During December 6-10, 2021, Beijing Normal University (BNU) School of Future Design (SFD) and the Royal College of Art (RCA) jointly organized International Frontier Forum on Design Education at BNU Zhuhai Campus with a combination of online and offline. Representatives from 30 universities across China, including the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China Academy of Art and Tongji University, together with guests from industries and enterprises attended this program.

On the first day, 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 Wang Min, Xu Ping and 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 Service Design.

Remarks by Gao Peng, Dean of the School of Future Design, Beijing Normal University

Keynote speeches by Naren Barfield, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Provost, and Paul Anderson, Dean of the School of Design, Royal College of Art

The forum covers service design and innovation design of RCA with online and offline academic activities including service design seminars, workshops, innovation design engineering course sessions, Innovation RCA exercises and graduate talks, etc., aiming to explore the value of service design and innovation design in design education in this post-pandemic era. Prof. Clive Grinyer, Head of Programme Service Design, introduced the course overview, method of teaching and case studies at RCA. Gareth Loudon, Head of Programme Innovation Design Engineering and Global Innovation Design, introduced the current development of the Innovation Design Engineering (IDE) MA program.

Prof. Clive Grinyer, Head of Programme Service Design of RCA, exchanging ideas with guests

Photo of the International Frontier Forum

Photo of the workshop discussion

  
Photo of group discussion

This BNU-RCA International Frontier Forum on Design Education aims to bring together domestic and international outstanding design educators to discuss the development strategy of design schools and search for the direction of service design and innovation education.