EIDD Annual Conference

The event series started 22 May with EIDD’s Annual Conference, this year with the theme ”Culture for All – Factoring Design for All into the European Capitals of Culture”. Representatives of the Lithuanian government and Vilnius European Capital of Culture 2009 paved the way for interesting presentations of Capital of Cultures to come - Essen 2010, Tallinn and Turku 2011 - as well as other topic relevant presentations.

 

New EIDD member countries

At its Annual General Meeting 23 May EIDD welcomed three more member organisations:

Silesian Castle of Art and Enterprise in Sieszyn, Poland, represented by Ewa Golebiowska and Krzysztof Dorda
Design Information Centre in Riga, Latvia, represented by Daina Vitolina and Inese Peterson
Panhellenic Union of Paraplegic and Physically Challenged in Athens, Greece, represented by Emmy Chatzigianni

This new influx of members means that EIDD Design for All Europe has now 26 member organisations in 22 European countries.

 

EIDD welcomes new Honorary Secretary

At the meeting of the Board of  Directors, following immediately after the AGM, Rama Gheerawo from The Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre in London was elected new Honorary Secretary of EIDD. Words of thanks were expressed to Markus Haas, Austria, for all his good work in the position 2007-2009.

Finn Petrén (Sweden) was re-elected President, Avril Accolla (Italy) Vice-President, Michal Ozmin (Ireland) Honorary Treasurer and Jesús Hernández Galán (Spain) Special Projects Officer. Also Pete Kercher continues as EIDD Ambassador.

The EIDD Board of Directors now has 28 members in total. The day to day business is carried out by an Executive Committee of five (President, Vice-President, Honorary Secretary, Honorary Treasurer and Special Projects Officer).

 

Design for All Workshop

In parallell with the EIDD Annual Conference and AGM, EIDD also started an international workshop on Design for All focussing on Street Furniture. The students were young designers from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Hungary and Portugal. Workshop tutors were Avril Accolla, Michal Ozmin, Jesús Hernández Galán, Pete Kercher and Finn Petrén, all from EIDD. The selected public space was the banks of river Neris, primarely between ”The White Bridge” and ”The Green Bridge”.

For a creative designer to tackle such a task as designing street furniture is interesting, challenging and seemingly not so difficult. However to make the space, layout and interactivity with people accessible and enjoyable to all as well as sympathetic to the surrounding built environment is a complex undertaking.

The objectives of the workshop were to clarify the Design for All concept, to introduce the participants to Design for All methodology through practical experience and to obtain at least some tangible result.

The workshop began 22 May with an opening party at Club Tarantino in downtown Vilnius combined with price ceremonies for the Vilnius Design Week. 24-26 May were packed with briefing, explorations, work in groups, presentations and feed-back from the tutors. The last day also saw the active participation of representatives of the Vilnius City Planning Department and Vilnius Capital of Culture 2009. Sights are now set on an exhibition, maybe also some tangible result, in October.


The Lithuanian host

All the arrangements around EIDD’s 16th AGM, which also included a meeting with the CEO of the Lithuanian Association of Hotels and Restaurants, were prepared by Marius Dirgela, director of the Lithuanian Design Forum and EIDD member, to whom we owe a sincere thank you.

Rimantas Zylius, Deputy Minister of Economy, Lithuania, Finn Petrén and Pete Kercher

Finn Petrén welcomes Ewa Golebiowska

Executive Committee and Ambassador

Workshop opening at Club Tarantino

Workshop participants

 Marius Dirgela (Lithuania), Ilona Gurjanova (Estonia), Daina Vitolina (Latvia)