Design Campus: Design and Democracy

The inaugural summer school of the Design Campus at the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD, Museum of Decorative Arts and Design) investigated the many connections between design and democracy. The six-week-long program seeked to probe design and its involvement in democratic processes, showing the social and political dimension of the discipline. Simultaneously, the program advocated a broader understanding of design, where the borders between disciplinary silos are blurred and design becomes a tool for mediation and translation. In this way, design was highlighted as an instrumental tool in unraveling but also in changing democracy.

With two workshops and several lectures per week, the program was shaped to explore diverse areas of overlap between design and democracy. Starting with an initial encounter and assessment of complex, multilayered systems formed by polities and policies in the first week, we explored how these can be designed and shaped in designerly ways. The program continued with an investigation of how power structures manifest in physical and virtual ways, both visible and invisible. We also explored issues of choice and empowerment, seeking to understand who gets to choose and why – and delved into topics of activism and protest, exploring ways to resist and change. The program then investigated matters of solidarity, both embodied and in innovative settings, and concluded with a week of reflection on documenting and archiving the knowledge we share today.

Mentored by designers, architects, curators, writers and other practitioners, such as Gabriella Gomez-Mont, Basma Hamdy, David Mulder van der Vegt,  Nina Paim, Jerszey Seymour, Andrew Sloat, Space Popular, Studiolow, Vivien Tauchmann, Ramon Tejada and Giuditta Vendrame.

Read more about the program here.

Team: Amelie Klein, Vera Sacchetti, and the Design Campus team