world that is increasingly complex. Climate events and the practice of democracy challenge us as citizens. The future is unclear, yet the future has never been predictable. Design is one of the few disciplines that work​ pragmatically and creatively with the future. It does so through acts of making and projection that aim to produce products, services and interactions beyond the strategies and systems of the here-and-now. 21st-century design pedagogy needs to be urgently reframed in an approach that we call ‘Design Futures Literacy’. This is a literacy that connects teaching and learning to provide an education for young designers for designing for complex tomorrows. This is a matter of Design taking on a far more proactive role in working to anticipate these tomorrows through acts of situated making that understands use and users and Design as working prospectively to look ahead of the immediate or short term (Celi & Morrison, 2018).

Main objectives
The main objectives of the project are to develop, test and implement new approaches and resources to provide learners and educators with innovative and adaptable tools to imagine, perform and enact a plurality of futures by design. This is to equip design learners and educators to deal with real-world issues on techno-digital futures, climate crisis, and political instability. We will connect experimentation and design theory via invention, imagination, speculation, and through design making activities such as via prototyping, scenario building, and foresight.

Activities
The ‘devices’ we will develop for a Design Futures Literacy initiative include the making of a ‘Design Futures Lexicon’ to build a bottom-up and shared vocabulary for working with design futures, supported by a set of ‘Futures Philosophical Pills’ that allow educators to better diagnose ideas, and practices of the future to inform future design education. We will develop student-centred, hands-on training approaches called ‘Design Futures Scouting’ to support development and empower teachers to teach future related design, and a Design Futures Toolkit of innovative practices and pedagogies to nurture and connect design curricula with design future driven activities. ‘Futures Literacy Methods’ will provide a training course of modular units in multidisciplinary futurist design learning. Our ‘Design Futures Manual’ draws together content and experience and provides routes to work with other HEIs, policymakers and EC level futures literacies strategies and programmes. We will deliver two short term design teacher training events and two intensive study programmes with Master’s and PhD students to test and circulate our inputs and their outputs, along with two transnational ‘multiplier event’s for futurists and design educators and professionals

Participants
Our team draws on leading design-educator-researchers from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design (NO), Politecnico di Milano (IT), University of the Arts London (UK), and ELISAVA (ES). We will work with design teachers and students at Master’s and doctoral levels and connect existing and emerging courses that address design futures. We will extend our innovations to other HEIs, educational organisations and professionals (designers, futurist foresight experts, innovation specialists) and to policymakers in education, research and culture, education governmental departments, design councils, innovation agencies and civil society organisations.

Methodology
Our socio-cultural pedagogical approach includes connecting making, engagement, collaboration and critique in an anticipatory view on design learning, supported by qualitative inquiry methods to ensure feedback can be connected to individual and wider educational change and innovation processes. Close collaboration, exchanges in meetings and scheduled project and public events will happen across the project, mediated through its website.

Results, impact and benefits
Learners will be able to shift strategic, given practices and views to anticipatory ones in longer term professional design horizons to meet Europe’s societal futures. Teachers will apply futures design curricula and pedagogies to meet challenges of teaching design for the future. A key impact will be connecting Design Education, Futures Studies, professions, organisations and future-oriented HEIs. We will link to Erasmus and Design Education networks to multiply impact, from local to top European levels and to professional bodies and public dissemination avenues to maximise reach and uptake. Finally, we will position and project inputs into key education policy and strategy actions and UN sustainability goals and related social innovation programmes.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 447425 Eur

Project Coordinator

ARKITEKTUR OG DESIGNHOGSKOLEN I OSLO & Country: NO

Project Partners

• POLITECNICO DI MILANO
• THE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS LONDON
• FUNDACIO PRIVADA ELISAVA ESCOLA UNIVERSITARIA