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Singapore’s highest honour for designers and designs across all disciplines
One of Asia’s premier design festivals that champions design thought leadership
National Design Centre

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Announcement

Call for Stories on the Transformation of Education through Design

7 min read

Calling all educators and students!

Educators, do you have an interesting story to tell about the transformative power of design, and how it played a key role in shaping the education landscape in your country?

What about the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused school closures worldwide? It has now affected more than 1.5 billion students globally who make up about 90 per cent of the world’s learners. Are there stories you would like to share about how you have used design to reimagine education, including how and what your students learnt?

Students, you have a chance to take part too! Have a story in mind? Share with us about how you and your school changed as a result of a design or innovation project.

The call is a lead up to the 2nd Design Education Summit, organised by the DesignSingapore Council, in partnership with the SUTD-MIT International Design Centre, SUTD. The Summit will be held in Singapore. We will announce the date of the event as soon as we can.

As part of the Summit, we are calling for you to submit design-related stories through our Call for Stories on the Transformation of Education through Design.

We would like to hear stories from educators and students, in both public and private education institutes from across the world.

Educators harnessing the transformative power of design to empower students with the open mindsets and skills, starting from the redesigning of their learning spaces. Find out more about their journey here in the 4-part Better Life by Design short film series.

What is it about?

This call invites educators and students to share and celebrate their stories about using Design. We are interested in all design-related stories, be it successes, challenges, even the ones about how design has empowered individuals with the mindsets and skills for improving lives. This could be an ongoing initiative or a specific project in response to the COVID-19 virus that is designed to evoke the areas below:

  • Empathy
  • Energy & Enthusiasm
  • Inspiration & Motivation
  • Introspection & Reflection
  • Joy & surprise
  • Play
  • Practice & Perseverance
  • Self-awareness & Instinct
  • Initiative & Leadership
  • Expectations & Limitations

Who is it for?

This call is for educators and students in both public and private education at all levels including Primary, Secondary, Post-Secondary (Junior College/Centralised Institute) & Tertiary (ITE/Polytechnic/Arts College/University) as well as those from the equivalent Grades 1 to 12 from around the world. Entries may be submitted by an individual or a team.

Who is it also for?

Students have a chance to participate too, and win one free pass for your school and a goodie bag for yourself. We urge you to submit your story now as its easy and all it takes is just 15 minutes of your time!

Why should educators participate?

  1. A great opportunity for educators to participate in the dialogue on Design Education, and stimulate discussion for future directions.
  2. The stories can be submitted individually by an educator, or a student or by a team of educators and/or students. We leave it to you to decide.
  3. 5 best individuals’ stories will receive one complimentary pass each to attend the Design Education Summit.
  4. 5 best teams’ stories will receive two complimentary passes each to attend the Design Education Summit.
  5. Selected educators and students will be given an opportunity to present their work at the Design Education Summit.
  6. Selected stories will be featured and highlighted across various media platforms.

Evaluation criteria

Entries will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

  • Relevance to design and design education.
  • Demonstration of understanding of issues pertaining to design education.
  • Providing insights or learnings in the field of design education.
  • Inspiring discussion on design education practices for the future.

Contributors of selected entries will be contacted by email. With your permission, submitted stories will also be analysed anonymously to investigate the transformation and experiences with Education through design. Aggregated insights and recommendations from the research team will be shared to inspire the global community of educators.

What to submit?

Participants can submit a maximum of two entries (inclusive of team entries).

  • Mandatory: Story of maximum 500 words with up to five pictures with captions. Format: doc/docx.
  • Optional: Videos related to the story.

Got a story in mind? We urge you to submit your story now as all it takes is just 15 minutes of your time!

Students from Commonwealth Secondary School work together with their teachers to redesign their Design and Technology laboratory to make it an inspiring place for learning. This is part of the 4-part Better Life by Design short film series. Click here for the YouTube showreel

How to submit and when to submit by?

Step 1: Prepare your content

  • Write your story in a word document. Insert the pictures in the document.
  • If you have a video, please upload it on sharing sites such as Youtube (make the video public), Dropbox or OneDrive, and note the URL.

Step 2: Permissions

  • Ensure you own the copyright of all material that you are submitting.
  • If you are submitting as a team, ensure you have your team members’ permissions to do so.
  • Ensure you have the consent of all individuals featured in any pictures/videos you are planning to upload, as these could be used for marketing purposes. If you do not have their consent, please ensure the individuals’ faces in pictures/videos are blurred.

Step 3: Submit

The Call for Stories for this summit has closed. Selected educators and students will be given an opportunity to present and share their work at the Design Education Summit. But, we are still keen on hearing stories from educators and students in both public and private education institutes from across the world. Please write to talent@designsingapore.org if you have a story to share.

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VISIT
Singapore’s highest honour for designers and designs across all disciplines
One of Asia’s premier design festivals that champions design thought leadership
National Design Centre