Design Otherwise | Book Launch | Reference Point
Arts
Design
Join us on 28 January at Reference Point for the launch of Design Otherwise: Transforming Design Education in the Arab Region. Author Danah Abdulla will be in conversation with researcher, educator, and artist Lina El-Hakim to discuss the purpose and relevance of design education, how regional identities and class divisions shape the development of design cultures, different perceptions of design and its value, and new possibilities for forms of practice. The event will be followed by drinks, nibbles, and dancing featuring music by DJ Jana Saleh. Doors and drinks: 7pm | Talk: 8pm | Nibbles and Dancing: 9-11pm About the book: How can we study and teach design in a way that is critical, socially engaged and relevant to place? In Design Otherwise: Transforming Design Education in the Arab Region, Danah Abdulla challenges us to imagine a design education and culture that moves beyond blindly borrowing Eurocentric models and frameworks. Drawing on learnings from work with design students, educators and designers in the Arab region, with a particular focus on Jordan and featuring examples from Lebanon, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, Abdulla creates a dialogue with those who have most at stake in education to imagine how we can develop a collaborative, contextually based and socially relevant design education. Copies of the book will be available for purchase, or you can pre-order a copy here. About the speakers: Dr Danah Abdullais a designer, educator and researcher interested in new narratives and practices in design that push the disciplinary boundaries and definitions of the subject. Her research focuses on decolonising design, possibilities of design education, design culture(s) with a focus on the Arab region, the politics of design, publishing, and social design. She is a Reader in Anti/Post/Decolonial Histories, Theories, Praxes at the Decolonising the Arts Institute at the University of the Arts London. Danah is also the author of Designerly Ways of Knowing: A Working Inventory of Things a Designer Should Know (Onomatopee, 2022), a founding member of the Decolonising Design platform, and founded Kalimat Magazine (2010-2016), an independent, non-profit publication about Arab thought and culture www.dabdulla.com. Dr Lina El-Hakim is a Beirut-born London-based researcher, educator and artist. She is currently a senior lecturer in Visual and Material Culture at Kingston University London, where she teaches Critical and Historical Studies, mainly to Graphic Design students. Lina research focuses on theoretical and practical models of object-led inquiry; socio-political and critical issues around art, design, and pedagogy in the Arab world; and critical and theoretical discourse focusing on the relationship between making and thinking, with a particular interest in overlaps between the material cultures of design, technology, art, science, craft, pedagogy, and play. Lina holds a PhD and MRes in Humanities and Cultural Studies (London Consortium, Birkbeck, University of London), an MA in Book Arts (Camberwell College of Arts, London), and a BA in Graphic Design (American University of Beirut). She held an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Victoria & Albert Museum, where she co-coordinated the V&A Research Institute (VARI) Pilot Project.
Information Source: Decolonising Arts Institute | eventbrite