Design Transforms ’23

Central Saint Martins Product, Ceramic and Industrial Design presents Design Transforms ’23

Marking the 10th anniversary of Central Saint Martins Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education, Design Transforms ’23 is a discursive platform to examine our futures.

Continuing on a cutting-edge collaboration between Central Saint Martins and UPM that launched earlier in 2023, UPM are proudly sponsoring Design Transforms ’23. The partnership was designed to trigger a radical reappraisal of production and consumption patterns, and to accelerate the transition to renewable circularity.

Our Manifesto

As Central Saint Martins product, ceramic and industrial design community we work in the world of things, but it’s human needs and connections with the world that engage us most.

Through the materials, processes and techniques of design, our community interrogates what it is to design for positive social impact.

Our programme is dedicated to creative ambition, collaboration and making. We experience design as a practice that transforms: it is anticipatory and adaptive for the benefit of people, industry and the environment.

We make

To experiment, prototype, prove, materialise, manufacture, to know. To practice the hand, the eye, the technique, the ritual and the heart.

Transformation

We develop individuals as caring, questioning, attuned and articulate practitioners, aware of the power of design to transform people, things, enterprises, services, systems and the practice itself.

Creative Ambition

We reject the notion of more of the same and practice to create new opportunities and possibilities that have yet to be discovered.

Collaboration

We embrace an art school studio model demanding participation, risk-taking and fearless endeavour. Our activity is rooted in relationships, co-creation and collaborative enterprise.

Anticipatory Practice

We prepare our graduates to anticipate, explore and articulate futures, ready for contemporary production, manufacturing and distribution paradigms that call for proactive, adaptive practitioners.

Community

We are more than a university, a college or a programme. We are a community: national and international, past, present and future.

Opening times

Workshops

From 20–21 September we will host participatory workshops utilising somatic practices of belonging through the exploration of the relationship between clay, migration, climate change and design.

Visitors to the space will be invited to participate in a series of  workshops with Nina Trivedi and Duncan Hooson from Central Saint Martins as well as Carolina Rubio-MacWright from Touching Land.

Wednesday 20 September, 11.00am – 2.00pm: Know Your Rights workshop with Climate Refugee Shelters, Senda de Visa I, II in Reynosa, Mexico.

Thursday 21 September, 11.00am – 6.00pm (lunch break 1-2pm): Clay power Figurine workshop with Hugo Gonzalez from Touching Land and NYC, Refugees.

Hosted in London, the workshops will also be live-streamed to the sites of the Mutual Aid Activists in the Bronx at La Morada Restaurant, NYC, Climate refugee shelters in Reynosa, Mexico and immigrants in Brooklyn, NYC.