Join Chile’s Design Month 2020!

The inaugural session will be on Thursday, November 5 at 2:00 PM UTC. The event will serve as a kick-start to the Design Month with an intro followed by a panel discussion in Spanish with English translation.

Register for the event here.
For more info visit: www.mesdeldiseño.cl   | Join the online conversation with the hashtag: #MDD2020

The inaugural session will be on Thursday 5th November at 2:00 PM UTC. The session will be presented by Juan Carlos Silva, Vice-Minister of Culture, Arts and Heritage of the Government of Chile, and Trinidad Guzmán, Coordinator of the Design and Creative Services Area of the same ministry.

This introduction will be followed by a panel discussion to explore the various dimensions and challenges of design practice and culture today. Mariana Amatullo, Vice Provost for Global Strategic initiatives at The New School and Associate Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons and President, Cumulus; and Alfonso Gómez, Founding Member of Corporación 3xI, Director of the UC Innovation Center, will share their perspectives on the subject in a moderated conversation by Nicolás Rebolledo, Tutor in Service Design at the Royal College of Art and co-founder of UNIT, a strategic design and services studio co-organiser of Design Month 2020.

The Chilean Design Month has been held annually for nine years in Chile. It consists of an integrated schedule of cultural and educational events, to promote and position Design as a fundamental axis of creative economies, society, culture and heritage. This year, the Design Month will be held digitally from November 5 to 27 and is named ‘Design Today: Conversations about Change’. This central theme seeks to place the discussion on the positioning and value of Design as a culture, practice and discipline in the context of the radical changes that we are experiencing as a society.

The question of what it means to design today can therefore be approached from multiple perspectives: What is design in the context of the technological revolution? What does this era of social, political and cultural change mean for design? What does it mean to design in a pandemic and in the economic crisis? What does it mean to design for a zero-carbon world?

These and other questions will be explored in a Festival of Ideas and Conversations, through thematic sessions, practical workshops and conversations that will integrate participants of different origins and that will be developed through digital media. The festival will feature 18 thematic sessions, 5 workshops and 14 conversations carried out by more than 85 speakers over 22 days. The events will be in Spanish with selected sessions with English translation.

Chile’s Design Month is an initiative of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage of the Government of Chile. The 2020 version has been co-organized by UNIT – a strategic design and services studio – in alliance with Encuentro Local, Feria Impresionante and Chile Diseño. The festival also has the support of different Higher Education institutions such as University of Chile, Catholic University of Chile, UDD, Inacap, University of the Americas, Duoc UC, Andrés Bello University and AIEP, among others.