International Frontier Forum on Design Education jointly held by Beijing Normal University School of Future Design and Royal College of Arts, UK

Day 1: discussing design in design schools

On the first day of the forum, keynote speeches on "What is the future of design schools?" were delivered by Dr. Gao Peng, Dean of BNU School of Future Design, members of the SFD Academic Committee including Prof. Wang Min, Prof. Xu Ping and Prof. Tony Brown, Prof. Naren Barfield, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Provost of RCA, Prof. Paul Anderson, Dean of the School of Design of RCA, and Dr. Nick de Leon, Executive Education and Knowledge Exchange Lead of RCA and the Initiator of the Service Design MA.

 “RCA’s partnership with society and industries aims to better integrate critical thinking and experimentation. It focuses on the connections between generalists and specialists, and emphasizes the importance between individual work and collaborative work”, said Prof. Naren Barfield.

“In service design, RCA explores technology, sustainability and life services while creating challenges. The curriculum of the School of Design should enable our students to think out of the box and encourage innovation for better research and experimentation experience through design,” said Prof. Paul Anderson.

Dr. Nick de Leon then introduced how the Service Design MA programme at the RCA was designed and developed with industry, government and academic partners, saying that intelligence services would be the next research topic in service design. With AI, robotics, and data science, the services for the next generation could be intrinsically integrated to better serve the needs and personalities of the users in real-time. The Service Design MA at the RCA started in September 2012 with 20 students, in 2021 they welcomed 160 Masters and PhD level students.

Keynote speeches by Naren Barfield and Paul Anderson

Keynote speeches by Nick de Leon

Dr. Gao Peng said that the School of Future Design is grounded in cross-disciplinary research in arts, technology and education, and covers three research directions: Design and Future Production and Lifestyle, Art and Technology, and Design and Education. The School has gathered a group of distinguished scholars and experts who will work with students together to shape and lead the future.

Prof. Wang Min stated, “education, as the foundation, determines the direction and level of China’s design development. The concept conversion from “future-oriented” to “facing the future” will profoundly change the internal structure and external ecology of the design education system. The development of the School of Future Design is rooted in the belief that we need to create a better future lifestyle from now on”.

“The future to be designed determines what education is needed today. Education itself is an industry linking history and the future. What we urgently need is categorizing, standardizing and improving the current conditions and problems and seeking the path of China’s design education development,” said Prof. Xu Ping.

“Art and design are interrelated for mutual promotion. While digitization is happening and evolving, we need to be fully prepared for the new environment”, said Tony Brown.

Remarks by Gao Peng

Remarks by Wang Min

Remarks by Xu Ping

Remarks by Tony Brown

Advanced Course: Service Design + Innovation Design

From December 7 to 10, the forum focused on “Service Design and Innovation Design” at the RCA, including service design seminars, workshops, innovation design engineering and Innovation RCA sessions, to explore the value of service design and innovation design in the post-pandemic design education.

“The Royal College of Art was delighted to join BNU for the launch of the School of Future Design. It was a pleasure to spend 5 days introducing the participants to the RCA’s post graduate teaching philosophy which is underpinned by research, practice, innovation and collaboration with external organizations. We wish the School of Future Design great success and look forward to further exchange activities in the future.” said Peter Christian, Head of RCA Executive Education.

Prof. Clive Grinyer, exchanging ideas with guests

Prof. Clive Grinyer, Head of Programme Service Design of RCA, introduced the course curriculum, course logic and teaching methods of Service Design MA at RCA. He said, “Service design is an interdisciplinary discipline, and its core is to identify problems and solve them. As the world is slowly recovering from the pandemic, we need more design, especially those caring design propositions, such as human condition, climate choice, new purchasing methods, urban life, future technology, etc., and these require service designers to integrate business thinking to improve and complete their designs, so that service design can help us to create a better world.”

Gareth Loudon,  exchanging ideas with RCA alumni and guests

Gareth Loudon, Head of Programme Innovation Design Engineering and Global Innovation Design, introduced the current development of the Innovation Design Engineering (IDE) MA program, stating that the interdisciplinary approach applied at the RCA focuses on exploring and developing impactful innovations through critical observation, design thinking, experimentation, advanced engineering technologies and enterprise activities.

Photo of the International Frontier Forum

Photo of group discussion

Photo of the workshop discussion

Faculty of BNU School of Future Design and guests at the forum had in-depth discussions and exchanged ideas with the faculty at the RCA on the current situation and difficulties of Chinese design schools, hoping to draw on the experience to facilitate design education in China, to establish a more dynamic teaching system and improve the quality of design education.

The School of Future Design of Beijing Normal University and the Royal College of Arts jointly organized the "International Frontier Forum on Design Education", to bring together outstanding design educators from home and abroad to discuss the development strategies of design schools and find the path of future service design and innovation education development.

The forum has obtained positive feedback from representatives from 30 universities and the guests from industries, who thought it was inspiring for design education today and we’re looking forward to the successful development of the BNU School of Future Design.