V&A Dundee hosts 'Design for Planet' sustainability festival

Sustainability experts at eastern Scotland's V&A Dundee hope to help the UK's 1.69 million-strong design community transform their practices.

About 150 designers and sustainability experts have gathered this week for the Design for Planet Festival.

With more than 4,000 others connecting online, the two-day event organised by the Design Council aims to galvanise and support the UK's design community.

On Monday, Design Council partner and Urge Collective co-founder Sophie Thomas led a tour of Binn Ecopark at Glenfarg.

There delegates saw state-of-the-art recycling and resource management facilities.

The tour was followed by a workshop highlighting how end-of-life waste materials can be reutilised in design projects, promoting greater sustainability and closing the loop of circular processes.

Among Tuesday's speakers, Payal Arora - a digital anthropologist and author of Next Billion Users, said: "The planet is us. Designing for planet is also designing for us.

V&A Dundee hosted the sustainability festival, 'Design for Planet', earlier this week.

"Change can't just come from bottom up but top down too to create a culture of sustainability."

Meanwhile, primary pupils from Claypotts Castle school visited the Design for Planet Festival to share their messages and learn how design can play its part in addressing the climate emergency.

Organised by Design Council with V&A Dundee and partners, the children's placards went on display in S.H.E.D., a pop-up arts venue and public space set up outside of V&A Dundee over the course of the festival.

S.H.E.D. is the first spin out company from the University of Derby.

Design for Planet Festival is part funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, V&A Dundee and Protolabs.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by Coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.