Daniel Charny joins Kingston University as Professor of Design along side Mike Nelson as Professor of Fine Art, designers Dr Ben Kelly and Roberto Feo as Senior Research Fellows and Designer Marloes ten Bhömer as research fellow all at the Faculty of Art Design & Architecture.

University for the Creative Arts Research & Enterprise invited Daniel Charny to give one of two keynote presentations alongside musician Matthew Herbert on their Staff Conference Customise! themed day. The talk entitled [Insert Title Here] was a joint conversation/presentation with Professor Ulrich Lehmann surveying and reflecting on the impact of MC (Mass Customisation).

The Crafts Council of Irelands Future Makers award ‘rewards excellence in craftsmanship and innovation for work created by makers who are embarking on a career in a craft-based discipline. The FM award provides practical support and professional encouragement to a craftsperson at a critical point in their career.’ The assessment criteria are quality, technical expertise, new and innovative ideas or processes and potential for future development. In short: imaginative use of skills. 2013 Future Makers assessors: Peter Sheehan & Daniel Charny met the Crafts Council of Ireland team in Kilkenny to see and discuss the shortlisted pieces.

On Saturday 16th of February alumni of Platform 10 study group from RCA years 2003 – 2013 met at Bunhill Fields Burial Grounds off City Road to reflect and celebrate past adventures. The invitation sent out by Nick Gardner triggered an international flurry of emails and resulted in some 30 representatives attending the event.

Royal Society of the Arts (RSA) Design Directors Nat Hunter and Sophie Matthews commissioned Daniel Charny to curate the stand of their new perception changing initiative The Great Recovery at 100% Design 2012. The stand, designed by Thomas.Matthews, presented a collaboration with Islington Council’s repair and reuse shop Bright Sparks founded by Diye Wariebi of Digibridge combining a 3d printer making missing parts (see first pict below of Jim with his Emaker Huxley). Other exhibits included new designs reusing discarded components by recent RCA graduate Gaspard Tine-Beres and hosted the launch of Fixperts.org pilot project (more about how this project soon).

Warsaw Academy of Fine Art Design department are setting Fixperts as a project for their design students and recent graduates of a group called PG13 lead by Tomek Rygalik. The launch of first Fixperts school project collaboration, was announced by Daniel Charny during the dynamic and inquisitive Lodz Design Festival 2012. PG13 will run the project in their first term this year and results of their Fixfilms should be up on the Fixperts.org website by end of January 2013. Next up for Fixperts: James Carrigan will be talking about the project at Retune, a creative technology conference in Berlin on Friday 26 October.

This years London Design Festival started for Daniel Charny with the curating of the Great Recovery stand for RSA at 100% Design, designed by Thomas Matthews; then talking at the first Global Design Forum with Thomas Heatherwick about working with clients; the next day with Monocle’s design editor Hugo Macdonald about the LDF role in generating new work see podcast on Section D #50. Day 5 as ‘Design Brain’ on Dezeen Live with Marcus Fairs talking about authenticity; Day 6 was judging and presenting at Be Open Think Tank design awards; and day 6 was the most exciting launching of the new initiative Fixperts.org with James Carrigan and the amazing Fixperts team.

As part of the Victoria and Albert Museum events celebrating British design and creativity from 1948 to the present day Design and… Education is the first in a series of panel discussions at the V&A’s Sackler Centre set to question and critique how this legacy has come to be and if it is to be sustained how should it be developed. Chaired by Wayne Hemingway, Hemingway Design, the panel includes: Martin Roth, Director, V&A; Daniel Charny, Royal College of Art; Sophie Thomas, Royal Society of Arts; Richard Seymour, Seymourpowell; Emily Campbell, Creative Education Academies and Mat Hunter, Design Council.

Design & Making is a series of essays exploring the importance of craft and design today published by Danish Crafts. Editor-in-Chief Max Fraser, editors Birgitte Jahn, Kristian Kastoft, Anders Kongskov Olsen, Nina Tolstrup. Contributors Daniel Charny, Magnus Englund, Grant Gibson, Lesley Jackson, Birgitte Jahn, William Knight, Libby Sellers and Paul de Zwart.

[images from Design & Making graphic design by Richard Ardagh Studio]

‘Brilliant’ is a new award initiated by friends as a tribute to the wonderful Eddie Mundy, which we all met at the Royal College of Art, first as an original student and then as a talented colleague and researcher. The prize given for the first time this year was established to celebrate his experimental approach, excellent studentship and remarkable attitude. The judging panel which included Noam Toran (the initiator of the award) Martino Gamper, Nick Williamason, Hilary French, Michael Marriot and Daniel Charny, met six talented graduates and their seriously impressive final 2nd year work at the MA RCA Design Products programme. The winner of the first award is James Thompson who received a contribution of £1500 towards the realisation of his work.

BE OPEN [a Russian foundation which acts as a creative think tank, aiming to stimulate innovation by looking towards design education] launched ‘INSIDE THE ACADEMY’ with DesignMiami by honouring achievements in educational approaches for creative design. A selection of European design schools presented work these included Le Cambre, Belgium; Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL), Switzerland; Hochschule Basel, Switzerland; Konstfack, Stockholm, Sweden; Sandberg Institute Amsterdam, The Netherland and Glasgow Fine Art School, UK.

The jury of international design experts included Ron Arad (Designer-Architect); Gilda Bojardi (Interni Magazine); Felix Burrichter (Pin-Up Magazine); Daniel Charny (Curator and Educator); Johanna Agerman Ross (Disegno Magazine) – selected the Sandberg institute to receive the BE OPEN Inside the Academy key note lectures Prize.

The following day Design Miami invited Ron Arad, Jurgen Bey and Daniel Charny to take part in a talk about ‘educating future innovators‘ moderated by the inquisitive Lucas Verweij.

Invited by Peter Griffith to do a friday morning talk at Nokia London headquarters, the conversation following the presentation was one of the more interesting I have experienced in the run of Power of Making talks. It brought up pertinent comments on perceptions of making in the future and I was struck by the dynamic positive outlook regarding designers involvement in production level understanding and detailing. Images of POM at V&A .

Core77 Design Awards jury teams for 2012 have been announced. Open to professional and student work C7712DA is a progressive international award that recognises the importance of speculative and experimental work. The Product Consumer jury team based in London is captained by Nicolas Roope and includes Sofia Lagerkvist and Sebastien Noel and Daniel Charny.

The Science Museum of London is planning an ambitious museum experience to tell the story of the Large Hadron Collider. As part of figuring out how to do this they invited a group of ‘creatives’ including Daniel Charny to join them on a very special visit to see the LHC control room and the experiments surrounding it. The kit is amazing but what it is really all about is the thousands of bright people from and around the world who share the goal to further knowledge.

This year Daniel Charny nominated five designs for Designs of The Year. RE-DESIGN FOR THE EMERGENCY AMBULANCE by HHCD and Vehicle Design, RCA. LIFELINE VIEW™ DEFIBRILLATOR (AED) by DEFIBTECH. EARTHQUAKE PROOF TABLE by Arthur Brutter and Ido Bruno. SOLAR SINTER by Markus Kayser. CARBON BLACK WHEELCHAIR by Andrew Slorance, iimaginedesign. The yearly ‘Design Oscars’ showcase from around the world is on now at the Design Museum London until 15 July 2012. Category award winners and the overall winner of the Design of the Year Award 2012 will be announced at an Awards event on 24 April 2012.

FormmuseumNu – debate ‘regarding the content and function of a future design museum’

2 February 2012, Konstfack,Svarta Havet, Stockholm.   16.00 – 18.00

Daniel Charny, Curator and advisor for the New Design Museum, London, Lidewij Edelkoort, Trend analyst, Trend Union, Paris. Nina Stritzer – Levine, Chief curator at Bard Graduate center Decorative Arts, New York. FromaFantasma / Andrea Trimarchi, Simone Farresin, Designer, Eindhoven. Mikael Schiller, Executive Chairman of ACNE Studios, Stockholm. Moderator: Annica Kvint, Design – and architecture critic, Stockholm.

Having an interesting time talking to students from various universities about Power of Making, a joint exhibition for the V&A Museum and Crafts Council. Next up is London Metropolitan University, Department of Architecture and Spatial Design where Course Leader is Diane Cochrane on 10 November details here. Then Camberwell College of Arts 3D Design and Designer Maker students lead by Karen Richmond and Maiko Tsutsumi. A little later in the month with the Royal College of Art Design Products students, a programme lead by Tord Boontje and early in December taking part in the TOOKIT lecture series for Kingston’s BA Product & Furniture Design where Jon Harison is Acting Course Director.

Held at the V&A during Power of Making Friday Late 30 September, The Institute of Ideas Satellite programme with guests Sandy Black, Daniel Charny, Angela Saini, Paul Reeves, Matt Warman and James Woudhuysen was an eclectic array of  responses to declarations and questions such as : ”Is the move towards the ‘creative economy’ simply the latest evolution of Adam Smith’s division of labour, or is there a serious risk of overspecialisation once the Chinese et al develop their designers alongside their factories? Should we embrace a return to the days of thrifty ‘make do and mend’ or celebrate mass production’s achievements in creating mountains of ‘stuff’? What skills are necessary to fuel a thriving manufacturing sector, and are there any barriers being placed on innovation today? What should the UK be making in the 21st century?.” [via Institute of Ideas]

Daniel Charny was invited by the Crafts Council of Ireland to talk about the ideas that shaped the exhibition Power of Making (currently on and free at the Victoria and Albert Museum till 02 January 2012) as keynote speaker at Ireland’s Future Makers Seminar next Thursday November 3rd, 10am – 4pm. Venue: Triskel Christchurch, Triskel Arts Centre, Tobin St, Cork.

The 23^rd International Conference of the Society for Medical Innovation and Technology (SMIT), chaired by the innovative surgeon Amir Szold invited a keynote on Design Thinking and how to work with designers. The talk by Daniel Charny reviewed the development of the profession of industrial design as a strategic practice suggesting to the inventors, engineers and medical innovation leaders to integrate design and designers from the very early stages of their projects. The talk also presented recent ground breaking work from the Helen Hamlyn Design Centre.