The meeting will include:
– introduction to show the scope, contents and structure of the PhD Cumulus Network;
– presentations of two Erasmus+ research projects which are being developed on PhD programs in Europe at the moment.

Speakers: Paola Bertola, Politecnico di Milano, Mark Evans, Loughborough University, Pieter Jan Stappers, TU Delft and Lorenzo Imbesi, Sapienza University of Rome.

– follow up on the development of the Cumulus PhD Network led by Chair of the network Lorenzo Imbesi, Sapienza University of Rome.

The aim of the Cumulus Ph.D. Network is to create a platform and activities where Ph.D. coordinators, faculty, and student community from the network can come together to collaborate and exchange learning.

Save the date:
Wednesday June 9 from 16:10 to 17:30 CET

Please check the overall program of the conference:
https://cumulusroma2020.org/

Wednesday June 9, 2021
9:30-10:50 Business, Strategy & Innovation CWG
11:10-12:50 New Eating Habits CWG
14:30-15:50 X-files CWG

Thursday June 10, 2021
9:30-10:50 Women in Design CWG
11:10-12:50 Leadership & Strategy CWG

Friday June 11, 2021
9:30-10:50 Contemporary Art CWG
9:30-10:50 Digital Art CWG
9:30-10:50 Service Design CWG
11:10-12:50 Art and Design Teacher Education and Pedagogy CWG
11:10-12:50 Fashion & Textile CWG
11:10-12:50 X-files CWG

Check the meeting descriptions below and the conference website:

ART AND DESIGN TEACHER EDUCATION AND PEDAGOGY (AADTE) CWG
FRIDAY 11 JUNE, 11:10-12:50

Within the Cumulus network there are a lot of expertise and knowledge in art and design pedagogy. We are interested in sharing and enriching this expertise. Cumulus Rome 2021 AADTE working group session will focus on distance and blended learning experiences, good practices and tools for development in the context of art and design education.

You are warmly welcome to join the meeting with a short introduction or case study presentation or just take part in discussions. If you are interested in giving a presentation, please contact Martti Raevaara (martti.raevaara@aalto.fi) and send your title and 3 key words by Fri 21.5.2021.
More information about the AADTE see our blog https://aadte.com/

BUSINESS, STRATEGY & INNOVATION CWG
WEDNESDAY 9 JUNE, 9:30-10:50

This working group deals about the relationship between design schools and companies in all their forms (training, partnership, professorship, incubator, etc.). It is also about the evolution of design as a strategic discipline of innovation in a socio-economic context disrupted by big shifts in ecological awareness, digital culture and the rise of artificial intelligence (robots).

The designer is increasingly called upon to take on the role of project manager able to put around the table, engineers, marketers, artists, philosophers, sociologists… all disciplines for a transversal sharing. Beyond his capacity to create and to represent, he/she must have an economic and managerial intelligence towards his/her production. As design has become a strategic discipline, it is likely that the careers of designers will evolve into strategic management positions for which knowledges of generating added value is preeminent.

CONTEMPORARY ART CWG
FRIDAY 11 JUNE, 9:30-10:50

The working group will discuss examples of how artists, educators and researchers are creating Design Culture(s) within Contemporary Art practice and research. It will consider this in relation to the Cumulus Community, so extending the debate on current issues, practices and research shared live at the Cumulus 2021 conference.

To facilitate this, there will be a project presentation on Creative and artistic place-making: creating a museology of Civic Dialogues during a pandemic.
– Simon Brown, Project Curator, National Justice Museum, UK
– Andrea Hadley-Johnson, Artistic Programme Manager, National Justice Museum, UK
– Dr Rhiannon Jones, University of Derby, UK.

This will be followed by an open platform for discussion. We will share ideas or acts of resilience, adaption and invention within Contemporary Art locating examples within a globalised frame of reference. The working group invites participation from individuals whose practice and/or research challenges notions of civic resilience, design cultures, current cultural, social, and economic challenges in art and design.

DIGITAL CULTURE CWG
FRIDAY 11 JUNE, 9:30-10:50

P-R-E is for “Practitioners meeting Researchers meeting Educators”. P-R-E is a collaborative series set by Cumulus Association and IxDA, Interaction Design Association.

Onboarding Together Alone – Remote transitions from School to Professional Life.
The global pandemic situation has impacted many aspects of design education and of the design practices. In multiple organisations, teams were obliged to go fully remote. Thanks to the wide use of digital tools, it even turns now into a new set of behaviours and habits, inside and outside the digital economy.

For many years, design education institutions have established connections with business and industry through internships and apprenticeship, as a way for young designers to gain experience in their creative skills. The full immersion in a workplace environment was an opportunity to improve soft skills required for young professionals : leadership, team spirit and collaboration, social rules, industry standards…
It’s now 2021, and we would like to discuss the actual meaning and relevance of this very experience of remote internships, both as a first touchpoint with the job market and as a valuable learning experience.

Perspectives will be shared by speakers before interactions with attendees.
Speakers:
– Dr. Mona Ismail, professor, Scientific College of Design, Muscat, Oman
– Sultan Shalakti, interaction designer, Amman, Jordan Lefteris
– Lefteris Heretakis, lecturer, IE University, Madrid, Spain
Co-moderators
– Eija Salmi, Cumulus Association, Helsinki, Finland
– Frederic Degouzon, Ecole de Design, Nantes, France
– Alok b. Nandi, IxDA and Architempo + Spread Design, Brussels

FASHION & TEXTILE CWG
FRIDAY 11 JUNE, 11:10-12:50

Theme: Towards Sustainable Fashion and Textiles

The aim of the Fashion & Textile Working Group meeting at Cumulus Roma 2021 is to provide the Working Group members with an opportunity to present and discuss their ongoing projects with international peers. The presentations include:

1. Fashion Societal, Economic & Environmental Design-led Sustainability (Fashion SEEDS) (45–60 minutes). Speakers: Piret Puppart (Estonian Academy of Art, Estonia); and Ulla Ræbild (Design School Kolding, Denmark). FashionSEEDS is a 3-year Strategic EU-funded Partnership (Sept. 2018–Nov. 2021) coordinated by UAL – London College of Fashion, in collaboration with Politecnico di Milano, Estonian Academy of Arts, and Design School Kolding. The project is developed by the network of university tutors and researchers using radical design-led approaches to envisage a fashion education system that nurtures graduates with the skills, capabilities, and knowledge of fashion design for sustainability. The outcome is presented on the FashionSEEDS platform, an open-source learning environment to be launched in June 2021. The teaching and learning materials are based on the four pillars of sustainability – environmental, economic, social, and cultural – and developed to meet tutors’ different needs in practice and theory to strengthen professional skills and critical thinking.

2. Sustaining Livelihoods for Textile Artisans (45–60 minutes). Speaker: Dr. Vandana Bhandari, Professor, National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, India. National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), New Delhi has engaged with over 750 artisans across 25 craft communities while conducting design workshops in rural and urban areas over the last 4 years. Over 100 faculty across NIFT centres and designers have worked on the USTTAD (Upgrading the Skills and Training in Traditional Arts and Crafts for Development) project. This workshop will present 3-4 textile crafts and discuss the key strategies for impact and growth employed in this national project. The aim for meaningful impact encompasses three broad areas – Craft excellence, Collaboration and Continuity. The intent is to foster a co-creation engagement between designers and artisans while staying true to the craft. At large, the project aims to empower the craft and artisans to adapt to evolving markets for sustainable livelihoods.

LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY CWG
THURSDAY 10 JUNE, 11:10-12:50

Collecting and Connecting the Dots. Small changes, big impacts.
How can we use the potentials of Cumulus as a network of globally connected university leaders to inform our institutional strategies, but also to contribute to a general change in design education on a larger scale? Our working group is informed through contributions from colleagues from more than 20 countries to exchange knowledge and best practices. With our learning and rhyzomatic structure we are about to build, being in flux, respecting and appreciating the different positions, expertise and perspectives on the world. Time to wrap up previous discussions around major transformations in design education and to explore missing perspectives and connect the dots to a bigger picture. The moment is now and we reflect on several topics:
– Encouraging and sharing emerging practices: how can we create a repository of the unconventional?
– Global collaborations, diverse perspectives: how can we create and promote meaningful interactions between faculty, students and external stakeholders?

In addition to our speakers each giving short and thought-provoking inputs from diverse contexts, all participants are invited to share cases from their universities to discuss how new aspects and the strategic orientation emerged and flourished.
Chairs: Philipp Heidkamp (KISD, Germany) and Teresa Franqueira (UA, Portugal),
Core team: Nur Abu Bakar (Lasalle, Singapore), Lolita Dutta (UID, India), Albert Fuster (ELISAVA, Spain), and Lene Tanggaard (Kolding, Denmark)
Our working group was growing constantly and had several online sessions in the last year. For more information about our working group, please visit here.

NEW EATING HABITS CWG
WEDNESDAY 9 JUNE, 11:10-12:50

Join us for a design experimentation workshop that benefits the local communities. Working with different industry and institutional partners towards a feasible system to minimise food waste and create circular economy possibilities. The participants will bring in their cultural and regional food waste scenarios in order to create tangible outcomes that ensure the effective use of food resources. The workshop aims to explore food circular economy stories: 1. Building a (trans) inter-multi -disciplinary international team of design researchers and practitioners | 2. Initiate dialogue regarding funding and identify stakeholders | 3. Create a design methodology process based on experimentation and research | 4. Build the framework for a larger research project with impact | 5. Combine our cultural context and design knowledge to achieve food ecosystem strategies. Let’s build relationships between the different stakeholders for a better economy and a better ‘farm to fork’. Looking forward to your contribution!!!

The workshop structure:
1. Food systems and circular economy | i. Components of the environment | ii. mapping through Blobs and Words 2. Favourite food circular economy story | i. exploring visual storytelling forms
3. Opportunities available of circular economy in your local community and who are your stakeholders i. storytelling the opportunity ideas | ii. extended stakeholder mapping
Roadmap: 1. 1 in many workshop series that will continue after the conference / 2 team building workshops. 2. Select core team to start working on the project (merge into point 1?) 3. Extending workshops to 30 mins webinars from different team members (global outreach engagement with stakeholders) 4. Create project document outlining research prototyping roadmaps across continents 5. Get initial funders on board 6 -5 months from now

SERVICE DESIGN CWG
FRIDAY 11 JUNE, 9:30-10:50

Cumulus Rome, we invite you to participate in discussing service design and the challenges it has been facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Workshops play a vital part in service design. However, the health restrictions have posed new challenges to facilitators who are transforming their practices to online platforms. We wish to reflect on and share good experiences and practices in the service design field. We invite you to present new insights carrying out online workshops in these challenging times. If you are interested in joining this working group, we kindly ask you to send us a short description of your presentation in 150-200 words. We will select 3-4 cases to be discussed in the working group. Please note that each presentation may be a maximum of 15 minutes, followed by a short discussion. Also, be aware that these presentations will not be included in the conference proceedings. Feel free to use any creative form of visual aids, for example, video, PPT, podcast, posters, others. The event will be an informal gathering to be held virtually. We are looking forward to hearing your interesting presentations and having a fruitful conversation with you in the Service Design Working Group in Cumulus Rome!

WOMEN IN DESIGN CWG
THURSDAY 10 JUNE, 9:30-10:50

“Women in Design” will be a platform for exchange, inspiration and mentorship. Sharing experiences and strategies and methods for coping will contribute to building a global network of women to support and promote each other.
Accessing and sharing knowledge on the challenges many women face can contribute to building assertiveness and empowering women in design, across cultures, to have the courage to take on visible, important positions within their society.
In this iteration of the working group we will use social stories and some knowledge gathered in previous working groups to focus on the mentor role – as a system; in institutions, design practice and internationally.

X-FILES CWG
WEDNESDAY 9 JUNE, 14:30-15:50
FRIDAY 11 JUNE, 11:10-12:50

With more than twenty years’ history, x-Files for Internationalisation is the oldest working group of the Cumulus association. It is a forum for international networking, a vehicle for the cultivation of existing collaborations and the discovery of new opportunities, as well as a platform for global engagement and interaction. We see x-Files as a toolset for the internationalisation of higher education institutions of Art, Design and Media.

x-Files working group include all types of university personnel, like faculty members, administrative staff, deans, directors, researchers and other professional profiles interested in finding ways of collaboration within the international context. Since 1998 x-Files has been present at every Spring conference, offering a place where new and old Cumulusians can meet their colleagues, find inspirations, share best practices, discuss relevant topics, and start fruitful academic relationships.

The ZOOM link will be published in advance.

FIRST TALK
Minna Suoniemi, Aalto University

Online experiences on contemporary art pedagogy

Minna uses student work from different courses to discuss experiences and examples of pedagogical opportunities and methods during distance learning in 2020.

SECOND TALK
Charlotte Axelsson, Zurich University of the Arts

Student survey on digital education in 2020

In the spring semester of 2020, 505 students were surveyed at Zurich University of the Arts. The aim of the online survey was to find out whether the conversion of teaching to a digital learning setting was successful and on which factors a successful conversion depended. Charlotte Axelsson, part of the e-learning team, presents the results for discussion.
Charlotte Axelsson, ZHdK https://www.zhdk.ch/person/charlotte-axelsson-181601

Find the event at: Cumulus Connects – Connecting the Community through Online Conversations that Matter

Deadline for submission of extended abstracts (approx 750 words) : January 15, 2021.

This call for papers is for a Special Issue of “Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy”, an open access journal published by Taylor and Francis on the topic of Sustainable Redesign of the Global Fashion System.

This Special Issue of Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy aims to devote attention to the organizational, technological, and sociocultural dimensions of system change. In this sense, the initiative is meant to serve as a call to action by various disciplines to disseminate work on theoretical and conceptual frameworks and results from empirical experimentation that can assist the global fashion system in the process of identifying environmentally tenable and socially equitable business models.

The Special Issue is curated by FiP Research Lab, our Working Group member from Politecnico di Milano.

Please see the call in pdf below.

CALL_FASHION_SUSTAINABILITY_SPECIAL_ISSUE

In addition to the monthly meetups, the Cumulus Working Group Leadership and Strategy is planning its second Global Conversation with a broader audience and some invited speakers. The event is hosted by Teresa Franqueira (University of Aveiro) and Philipp Heidkamp (KISD).

This session is designed to build on the creativity, engagement and different perspectives of our diverse group and audience. New participants are welcome, making yourself familiar with previous work helps us to build on what has already been achieved.

The Cumulus Working Group is aiming at a joint position and statement fed by the diversity of our community and a way to communicate it to other stakeholders in organisations, companies and politics. A hybrid session will be designed during the Cumulus Rome conference (June 8-11, 2021).

Please note that the CWG Leadership and Strategy also conducts informal monthly meet-ups every last Thursday. For more info, click here.

A good chance to meet!

Are you free on Thursday, November 19, at 13:00-14:00 UTC for an informal Zoom-chat?

This is your opportunity to connect and share ideas regarding contemporary art!

We are excited to share that we will be hosting a session for the Contemporary Art Working Group to relaunch the program for 20/21 and discuss the key themes that we want to address as a working group.

This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in finding out more about the ambitions of the group and we are welcoming proposals from any new and current members of Cumulus to the working group.

Please see here or contact R.Jones3@Derby.ac.uk for more information.

The meeting is meant to be informal. It is a live event and will not be recorded.

Details to join are:

Click here to join the Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 949 5878 5751

Join the x Files coffee break on Thursday, November 12, at 1 PM UTC on Zoom! (link below)

Dear colleagues from Cumulus, from around the globe,

we understand that due to the pandemic situation some of us are back in our homes, trying to deal with family and working questions simultaneously, with all kind of issues, troubles, joys …

May be like us in the x Files board,  you would enjoy a BREAK, a chat for sharing moods, pleasures, feelings  – last year we realised it had been well received and we think that repeating this informal meeting could be nice, allowing to see how is everyone… to keep giving a Human Centred approach to our group.

We shall also show you some of our activities and launch the program for the next meetings, including the survey renewal.  If anyone has something to share, we are welcoming all proposals.

Please contact anne.schoonbrodt@polimi.it

The coffee break is meant to be informal. It is a live event and will not be recorded.

INVITATION 

So we all wait for you on ZOOM at 1 PM UTC ON THE 12TH NOVEMBER
WHAT: COFFEE BREAK _ XFILES 2020
WHEN: 12 nov 2020 1 PM UTC
WHERE: On Zoom

Zoom-link
ID meeting: 971 354 2940
Passcode: xFiles

See you soon, Anne, Lisa and Inken.

The event is organized by Art and Design Education and Pedagogy Cumulus Working Group (AADTE CWG) will take place on Fri 9th October at 9-11:00 UTC.

Join the event via this Zoom link: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/63362842775

See the event details on Cumulus Connects.

Lolita Dutta from the NID, India and Karin de Jonge from the WdKA, Netherlands, will present and share their experiences and visions and open the floor for lively discussion by participants.

Here you are the abstracts of the presentations:

Lolita Dutta: Design Education in India: “From the Traditional to the New Digital”

Karin de Jonge: “I Have To Change To Stay The Same”

CARROT BAR!

The story started in 2019 when Dr. Dolly Daou of L’Ecole de Design Nantes France established the ‘New Eating Habits’ Cumulus Working Group at #CumulusRovaniemi2019. Designers, educators, researchers are imagining an alternate future of our contemporary eating habits. The Carrot Bar is the name of the webinar series created by this Cumulsu working group.
New Eating Habits working group: Cumulus Association created an exchange with Dr. Dolly Daou and Lolita Dutta UiD Ahmedabad India leading to dialogues around rethinking ‘eating’ and the need for creative ways of doing research. Dr. Rahul Bhattarachya UiD Ahmedabad among CNEWG passionates, joining this session.
‘Breadcrumbs’ follows the journey of bread across continents and brings to the conversation 3 propositions on ‘bread’ from 3 cultural histories.
Join us this Thursday:
https://lnkd.in/de8CEBX

A special call out to Srinidhi Meenakshi VU for the visual identity of the carrot bar and the poster.
#fooddesign #innovation

The Biodesign Working Group, a partnership of Cumulus Association and Biodesign Challenge, welcomes paper submissions that explore the emerging field of biodesign. Papers will be published in both the Cumulus Conference Proceedings and in Biodesigned, the bimonthly online magazine published by Biodesign Challenge. This Call for papers is the inaugural program of the Biodesign Working Group, which will be hosting meetings and discussions at future Cumulus conferences (both online and in person). The Call welcomes submissions worldwide and is not limited to Cumulus members.

About the Call

Biodesign is an emerging discipline that harnesses biotechnology and living systems to create products and processes, probe humanity’s relationship with biology, and interrogate emerging practices in the life sciences. Practitioners consider relationships among people, the environment, and lifecycles, and attempt to recognize humanity’s part in an intricate ecosystem that binds designed objects to the living world.

The discipline requires academic discourse on which to build new branches of biodesign research. We ask that contributors describe their own ongoing research or review areas of research that are emerging. This Call is open to academic researchers studying the field of biodesign, practitioners, and students of the field.

Key Dates

November 16, 2020: Deadline for submissions of abstracts through this [LINK].

March 1, 2021: Deadline for submissions of full paper.

June 1, 2021: Deadline for camera-ready submissions of full paper.

See https://www.biodesigned.org/cfp for more information on the call.

Poster made by Pearlyn Lii