The Royal Danish Academy
Ida Engholm, Brian Frandsen, Christina Reedtz Funder, Else-Marie Bierlich, Henriette Melchiorsen, Sebastian Elers La Cour
Ida Engholm is professor of design history and design theory at the Royal Danish Academy. She has published numerous research articles, and is author and co-author of twelve books on design and design-related fields, most recently the influential, “Design for the World. From Human Design to Planet Design”, published by Intellect Press. Engholm is founder and head of the Academy’s postgraduate educational program, Master in Design for trained designers and architects, as well as professional in innovation and development-oriented industries, who seek to further their education in sustainable leadership with a design perspective. Engholm is a member of the Danish Design Council.
Brian Frandsen is an independent strategic designer who assists organizations and individuals in creating sustainable impact and navigating complexity. With a decade of experience in facilitating design processes, strategic project development, and realization, Brian has trained specialists, managers, and leaders from the public, private, and third sectors in design thinking, design leadership, and organizational design. He is particularly focused on exploring new approaches to design that support our transition to post-Anthropocene lives and societies.
Study Lecturer at The Royal Danish Academy. With a background from Rhetoric, University of Copenhagen, Christina works mainly in the field of intentionality, argumentation and change in design processes and she has a vast experience of facilitating workshops on these subjects. Furthermore, she has a keen interest in experimenting on how design, language and being can nurture sustainability in planetary everyday life.
Else-Marie Bierlich teaches Earth Wisdom and Dreamwork. She was originally educated as an Anthropologist at the University of Cambridge and holds more than Twenty years of Fieldwork and Teaching experience in Ceremonial practices and ways stemming from the Cultures of the Americas. She is currently involved in Planetary Dreaming and Golden Cloud and finds it imperative that we - as Humanity - remember and awaken our innate capacities as Dreamers - for a sustainable and peaceful future for us and those who come after us.
Henriette Melchiorsen is a Danish designer whose career spans over thirty years working in areas ranging from product design and concept development to circular economy and new green business models. She is a Teaching Associate Professor at The Royal Academy in her area of expertise, Sustainable and Strategic Design. She has worked with commercial design for Danish companies such as LEGO and Menu A/S, while concurrently working on projects of a more artistic nature. Her work has been exhibited both internationally and at home. In 2006 she co-founded FairTrade Designers, a cooperative that uses design as a social leverage tool, completing projects with local craftsmen in China, Ghana, and Zimbabwe.
Sebastian Elers La Cour is a designer from Copenhagen, currently studying Visual design and interaction at The Royal Danish Academy and Politecnico di Milano. His experience ranges from editorial design, type design, identity and branding to architecture and spatial design. His work aims to create universal, sustainable and uniting solutions to modern day challenges through his design, with the purpose of inspiring and uniting human beings to see new perspectives and alligning us with each other and the planet. He has been part of developing the first phase of the designWISE visual identity, and is currently working with the team behind Planetary Dreaming and DesignWISE to shape new the visuals of tools and designWISE experiences.
Planetary Dreaming: Designing the Future
The workshop combines approaches from design with perspectives from indigenous thinking and focuses on how we can develop new methods for working with uncertainty and hosting more meaningful and courageous conversations about our common future, about planetary well-being.
The questions we are pursuing in the workshop are: What constitutes wisdom for the future? How might wisdom involve balancing learning from the past while remaining open to the future? How is wisdom linked to imagination, action, and decision-making? And how can design and designers help us engage with complexity while also shaping new visions for a world worth dreaming of?
