York Design Week 2021

  • Location
    York, United Kingdom
  • Attendance
    In-person and Online Event

With an exciting programme of exhibitions, workshops, installations, creative careers advice, presentations, and live music, you are invited to join us. Let’s find unexpected solutions to systemic problems through play, conversation, collaboration, and by taking a tumble into the unknown. From the city to the individual: how do we think global and act local, be creative, build communities, deepen our democracy, and reconnect with the natural world?

We’re living in challenging times. Multiple and complex issues around mental health and wellbeing, the housing crisis, the biodiversity and climate crises, poverty, inequality, racism, and increasing uncertainty about the future can often leave us feeling powerless and fearful. York Design Week 2021 sets out to ask: ‘what if we weren’t in such a pickle? What would that look, feel and be like, and how would we design a way there? Life is complex. An interconnected web of mass, energy, patterns and dark matter, that even our finest scientists struggle to comprehend and explain. How can we embrace this complexity, avoid reductive narratives and challenge over simplification in our day to day? How can we acknowledge and work with spectrums, understanding that there are not one or two sides to a story, but that there are always infinite perspectives? How can we find ways to champion diversity and become more than the sum of our parts? Coming out of the pandemic, how can we ensure that wellbeing remains at the heart of the conversation for our global recovery, and act on those lessons learnt over the past 18 months? How can we find a balance within complexity, to re-evaluate and re-address that fine balance between: work and play, individual and collective needs, our relationships - with one another and with the natural world, consumerism and sustainability, body and mind, composting and harvesting… How can we re-balance our economy to enable our planet and our people to thrive, how do we care better for ourselves to enable us to care better for others? Where is the sweet spot in this pickle? Let’s go to the ‘What If?’ Unlock our imaginations and dream beyond immediate needs, beyond the individual, beyond the community, beyond the nation state, beyond the present. Is there a shared dreamspace? Can we find it? What might happen if we allow ourselves to dream together? How can we dream to plan, to evaluate, to avoid unintended consequences of our actions, and create a more inclusive society? Dreaming beyond is a privilege, how can we be inclusive, so that we all find space and time to dream. How do we create safe spaces for dreaming? Imagine the possibilities that lay beyond the horizon, might we learn how to be good ancestors? Could we leave something more hopeful behind?

Tickets

Virtual Location

Venue

SPARK:York CIC
17-21 Piccadilly
YO1 9PB, York
United Kingdom

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