21/11/2005
SEEdesign partners meet in Lyon for the 2nd Steering Committee Meeting and EWDS

SEEdesign is a European project that seeks to promote the use of design in small and medium-sized enterprises within the EU. Design is a key competitive factor that enables companies to add value to their products and services, and SEE-Design strives to highlight this potential.

SEEdesign's Steering Committee met for the second time on 18-20 October in Lyon. The event included workshops, the Steering Committee Meeting and was rounded off with a business conference with speakers from Nokia, Delsey and others. The participants included many representatives of companies in the region.



SEEdesign is a three-year project supported by the European Union Development Fund (ERDF) within the INTERREG IIIC programme. The project revolves around design promotion for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) in Europe. Based on existing practices in the individual participant countries, the project seeks to optimise the countries' design promotion efforts in order to provide more support for the SME’s.

Design Centre Poland and Design Centre Portugal also took part in the meeting and gave very interesting presentations.

Dialogue and knowledge sharing

The Steering Committee Meeting in Lyon and the presentations from the invited speakers reflect the focus of SEEdesign: knowledge sharing and dialogue. The goal is to learn from new initiatives and common issues in order to enhance the services available to SME’s.

There are many interesting projects going on in the individual countries. Among them are workshops, exhibitions, collaboration projects involving companies and designers, business support, festivals etc. All the participating countries are investing large sums in design, and their governments are backing the design promotion activities.


Design Centre Portugal 

Design Centre Portugal has launched a new project, ’DES+GN mais’, which is a combined public-private partnership to increase the internationalisation of Portuguese companies through the use of design as a competitive factor. The goal is to match companies and designers within the areas People, Home and City. More than 200 designers and companies are involved in this initiative, which the Portuguese government backs with 5.5 million euros.

The programme includes trend fairs, workshops, a selection process and a subsequent training plan for the involved parties. The process culminates in a trade fair where the designs are presented to the selected companies. The last time this fair was held it resulted in 63 partnerships, which are currently undergoing further development.


Design Centre Poland

Poland has managed to establish and build a design centre in only five years. The key idea is to use design as an instrument for restructuring the region Selesia, which is otherwise characterised by heavy industry and a high rate of unemployment. The goal of the project was to create a design and business centre in the city of Cieszyn. The project carried a price tag of 3 million euros; 1.9 million came from the EU, while the remaining 1.1 million came from national, regional and local government agencies. In 2005 the centre was ready and now works to promote entrepreneurship and industrial design, to preserve and promote local crafts, and to develop the tourism trade and other cultural activities.


Measuring the effect of public design initiatives

One of the key issues that SEEdesign is documenting is the effect of government initiatives that support design. This is addressed in a project involving the University of Manchester. The goal is to create a tool that can be used for internal and external assessments of the effect of design promotion. External assessments would document the actual pay-off from design investments, an important factor in putting design on the political and economical agendas. Internal assessments would reveal the specific situations where design pays off and, thus, help design centres target their activities and initiatives. The assessment tool is expected to be fully developed and implemented in 2006.

Future events

In an effort to establish a closer and more fruitful collaboration among the SEEdesign partners, the steering committee meeting included a proposal for the partners to involve each other at an early stage in the process of developing new initiatives in order to maximise mutual input and sparring. In the spirit of this proposal, Design Wales is hosting a workshop on Service Design on 6 December in Wales.

Wales is also the host of the next steering committee meeting, which will be held in May 2006 in Cardiff, Wales.


Pernille Skanderup (Dansk Design Centre

)

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