Welcome (Lauren Parker)

Lauren Parker: Hello, everyone. Thank you, and welcome. My name’s Lauren Parker and I’m Head of Contemporary Programmes at the V& A and I just want say thank you very much to everyone for taking the time, especially in the evening, to come and join us. Before we kick off, I just wanted to give a very quick background to this series of events. The idea really started, I guess, from, from our side during the V& A’s 150th anniversary celebrations, and in those we kind of look back at the origins of the Museum, and also celebrated some of the leading practitioners working today. But, in response to this, we also started to think about what the nature and role of the design movement of the future might be, thinking about the kind of next 150 years. And so, this is the first in the series of really informal debates with an invited audience which will explore aspects of how we can teach, talk about, collect and display design now, and in the future.

Over the course of this year, we’ll explore ideas around the future designer, which is the topic for tonight: the future object; the future environment and the future audience. Critical to the success of each event is that they should become a single partnership with another organisation, and I’d really like to thank the RCA’s partnering the V& A on this particular event, and particularly to Jeremy whose thoughtful input has really helped to shape not just this evening, but also the series as a whole.

Before I hand over to Jane Pavitt, who’s going to be chairing this evening’s event, I just wanted to mention a couple of housekeeping bits and pieces. The bar will be open throughout, so please feel free to come and go as you like and keep yourself topped up. There’s also… I’m sure most people know, but the loos are just by the lifts. The more formal part of the discussion should finish by eight o’clock, but I hope that many of you are going to stay on for a little while longer after that, and we’ ll be serving drinks and canapés.

And, finally, we want to keep refining the format of these events, and so we’ve got a few comments, forms and feedback forms around, and it’d be great to get some feedback from you afterwards, because I think that will help us think about how we might organize these in the future. And, finally, I’ d just like to thank Jane for agreeing to chair the event; for our four provocateurs; to Zoe and Kaia for helping to organise it, and most of all thank you to all of you for coming and taking part.

Thank you very much.