The Design History Society in Barcelona organized their annual conference from 7 to 10 September 2011. The theme this year was Design Activism and Social Change. 'It's time to investigate the history and development of design activism', writes conference chairman Guy Julier. 
Philosopher Henk Oosterling, known from the Premsela 'Dasein as Design' Lecture, was one of the keynote speakers. Premsela's programme manager Roel Klaassen was participating in the closing discussion about Design Activism and Design Futures and chairing one of the Theorizing Design Activism sessions.
CTRL-ALT-Design
During the conference, Roel Klaassen and Maria Neicu were presenting their contribution: CTRL-ALT-Design. Roel Klaassen is a former programme manager at Premsela. Maria Neicu is studying for her second MA in International Performance Research at the University of Amsterdam. Her academic background is in communication and culture and she is involved with social issues.
Klaassen and Neicu assert in their paper that solving global problems is more necessary than ever. However, in order to make this intention reality, the profession will have to relinquish control. With today's technology, anyone can design and open design provides unprecedented opportunities to make the world a better place. But even if people are able to solve their own problems by making and adapting products, designers will still be necessary in the future. 'The social problems we face at the beginning of the new millennium are more challenging than ever and we have no unequivocal solution or customary methods for solving them. Design thinking could help. However, it is a methodology largely based on 20th-century thinking and there could be a catastrophic learning process as people search for solutions within a system that has none for the problems at hand,' according to Klaassen and Neicu.
Klaassen and Neicu assert in their paper that solving global problems is more necessary than ever. However, in order to make this intention reality, the profession will have to relinquish control. With today's technology, anyone can design and open design provides unprecedented opportunities to make the world a better place. But even if people are able to solve their own problems by making and adapting products, designers will still be necessary in the future. 'The social problems we face at the beginning of the new millennium are more challenging than ever and we have no unequivocal solution or customary methods for solving them. Design thinking could help. However, it is a methodology largely based on 20th-century thinking and there could be a catastrophic learning process as people search for solutions within a system that has none for the problems at hand,' according to Klaassen and Neicu.
