How to design a more sustainable world

Design for Our Times is a celebration of ingenuity, invention, and creativity. It showcases projects from seven of Scotland’s many brilliant contemporary designers and artists who are exploring new ways of working with everyday materials. The exhibition shares insights into the inspiration that lies behind the creation of these new functional objects and, importantly, it shows how the design process can be unpredictable and how determination and creativity are needed to take an initial idea on an exciting, but often bumpy ride into the wider world.

In 2018, I launched Design Exhibition Scotland to champion design and designers working in Scotland. I believed contemporary design needed to be more visible and I also wanted to help ensure recent graduates and established designers, artists and makers saw Scotland as hospitable to innovation, supportive of the resolutely contemporary, and offered an inspiring community to work within. And of course, I wanted to share their energy and ideas with a wide audience, so the opportunity to present Design for Our Times at V&A Dundee has brilliantly enabled this to happen.

For each of Design Exhibition Scotland’s projects I need to fundraise – I secured funding from Creative Scotland to support the development of Design for Our Times. The exhibition has a particular focus. I wanted to shine a light on how contemporary design can propel change and influence the way we value everyday materials. From Mirrl of Glasgow’s drinking fountain to Andrew Miller’s sculptural lights constructed out of glass vases found in charity shops – Design for Our Times champions new creations and how materials can be beautifully repurposed.

I hope the exhibition gives powerful evidence of the vital importance of fueling creativity. All the designers and artists involved are passionately interested in thinking afresh about resources and repurposing materials that might be considered ‘waste’ or unwanted. Take Chalk Plaster who are based in Fife and their explorations into reusing gypsum extracted from unwanted plasterboard to make objects. It’s their energy and imagination that can lead the way in how we can all think more clearly how propelling change. The designer is a catalyst of change.

I also frequently thought about how the exhibition could best appeal to and inspire a 10-year-old schoolchild. How it could most effectively illuminate the design process and the sense of adventure that is involved. Catriona Brown was a teenager on the west coast of Scotland when she decided to design an alternative to plastic tree shelters. In her 2020 degree show in Product Design Engineering at Glasgow School of Art / University of Glasgow she exhibited a mycelium alternative. I find this story inspiring and wanted to share it.

"All the designers and artists involved are passionately interested in thinking afresh about resources and repurposing materials that might be considered ‘waste’ or unwanted."

I wanted Design for Our Times to showcase a diverse range of designers who are working in a variety of ways. Future Practical are a new initiative based in Glasgow who are exploring how the circular economy and open sourcing ideas can have a powerful and beneficial impact on designing and making. They designed the exhibition plinths which are made of aluminium. The mycelium tree shelters are still very much at a prototype stage but Kenoteq’s K-Briq is now in production after 10 years in development. I was keen to show how good ideas often require a long gestation period. All the designers and artists involved share a knowledge that invention and creation always involves trial and error and often big emotional ups and downs. Things can go wrong, take longer, cost more than was originally anticipated, but ultimately the compulsion to be creative is a powerful fuel!

I worked closely with all the designers and artists, meeting them in their studios when possible or via Zoom. This gave me the opportunity to understand their design and making process and discuss in detail the work they wished to exhibit. So there were no real surprises, but there were lots of thrills! I remember seeing the production of a K-Briq for the first time on a farm in East Lothian. It was totally thrilling to pick up a beautiful deep pink-coloured briq made of construction waste that was being made here in Scotland.

“All the designers and artists involved share a knowledge that invention and creation always involves trial and error… things can go wrong, take longer, cost more than was originally anticipated, but ultimately the compulsion to be creative is a powerful fuel!”

When curating the exhibition, I thought carefully about the Michelin Design Gallery. It is positioned outside the Scottish Design Gallery and the larger gallery spaces and is in many ways a transitory space as visitors head on to their destination. So, right from the start I wanted to make the exhibition visually arresting and welcoming. I worked closely with the V&A Dundee team and with the graphic designer, Andy McGregor, on how to present the exhibition.

Since opening, I have spent time watching people visiting the exhibition. It is always so interesting to see how people respond to a space and objects, the way they move through an exhibition is not always as you expect! But so many of the visitors look very engrossed as they read the text panels and studied the objects which is brilliant. I have also spoken to the Visitor Assistants who say the exhibition has really engaged people.

Design for Our Times truly celebrates more widely Scotland’s design ecology and how important it is to champion the local. Aymeric Renoud who moved from France to study at Duncan of Jordanstone School of Art and Design has his studio half a mile away from V&A Dundee. It is here that he makes furniture made from spent grain leftover from brewing - he is totally delighted that his work is being show in such a prestigious museum as V&A Dundee. I hope Design for Our Times has inspired those who have visited to think about everyday materials and the importance of supporting designers to think afresh. Perhaps we have even inspired visitors to become designers!

Design for Our Times runs in Michelin Design Gallery until Sunday, 19 June 2022.

Header image - Mrs Marshall’s Stool (detail) by Chalk Plaster. Photo Andy Stagg