Workshop context

While the aim of the ideation workshop is to raise awareness of ideation tools in generating and communicating ideas, equally important is the cultural context of the workshop, that is, how the workshop relates to the concerns of design in contemporary societies. To get started, each workshop has an ideation theme agreed beforehand, themes that can relate to, say a function, object, place or narrative. But also how the individual workshop theme reflects the complexity, diversity and ambiguity of an increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. But whereas design in recent decades have followed the path of playful postmodernism or been strongly influenced by economic neoliberalism and privatisation of the public sphere, the financial crisis of 2008, and the virus pandemic of 2020 suggest a renewed awareness of and interest in the greater role of design in society. That is, a role that embraces social inclusivity, sustainability issues and care for the environment as well as the possibility of a political re-engagement of design so absent from the design discourse since the 1980s. In short, the workshop addresses through its themes not just narrow personal interests in design but concerns that are affecting us all: What is design, what does it mean, what does it do?