Alice Rawsthorn to present V&A Dundee’s first New Year’s lecture

Award-winning design critic and author Alice Rawsthorn will present the first New Year’s lecture at V&A Dundee.

Design as an Attitude will discuss how designers are responding to an age of instability and explore how they are tackling some of the world’s greatest economic, political and ecological challenges.

The lecture will also examine the role of design in interpreting new technologies and the emergence of a new wave of digitally empowered designers.

It will mark the start of V&A Dundee’s ambitious 2019 programme which includes major exhibitions exploring videogames, robots and the future of design.

Alice Rawsthorn said: “I am delighted to be returning to V&A Dundee to discuss the key themes of Design as an Attitude and to see how the programme is evolving and how the museum is influencing the city.”

Rawsthorn, who was awarded an OBE for services to design and the arts, is the author of several critically acclaimed books on design, including Hello World: Where Design Meets Life. As design critic of the international edition of the New York Times for over a decade, she wrote a weekly design column, which was syndicated to other media worldwide.

An influential public speaker and social media influencer, Rawsthorn’s TED talk has been viewed by more than one million people worldwide.

Allan McIntyre, V&A Dundee’s Creative Industries Producer, said: “As an international centre for design, V&A Dundee aims to highlight and examine the powerful role design plays.

“We are delighted to welcome Alice to the museum to host our first New Year’s lecture and discuss the challenges and developments that are having a profound impact on societies around the world.

“This is an exciting and important time for everyone interested in design, and I can’t think of a better way to mark the beginning of 2019.”

Over the next 12 months Scotland’s first design museum will continue to provoke discussions about the role of design in everyone’s lives.

The design and culture of contemporary videogames will be explored with the V&A’s spectacular exhibition Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt, which will run at V&A Dundee from 20 April to 8 September 2019.

The new museum will then go on to examine the current boom in robotics with the exhibition Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine which will run from 2 November 2019 to 23 February 2020.

V&A Dundee’s New Year’s lecture Design as an Attitude with Alice Rawsthorn will be held on Thursday 10 January 18.30 – 19.30 in the Juniper Auditorium. Tickets cost £8 (£6 concessions) and are available to buy from the V&A Dundee website or in person at the museum’s Welcome Desk.