DESIS Europe Network
DESIS Europe Network
A Network on Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability in Europe
Press release:
Social innovation is pointed by all part as the next source of inspiration and force of implementation towards new and more sustainable ways of living. But if everybody from public authorities to business sector seem to be convinced that true social shift away from mainstream consumption society can only start at a local level the question of scaling-up remains: how to step forward from promising micro-experimentations to sustainable macro-transformations of places?
This topic was the core of the discussions of an original kind of meeting that brought together innovation labs, public authorities, social innovators and design schools in Malmö, this last 1st to 4th of June. These 4 days of case review and exchanges have been concluded with the launch of the DESIS Europe, a network of schools, institutions, companies and non-profit organizations on Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability in Europe. DESIS Europe will operate in the framework of DESIS international: a network started in 2008 and based on similar local networks in China, Brazil, US, Columbia and soon in India and Mid-Orient.
This movement is emerging from design schools and universities that, worldwide, recognise themselves as potentially powerful agent of change. And that operate to do that exploring social innovations in order to inspire new and more sustainable solutions for daily life, and using design-based approaches to mainstream them and facilitate their deployment. Examples are many: local trading systems, active welfare services, digital platforms for exchange and mutual supports outline the emergence of new forms of neighbourhoods; community supported agricultures, food purchasing groups, urban farming and collective orchards are defining new food networks; creative centres, based on different mix of cultural activities, social supports and capacity building emerge as new kinds of places where bottom-up entrepreneurship and sustainable transformations are incubated. Similar social dynamic is developing in community-based tourism; alternative mobility; health care networks picturing the emergence of a sustainable lifestyle.
DESIS network aims at 1/ exploring these initiatives worldwide and collect them in a catalogue of promising practices to give them more visibility; 2/ inspire new collaborative services, shared products and enabling systems and design them to facilitate their access to a wider share of the population; 3/ promote implementation of larger programmes of urban/regional sustainable development based on multiple local projects in synergy. The launch of DESIS Europe confirms a large series of such activities are already going-on in Milan, Paris, Malmö, Helsinki, Lancaster – where the core launch group initiate from. But many other European design schools and universities are moving in similar way and, of course, they will be invited to join the network and take action to develop this common approach. That is to foster in Europe and worldwide design for social innovation and sustainability!
More information at www.DESIS-Europe.org
Download the complete description of the constitution of DESIS Europe network
