Creascope: Design Your Life
Creascope is an annual international conference about the creative business and for creative industries in Kiev (Ukraine). The second edition took place on the 14th of June 2017. One of the speakers was Dutch creative director Simone de Waart (Material Sense). Polish trendwatcher Zuzanna Skalska (360 Inspiration), who has lived in Eindhoven since 1991, delivered the opening lecture.
The aim of the conference is to support the exchange of ideas, experiences, and inspiration from multidisciplinary experts, to share the information about recent research on design and the creative economy, to deliver new and inspiring ideas for creative industries and innovative businesses.
Lecture Zuzanna Skalska: ‘Design After Design’
Zuzanna Skalska stated that capitalism is creaking under its own weight and that we need an alternative: “A basic income for all is key in a non-market economy. This will allow people to volunteer for non-profit businesses, set up food co-ops, or design things using a 3d module. It will not stop people from working – those with well-paid, satisfying jobs would continue doing them – but it will stop people from having to do things that machines can do more easily and more safely.” Skalska believes that you can never change things by fighting the existing reality: “To change something, you need to build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. If we are going to build a new model, it means we have to change our definition of design.”
Skalska also conducted a workshop on ‘Redefining present and building speculative future scenarios’. She expects that many organizations will fail because of an inability to adapt or to change their business model to a multichannel reality in which boundaries between the government and citizens or the online and the physical world disappear.” Analyzing trends and translating them into innovation processes is a very new discipline, conducted by trendwatchers. One of the available methods is ‘360 Third Horizon’, which allows to analyze different issues around a subject in a very systematic way. Skalska: “Changing perspective and future context offers plenty of new opportunities as well different perceptions and views.”
Lecture Simone de Waart: ‘Materials make the difference!’
Simone de Waart showed examples of materials developments on our way to a more sustainable society: materials, crafts and technologies from the different perspectives of design, research and industry. She also presented conceptual examples from education to inspire the sense of materials.
De Waart sees materialization of products as the starting point for a design process but also changes in thinking about production and the connection of materials to products and services will help trigger the shift to a circular economy. Finally, De Waart reminded the audience of the importance of using less material and making more use of local resources or enabling a long-term emotional connection to products.