Past Salons

Friday 9 June, 2017

The Performance of Protest: a panel on visual culture and aesthetics
Institute of Contemporary Arts

 

 

 

 

Thursday 26 January 2017

Alt.Econ: how does design create alternative economies in contemporary culture?

Angewandte Innovation Lab, University of Applied Arts Vienna

 

Chair:  Professor Guy Julier, Professor of Design Culture, University of Brighton and V&A / University of Brighton Principal Research Fellow in Contemporary Design. Author of Economies of Design, (Sage 2017).

Panel
Dr Martina Grunewald, Postdoctoral Researcher in Design History and Theory, University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Professor Alison Clarke, Chair of Design History and Theory, University of Applied Arts Vienna and Director of the Victor J. Papanek Foundation, University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Dr Ozlem Savas, Assistant Professor, Bilkent University, Turkey.
Matthias Tarasiewicz, new media artsist and technology theorist, co-founder of Research Institute for Arts and Technology

 

Friday 20 May, 2016

Queer Craft…?

Chair: Laura Carderera, Residency Coordinator, V&A

Panel:
Dr Julia Bryan-Wilson, Associate Professor, Modern and Contemporary Art, University of California, Berkeley
Catherine Flood, Curator of Disboedient Objects and Curator, Prints, Victoria and Albert Museum
Dr Joseph McBrinn, Reader, Art and Design Institute, University of Ulster
Conor Wilson, Artist and Senior Lecturer at University of the West of England
Dr Matt Smith, Artist in Residence at Victoria and Albert Museum and Lecturer at University of Brighton

 

 

 

Friday 22 April, 2016

Design Culture Salon 20: What are the values of design and making in China?

Chair:  Professor Guy Julier, University of Brighton/Victoria and Albert Museum

Panel: Zara Arshad, founder-editor Design China blog
David Li, Director Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab
Lit Liao, Founder Litchee Lab, Shenzhen
Tom Saunders, Senior Research, Nesta

 

 

 

Friday 19 February, 2016

How does the design studio support emergent design practices?

 Chair: Dr Lucy Kimbell, Director of Innovations and Insights Hub, University of Arts, London.

Panel:
Professor Daniel Charny, Professor of Design, Kingston University and Director at From Now On
Dr Ignacio Farias, Assistant Professor at the Munich Center for Technology in Society and the Department of Architecture of the Technishe Universität München.
Yiyun Kang, V&A Artist in Residence
Professor Peter Lloyd, Professor of Design, University of Brighton
Dr Alex Wilkie, Senior Lecturer in Design, Goldsmiths, London

 

 

 

Friday 20 November, 2015, Victoria and Albert Museum

Is designing for behaviour change ‘creepy’?

Chair: Dr Dan Lockton, Research Tutor, Innovation Design Engineering, Royal College of Art

Panel Dr Simon Blyth, Founder of Actant design research consultancy
Professor Peter John, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, UCL
Dr Phoebe Moore, Senior Lecturer, Department of Law and Politics, Middlesex University
Dr Alison Powell, Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communication, LSE. Dr Jessica Pykett, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Birmingham

 

 

 

 

Friday 23 October, 2015, 6:30pm, Clore 55, V&A

Imitation, Inspiration or Theft: What does intellectual property mean in a global design economy?

The fine line between imitation and inspiration has always been a source of contention and debate in design. However the issue has come under greater scrutiny of late, in the context of the increasingly central role played by China and India in the global design economy. Here, the terms Intellectual Property (IP) function in different ways to Europe and America. This Salon will explore the possibilities and complexities of finding a common understanding of Intellectual Property across global design cultures and consider the implications of this for the future of design practice.

Chair

Professor Guy Julier, University of Brighton Principal Research Fellow in Contemporary Design

Panel
Tania Phipps-Rufus, Doctoral Candidate in intellectual property and the cultural industry of fashion, University of Bristol
Mark Waugh, Head of Innovation, DACS
Arti Sandhu, Assistant Professor of Fashion Design at Columbia College, Chicago
Dr Landé Pratt, Senior Lecturer, Media and Communication, Kingston University, London
Dr Sarah Teasley, Head of Programme, History of Design, RCA

 

 

Friday 10 April, 2015, Clore 55, British Galleries

What does design do for citizenship in the age of the consumer?

 

Notions of the consumer and the citizen have become curiously entangled in recent years. In many cases, design has been the culprit in delivering this entanglement. Advertisements, branding and luxury lifestyle products increasingly conflate buying and consuming with individual agency on a variety of public issues, from climate change to online privacy. But how meaningful is this association? If design has been a powerful tool in merging notions of consumerism and citizenship, then how might it be used as a tool to reverse this? What other forms of citizenship are available to design with?

Chair: Guy Julier, Professor of Design Culture, University of Brighton and Victoria and Albert Museum.

Panel:
Irenie Ekkeshis, New Citizenship Project
Gordon Hush, Head of Product Design, Glasgow School of Art
Noortje Marres, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Goldsmiths
Barry Quirk, Chief Executive of Lewisham Council
Leanne Wierzba, Winchester School of Art/V&A Research Fellow in Craft/Luxury

 

 

Friday 13 March, 2015
Design Culture Salon 15: How does design address immobilities in our society?

 

Clore 55, British Galleries

While Design Culture Salon 10 looked at the concept of movement in urban culture, this salon focuses on spaces of immobility to reveal some of the inconsistencies and resistances in contemporary design culture. Bodies of the disabled, ill and elderly are difficult to find in design history, while contemporary design is often more eager to engage in idealized forms of engineering the urban mobile citizen. So, how can the enabling capacities of design be improved? What are the challenges and obstacles here? How can they be overcome? What can designers learn from cultural theories and histories of the representation of the body and from a wider reading of disability studies?

Chair: Rob Imrie, Professor of Sociology, Goldsmiths, London

Panel:
Ana Carden-Coyne, Co-Director of Cultural History of War, University of Manchester and author of Reconstructing the Body
James Grant, Senior Communications Manager, Transport for London
Graham Pullin, Course Director of Interaction Design at the Duncan Jordanstone College of Art, University of Dundee and author of Design Meets Disability
Carmen Papalia, V&A and Adam Reynolds Memorial Resident, in partnership with Shape
Alison Thomson, PhD Candidate, Goldsmiths, London

 

Design Culture Salon 14: How dependent is the design profession on cultures of migration?

Friday 20 Feb
6:30pm-8:30pm

Clore 55, British Galleries

Immigration has been a bargaining point between the political parties in the run up to the 2015 election and can be seen to particularly divide attitudes to working cultures in the UK. Economic experts point to the vital and invigorating role immigration plays in our national economy. Design historians have established that the UK profession was carved out by émigré designers. Sociologists and geographers continue to note the lasting and continuing importance of global cultures of design in shaping the UK creative economy. Design Culture, as a research discipline, studies the migration of ideas, cultures, aesthetics and styles as well as practices and people. Building on these perspectives, this Design Culture Salon asks the following questions: Does immigration mean something particular and distinct in design? If designers are in the business of innovating and instigating change, is it an advantage for the designer to be an ‘outsider’? Or even further, is the designer necessarily an outsider? Could the design profession exist without these cultures of immigration? Is the identity of the immigrant or émigré an anachronism in an increasingly global design economy?

Chair: Guy Julier, Professor of Design Culture, University of Brighton and Victoria and Albert Museum.

Panel:
Robin Kinross, Design critic and historian, Founder of Hyphen Press
Alison Clarke, Professor and Chair of Design History and Theory, University of Vienna
Max Nathan, Senior Research Fellow, National Institute of Economic and Social Research
Adrian Shaughnessy, Graphic designer, Associate Professor RCA, Founder of Unit Editions

 

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Design Culture Salon 13: How does age influence cultures of design?

Friday 9 January 2015
 

Creativity; intuition; innovation; experimentation: these words commonly punctuate design narratives in practice, research and in the media. They are also all, interestingly, most associated with youth culture. The designer’s career cycle appears to move in new directions with age. Design institutions such as D&AD promote the dynamism of the ‘new generation’ through its ‘New Blood’ scheme. So, what does this tell us about the relationship between age and design culture? How meaningful is this generational view of design practice? How is the career narrative of the designer framed in relation to cultures of age? To what extent is design a youthful skill, characterized by intuition and innovation, or is there a place for ‘design wisdom’ in contemporary society?

Chair: Malcolm Garrett, Graphic designer and Master of the Faculty of RDIs

Panel:

Professor Sean Nixon, Head of Sociology, University of Essex
Joseph Smith, Designer, Artist and Co-Founder of Makerversity
Alasdair Scott, Partner at C3UK
Susan Benn, Founder and President of Performance Arts Labs (PAL ltd)

 

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Design Culture Salon 12: Is innovation overrated and what is the role of design here?

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Design Culture Salon 11: How do fashion cycles and design culture interact?

Friday 14 November 2014
6:30-8:30pm

Clore 55, British Galleries

Fashion has featured very little in the conversations and debates generated in previous Design Culture Salons. This is surprising, given that the concepts of movement and mobility, central to the study of design culture, are also central to the study of fashion theory. Fashion also dominates how design is understood and consumed, particularly through the media. At the same time, the ‘trend’ orientated fashion system appears to be oppositional to those seeking to pave alternative systems and cultures of consuming design. So, how useful are the dynamics of fashion as a method of examining and understanding the role of design in contemporary culture? How can we compare the cycles of fashion and furniture design, for example? What can we learn from trend forecasters about design culture? What might account for the apparent separation of the academic study of cultures of fashion and design?

Chair:  Christopher Breward, Principal, Edinburgh College of Art

Panel:
Cher Potter, Research Fellow, V&A and London College of Fashion
Lisa White, Content Director, HomeBuildLife, WGSN
Marloes ten Bhomer, Designer and Fellow at Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University
Joanne Entwistle, Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries, Kings College, London

This event is free, but booking is essential.

 

Design Culture Salon 10: How is the urban cyclist designed?

Friday 10th October 2014
6:30-8:30pm

Clore 55, British Galleries

The way a society moves reveals much about the nature of its citizenship and what they deem to be important. Yet, not all forms of mobility or mobile bodies are equal. Some are designed to fit with mobile everyday life more than others. How is the urban cyclist designed? How does clothing, infrastructure (or lack of it) and policy presuppose a particular type of cyclist? How does one become a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ cyclist? How have our cycling pasts shaped our contemporary practices and what futures might be possible?

Chair: Kat Jungnickel, Lecturer in Sociology, Goldsmiths

Panel:
Rachel Aldred, Senior Lecturer in Transport, University of Westminster
Jenni Gwiazdowski, Founder and Director of the London Bike Kitchen
Carlton Reid, Executive Editor of BikeBiz and author of ‘Roads Were Not Built For Cars’
Justin Spinney, Lecturer in Human Geography, Cardiff University

Friday 7 March 2014, 1900-2030

Seminar Room One, Sackler Centre, Victoria & Albert Museum

‘Fourth Wave’ feminism has recently put gender politics back in the headlines and is impacting on the design of everyday objects, from the £10 note to Lego.

Female designers are also looking again at the gender politics of contemporary design practice, both in relation to the structure of the profession and through their designs. So, is gender politics still an issue in contemporary design? If so, how and why is this the case? How have gender stereotypes of the ‘woman designer’ changed? How can these politics be resolved and what can designers do about it?

Guest Chair: Dr Catharine Rossi, Kingston University

Panel
Marloes Ten Bohmer, Stanley Picker Fellow, Kingston University
Professor Teal Triggs, Associate Dean School of Communication, RCA
Simone Brewster, Spatial Designer
Sarah van Gameren, Designer

Friday 7 February, 1900h

Seminar Room 1:  Sackler Centre, Victoria & Albert Museum

In an economy no longer focused on mass production, designers have had to be innovative and inventive in finding models through which they can start their businesses and establish a public profile. In the past, this has sometimes meant designing their own briefs and starting collectives which utilise networks formed at design school.  In recent years, the success of crowd-sourcing sites such as Kickstarter have formalised this start-up model , creating a template for this process to happen. So how has this changed things? What are the implications both on design practice and on relationships with the consumer and the client? What are the support structures for emerging designers and how does this challenge ‘expertise’ or professional status?

Guest Chair:  Liz Farrelly, University of Brighton.

Andrew Merritt, Something and Son
Nicolas Roope, Founder of Hulger and Poke
Alexandre Bettler, Designer, DesignMarketo
Héloïse Parke, Curator, The Aram Gallery
Jonathan Sapsed, Principal Research Fellow, CENTRIM, University of Brighton.

Friday 10th January, 1900h
Seminar Room 1:  Sackler Centre, the Victoria & Albert Museum

From banking to national security, the notion of transparency has been a popular subject of late and was high on the agenda at the G8 summit last year. Transparency, openness and provenance are also emerging as strong principles in contemporary design practice, across a range of disciplines. But what does transparency mean in a design context? Does it mean different things to different people? How has it changed the relationship between the designer and consumer? How has open data changed things? What are the ethics and politics of transparency and is this is being adequately factored into design practice?

Chair: Kevin Walker, Head of Information Design, RCA

Jessi Baker, Founder of Provenance and PhD Candidate, UCL
Alison Powell,  Assistant Professor in Media and Communication, LSE
Martin Dittus, Trustee and Founding Member of London Hackspace
Gillian Youngs, Professor of Digital Economy, University of Brighton

Friday 13 December, 1900h-2030h

Seminar Room One, Sackler Centre, V&A 

How do new food systems impact on our towns and cities? 

Chair:  Gabriel Wulff (University of Brighton)

Panellists:

Alma Clavin, (Liveable Cities, CPRE)
Doina Petrescu, (University of Sheffield)
Matt Skinner, (FutureGov)
Andre Viljoen, (University of Brighton)

Food has re-emerged as a central concept in debates regarding how we design our cities.Current practices linked to the growth, production and distribution of food are being questioned as contemporary cities become larger and more populated.In these landscapes, the desire to re-design our relationship to food is reflected in the emergence of alternative food focused urban initiatives – from community supported agriculture systems (CSAs) to rooftop gardens and urban farming projects. Re-thinking food has also been combined with the delivery of public services, improving the urban environment and enhancing community cohesion. These projects are varied in their methods,visions and goals and have socio-cultural, economic and environmental repercussions, as well as the potential to catalyse a politically active citizenship. What can we learn from these food based initiatives? What are their aims and approaches and how far do they achieve their goals?

Tuesday 30 April, 1900h-2030h
Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre, V&A
How does design produce new publics?

Panellists:
Adam Drazin (University College London)
Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe (Central St Martins)
Joe Harrington (Innovation Unit)
Noortje Marres (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Jana Scholze (V&A)

If, according to Bourdieu, designers are ‘cultural intermediaries’ who undertake ‘needs production’, how are these linked? How might designers create new social practices? Is this merely a commercial strategy (as in ‘brand communities’)? What role does open design or co-creation have in this process? How does the material function in such a process?

Panelists

Adam Drazin is an anthropologist who works on design and with designers. He obtained his PhD in anthropology at UCL in 2001, on the material culture of care in Romania. For the last three years, he has been lecturing in Ireland at Trinity College Dublin on themes including material culture, globalisation and migration, gender and the home. Adam is runs the MA programme in Culture, Materials and Design at University College London. See http://ethnodesign.org.

Lorraine Gamman and Adam Thorpe direct Design Against Crime at Central St Martin’s, University of the Arts, London. This unit takes a social innovation approach via practice-led design to reducing the incidence and adverse consequences of crime through products, services, communications and environments. They are authors of several related books and articles and frequent conference speakers. Adam Thorpe is a Reader at CSM and runs the Vexed Generation design partnership. Lorraine Gamman is Professor in Design Studies at CSM and recently has been researching design issues linked to public space raised by street furniture design and graffiti, as well as street urination and other social design issues.

Joe Harrington has experience working as a service design consultant across the public sector, leading projects from social research with vulnerable groups to transformation work at the service delivery, strategic, organisational and policy levels. He is a partner at the Innovation Unit and co-leads the service design practice. Before this he was leading the public sector work at Engine for several years before working with both Participle and Uscreates. He has led projects with organisations including; developing a collaborative commissioning framework and culture change programme for Lambeth PCT; generating an innovative model to support complex families in Bucks and a range of design led work across the NHS and Local Authorities.

Noortje Marres is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Director of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process at Goldsmiths, University of London. Much of her recent work is on object-centred approaches to participation, which seek to appreciate the role of things, settings and environments in the organisation of publics. Noortje has collaborated with designers on various occasions, most recently, during her project Issue Mapping Online (www.issuemapping.net) and the ESRC-funded project Designing Energy Communities (ECDC). Her book Material Participation: Technology, the Environment and Everyday Publics was published last summer.

Jana Scholze is Curator of Contemporary Furniture and Product Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She is author of Medium Ausstellung: Lektüren musealer Gestaltungen in Oxford, Leipzig, Amsterdam und Berlin and exhibitions reviews editor for the journal Design and Culture.

Guy Julier, University of Brighton Principal Research Fellow in Contemporary Design, will be chairing.

 

Tuesday 26 March, 1900h-2030h
How does design function in a recession?

Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre, V&A
Panelists:
Irena Bauman (Bauman Lyons Architects)
Jeremy Till (Central St Martins)
Bianca Eizenbaumer and Fabio Franz (Brave New Alps)
Louis Moreno (University College London)

 

Tuesday 26 February 1900h-2030h
Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre, V&A

Panelists:
Jody Boehnert (EcoLabs)
Jonathan Chapman (University of Brighton)
Noel Douglas (Occupy Design)
Paul Micklethwaite (Kingston University)

Climate change, resource scarcity, economic crisis and struggles for social justice have given rise to new movements in design that seek more than creative and commercial fulfilment. What models of design practice support this? How might design work with other activist practices? What role do universities and museums have? How can design activism work with marginality?

The Panel

Jody Boehnert is an environmental communicator, designer, educator and activist who lives in Brixton. She is founding director of EcoLabs (http://eco-labs.org)
– a non-profit studio visualising complex environmental issues and recently completed an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded PhD titled: ‘The Visual Communication of Ecological Literacy: Design, Learning and Emergent Ecological Perception’ at the University of Brighton. Her research focuses on how images work to help audiences understand complex environmental issues in order to build capacity (and agency) to respond effectively. More recently, she worked with Noel Douglas establishing Occupy Design UK, a group that aims not only to use design skills so support activism, but to use the political and cultural critiques developed by social movements to transform design.

Jonathan Chapman  is Professor of Sustainable Design at the University of Brighton. His research, teaching and consultancy seek to reveal the behavioural phenomena that shape patterns of consumption and waste. Over the past decade, his teaching, consultancy and research have grown from their early polemical and activist roots, to developing strategic counterpoints to the unsustainable character of contemporary material culture. Described in New Scientist as a ‘mover and shaker’, Professor Chapman’s work has
critical acclaim by CNN International, New Statesman, New York Times, The Independent, New Scientist and numerous features on BBC Radio 4. He has written two books; his monograph, Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences & Empathy (Earthscan, 2005) and his co-edited work, Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories: A Collection of Sustainable Design Essays (Earthscan, 2007). His sustainable design consultancy experience includes The Science Museum (UK), the London Design Festival (UK), Clarks International, FitFlop and Puma.

Noel Douglas is an artist, designer and activist whose practice is concerned with the relationship between aesthetics and politics, anti-capitalist uses of signs and graphic communication and more general themes of the privatisation and the commodification of space and popular culture. He is currently Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for the Design for Communication degree programme at the University of Bedfordshire.  He co-curated Signs of Revolt and was key to the establishment of Occupy Design UK. See also http://www.noeldouglas.net/.

Paul Micklethwaite  is a Senior Research Fellow in The Design School in the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture at Kingston University, UK, where he is course director of the MA Design for Development. His primary interests are in the impact of the sustainability agenda on the theory and practice of design, and emerging modes of design practice such as social innovation. He is co-author of the book Design for Sustainable Change: How design and designers can drive the sustainability agenda published by AVA Academia in 2011. Paul Micklethwaite is not a designer.

Guy Julier, chairing the Salon, is University of Brighton Principal Research Fellow in Contemporary Design at the V&A and Visiting Professor of Design Culture at the University of Southern Denmark.

 

Tuesday 29 January, 1900h-2030h
Is ‘making stuff’ back on the agenda?
Panelists:
Glenn Adamson (V&A)
Jocelyn Bailey (Policy Connect)
Daniel Charny (From Now On)
Nick Gant (Inheritable Futures Laboratory/University of Brighton)
Katie Hill (Sheffield Hallam University)

After decades of talk of ‘deindustrialization’ and the rise of service industries, it seems that manufacture and making are back in fashion. Politicians, TV producers and curators want to talk about stuff again. Why might this be so? Is there really a renaissance of materiality? How is this influencing design practice and the dynamics of consumption?

Glenn Adamson is Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Dr. Adamson is co-editor of the triannual Journal of ModernCraft, and the author of Thinking Through Craft (Berg Publishers/V&APublications), an anthology entitled The Craft Reader (Berg, 2010), and the forthcoming book The Invention of Craft (Bloomsbury/V&A, 2013).  His other publications include the co-edited volumes Global Design History (Routledge, 2011) and Surface Tensions (Manchester). He was the co-curator for the exhibition ‘Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 1970 to 1990’, which was on view at the V&A from September 2011 to January 2012.

Jocelyn Bailey is Head of Manufacturing, Design & Innovation at Policy Connect, an organisation that works with parliamentarians, business and the public sector to help improve policy. Within Policy Connect she is Manager of the Associate Parliamentary Design & Innovation Group. Over the last two years she has overseen Policy Connect’s expansion into a programme of work around manufacturing, including the Parliamentary campaign, ‘Made By Britain’. She has also worked at Blueprint magazine and Nissen Adams architects.

Daniel Charny is an independent curator and co-founder director at From Now On, a creative projects consultancy. He has recently joined as Professor of Design at KingstonUniversity in the Faculty of Art Design & Architecture. Between 2002 – 2010 he was the founding curator of The Aram Gallery for experimental and new design. His most recent curating project was ‘Power of Making’ at the Victoria and AlbertMuseum, seen by over 320,000 visitors it has become the V&A’s most popular free exhibition ever staged. As Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art, where he taught for 14 years,  he was a key member of the team that merged Industrial Design and Furniture Design into the Design Products department. His current projects include founding Fixperts.org encouraging fixing as a way of thinking and promoting creative social values through design.

Nick Gant is a designer, researcher and educator and has led programmes in design and craft as well as high-value, practice based research projects with international industrial partners. As a maker by training, his collaborative research and practice explores material and object meanings and languages, ethics and sustainability and locality and community. His exhibition ‘On Our Doorsteps – Local Design Activism’ at 100% Design 2012 curated makers who explore ‘local’ as a creative methodology and context. The ‘Sole Searching’ project is part of an ongoing collaboration with Tanya Dean includes the fabrication of highly crafted shoes made from waste materials which map a culture of makers and help establish methodologies for ‘meaningful material interactions’. Nick is also researching the interpretation and valuation of virtual, made objects through digital media.

Katie Hill is a design researcher who works across academia and the third sector using creativity and design to engage communities in social and environmental projects. She is currently working on several Arts and Humanities Research Council ‘Connected Communities’ projects some of which use making as tool for community engagement and learning. In the late stages of a PhD at the University of Brighton, her thesis is on developing design practice as an enabling process to support agency and empower people to make positive social and environmental change within their neighbourhoods, and she is interested in various aspects of making in terms of DIY culture and the use of craft within activism and as a social connector.

See Salon Reflection here.

 

 

Tuesday 27 November, 1900h-2030h
What can museums do with contemporary design?

Seminar Room One, Sackler Centre, Victoria & Albert Museum

This Design Culture Salon brings together curators and academics who have specialized in contemporary design. They share a concern for exploring new ways by which design can be represented, or, indeed, how to engage with contemporary questions and issues through design.

See Salon reflection here.

Panelists

Jan Boelen is founder and director of Kunstcentrum Z33 in Genke, Belgium. Its stated mission is to undertake ‘projects and exhibitions that encourage visitors to see everyday things in a new way.’ It arguably presents among the most exciting programmes of art and design exhibitions and events in Northern Europe.

Liz Farrelly lectures at the University of Brighton, is Editor-at-Large of the graphic design magazine Etapes and is currently researching a PhD on design museums for the 21st century. She is well-known as a design journalist and curator.

Stephen Feber is a social enterprise developer. His expertise goes across the cultural and development fields, with a special focus on museums. He has, in fact,  set up three museums, a five site museum service, a science centre and a children’s museum. He is currently Curator of the Future at London Transport Museum. His 2012 exhibition ‘Sense and the City’ focused on digital applications and its relationship to mobility, society and work.

Jane Pavitt curated a series of exhibitions at the V&A, included ‘Brand.New’, ‘Brilliant’, ‘Postmodernism:  Style and Subversion’ and the much acclaimed ‘Cold War Modern’. These shows broke new ground in how contemporary design could be exhibited. She is now Head of RCA/V&A History of Design MA Programme and Dean of Humanities at the Royal College of Art.

Louise Shannon has been Deputy Head of the Contemporary Department at the V&A for several years. In particular, she has been responsible for the museum’s engagement with digital design and its spectacularly successful Friday Lates series.

Guy Julier, chairing the Salon, took over from Jane Pavitt as the University of Brighton Principal Research Fellow in Contemporary Design in 2011. Among his current activities he is working through how non-material design — such as service design and social innovation — can be represented in the public, museum context.