How can we build engagement among the practitioner, research and public-administration communities around design as a lever for business growth and innovation, especially against a backdrop of ecological and social transition? The Bureau du design team invited some 30 stakeholders to a day-long policy workshop aimed at mapping Montréal’s design ecosystem.
In 2022, the City of Design members of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network supported a project by Dr. Anna Whicher, a researcher with the PDR design research centre at Cardiff Metropolitan University (Wales, United Kingdom), to establish a shared methodology for mapping their respective design ecosystems and to build a database of case studies on exemplary practices for supporting development of the design sector.
As an active participant in the UNESCO Cities of Design Policy Working Group, Montréal contributed to this project by co-ordinating a policy workshop, held on June 14, 2024, at Espace Rodier, with the goal of mapping Montréal’s design ecosystem, exploring its strengths and weaknesses, and proposing avenues for action to support its development.
The overall research project will also generate an indicator framework that will be used to update the Bureau’s portrait of the local design industry, the last edition of which dates from 2019. More generally speaking, the initiative is also serving as a call for dialogue to renew and broaden perspectives, and in turn open up new opportunities and identify potential new partners.
The workshop was in keeping with a number of initiatives deployed in recent months that target a broadening of design-centred practices and their role in processes of innovation, such as the Answer the Call! Innovation by Design in Public Action symposium and the Emerging Design Practices call for expressions of interest.
A summary report on the workshop will be published in autumn 2024.
Dr. Anna Whicher is Head of Design Policy at PDR. Her research and guidance interventions with public administrations aim at integrating design into policy and business-support programs across Europe and worldwide. Her PhD thesis was on benchmarking design for innovation policy in Europe. PDR is an award-winning design consultancy and applied-design research centre that operates in the spaces of design policy, service design, product design, medical design, ecodesign and prototyping.