May 20, 2012

The Blank Sheet Project: The Power of Creativity

The Blank Sheet Project is an initiative from Arjowiggins Creative Papers, aiming to inspire creative excellence by encouraging individuals and businesses to be more innovative, thoughtful and sustainable. It asks creative professionals, given a blank sheet of paper “How will you leave your mark?”

From its introduction in 2010, The Blank Sheet Project has gone on to address and inspire a global audience of young minds. To promote its message, Arjowiggins Creative Papers currently is collaborating with two eminent organizations: D&AD and One Young World.

Sir John Hegarty, founder and global creative chairman of advertising agency BBH, in a forthright interview with D&AD Chief Executive Tim Lindsay, discloses surprising and spontaneous confessions on creativity.  His call for “game-changing” creativity reinforces The Blank Sheet Project’s message to think again — and think differently.

In choosing Hegarty to present his insights from The Blank Sheet Project, Jonathan Mitchell, business director of Arjowiggins Creative Papers says, “We believe that whatever our profession, we each have the opportunity to use the power of creativity to truly leave our mark. In Sir John Hegarty, we have a creative leader of world renown who shares this belief and isn’t afraid to express sometimes uncomfortable insights to inspire us and motivate the next generation to be great.”

Geographics: Design, Education, and the Transnational Terrain – Call for Proposals

For many design educators working in different parts of the world today, design practice is taking place in what may be called a transnational context.

The boundaries that define the field of higher education have become increasingly fluid, and professors, students, programs, and curricula are moving back and forth between different regions of the world as never before.

The design projects, research, and institutions that result retain a unique cultural complexity because they promote meanings and values that often transcend the cultures and boundaries of the nations within which they originate.

Taking place at the East-West Center and the University of Hawai’i in Honolulu, the conference, Geographics: Design, Education, and the Transnational Terrain will provide international design educators, scholars and practitioners the opportunity to share examples of design programs, research, and projects that have been implemented within a transnational context.

Deadline for proposals is February 15, 2012.

more: aigageogfx.com/files/GEO_FINAL_CALL_PROPOSALS.pdf(48)

Restarting Britain: Design Education and Growth

To create tomorrow’s innovators our education system needs to learn from the best businesses in the world. Companies like Apple, Dyson, and JCB integrate design as engines of innovation,” commented David Kester, Chief Executive of the Design Council. “It’s time for our education system to follow suit. We need to shift from a system that encourages discrete specialist subjects to mix but remain unchanged, towards an integrative system that promotes adaption as skills needs change. Put simply, our High Schools need to be ‘iSchools’.”

This inaugural report from the Design Commission explores the link between the UK’s national design capacity, and economic growth in the 21st century. In so doing, it describes and analyses the design skillset, assesses the current strengths in the field of design education, and compares those to the practices of other nations. It sets out the current threats to the ongoing successful delivery of design education and what the Design Commission believe the UK must do now to continue to compete.

Read the report
Download the full report
Download the pamphlet (executive summary)

Towards a creative Australia: the future of the arts, film and design.

Creativity is increasingly recognised and celebrated for its contribution to cultural development, economic growth and social harmony; but it’s also intrinsically good. We value our artists, film-makers, designers, authors, playwrights and performers because they entertain us, challenge us and inspire us.

Australian cultural endeavour feeds the roots of our creativity; it helps preserve and protect the storehouses of the nation’s memory; it supports and sustains our disadvantaged and marginalised communities; and it shapes and defines our shared national identity.

Australian culture, in all its various forms and guises, is interwoven with the philosophy and the spirit of our nation, it is at the heart of who we are and is integral to the way we see ourselves and how others see us. Through film, writing and performance we try to define our unique experience, tell our own stories in our own voices and make our mark on the world.

Read more about The future of the arts, film and design here.

Creative Capital: Arts and Culture Strategic Directions for Queensland

Creative Capital

Creative Capital: Arts and Culture Strategic Directions for Queensland is an opportunity to reflect on where we have come over the past five years and how we can build on our successes into the future.

The name ‘Creative Capital’ highlights that arts and cultural ‘riches’ or capital, found in every part of the state, make a vital contribution to the social and economic capital of Queensland.

Read below about the Creative Capital paper, forum and blog posts happening in December 2011.

Creative Capital forum

The Creative Capital forum will be held at the State Library of Queensland on Wednesday 14 December 2011. It will bring together creatives, business and civic leaders and educators to reflect on the past, present and future of Queensland arts and culture.

Speakers at the forum include Robert Forster (musician), Fiona Foley (visual artist), Lucas Stibbard (performing artist), Lenine Bourke (cultural development worker), Scott Hutchinson (business leader), Madeline Veenstra (creative entrepreneur), Kevin O’Brien (architect), Mayor Bob Abbot (local government councillor) and Dr Julianne Schultz AM (academic, writer and editor). The Honourable Anna Bligh MP, Premier and Minister for Reconstruction, and The Honourable Rachel Nolan MP, Minister for Finance, Natural Resources and The Arts, will also address the forum.

You can watch a live webstream of the forum from 9am – 12:15 pm on Wednesday 14 December 2011 via Gigtv.

Read more here.

QUEENSLANDERSIGN

constellation awardLearn more about this exciting initiative raising the profile and understanding of good design and design thinking in Queensland.

Good design is all about attitude. Sure, it needs to tick all the right boxes: be sustainable, functional, beautiful, accessible, ethical and enduring. But truly great design is the result of something more thoughtful, more instinctive. It is the product of the designer’s deeply held belief that they can make something better – that they can improve the way we live and enjoy every day.

QUEENSLANDERSIGN is all about focusing this energy on thinking about how we, as a state, can be better designed – from our footpaths and bridges, to our schools and our hospitals, everything you can imagine – for the benefit of everyone.

Visit Designing a better Queensland now!

Announcing the 2012 TED Prize Winner – The City 2.0

TED is pleased to announce the winner of the 2012 TED Prize.

For the first time in the history of the prize, it is being awarded not to an individual, but to an idea. It is an idea upon which our planet’s future depends.

The 2012 TED Prize is awarded to….the City 2.0.

The City 2.0 is the city of the future… a future in which more than ten billion people on planet Earth must somehow live sustainably.

The City 2.0 is not a sterile utopian dream, but a real-world upgrade tapping into humanity’s collective wisdom.

The City 2.0 promotes innovation, education, culture, and economic opportunity.

The City 2.0 reduces the carbon footprint of its occupants, facilitates smaller families, and eases the environmental pressure on the world’s rural areas.

The City 2.0 is a place of beauty, wonder, excitement, inclusion, diversity, life.

The City 2.0 is the city that works.

The TED Prize grants its winner $100,000 and “one wish to change the world.”   Individuals or organizations who wish to contribute their ideas to a TED Prize wish on behalf of The City 2.0 should write to tedprize@ted.com

Read more here.