Art and design . . . and innovation (two videos)

Recently I was invited to speak at a conference for a national network of art and design educators in the Netherlands. This was the Skills 21 Symposium organised by Cultuurnetwerk and held, this year, in the northern city of Leeuwarden.

Having arrived nice and early, I popped outdoors to make this short two-minute video in which I outline a bit of my argument. Partly I’m talking about the role of art and design in innovation, which is crucial but is often overlooked in favour of technology and engineering. And partly I’m talking about how we can work with all of the innovative things that are being developed online, not by academics or researchers but by everyday enthusiasts, doing it just because they want to.

How can art and design teachers and professionals work with these developments without undermining them? Here I propose that it must be about:

• participating in networks,
• making things happen,
• and a kind of leadership which works with all these other people participating in the space.

Here’s the video:

I was also interviewed during the day, by Ralf Steenbeek of Cultuurnetwerk. That five-minute interview is mostly about the arguments of Making is Connecting, and appears here: