Greengaged at the Design Council for the London Design Festival 2009

By Sophie Thomas

After an incredible launch year in 2008 that saw a huge mix of designers, strategists, chemists, policy writers, clients and agitators greengaged returns for its second year at the Design Council for this year’s London Design Festival 2009. 

This year brings an exciting programme where we will be mixing it all up once more building on emerging themes from last year. We have five brilliant guest curators that will each be creating a day based around their expert subject and bringing along a whole new set of experts to inspire and galvanise us all.

Ed Gillespie, Founder of Futerra and slow travel expert.
Ed will be curating a day on the complexities around ‘design for Life’ looking at issues around travel, energy and housing and asking the big questions like what exactly IS holding us back from pulling sustainability into mainstream design.

John Grant, author of The Green Marketing Manifesto and former co-founder of St Luke’s.
John will be curating a day on new sustainable business and network models focusing on emerging alternative business structures and running a practical session on re-designing the banking system.

Michael Pawlyn, Founder Exploration architecture
Michael Pawlyn will be running a day on the influence of biomimicry on design with the the innovators and thinkers in this field joining in discussions and debates with a practical design session in the afternoon.

Anna Gerber, Design Critic and publisher with Three Trees Don’t Make A Forest 
Anna and Three Trees will be curating a day around the emerging new craft aesthetics in sustainable design and focusing on the relationship between the designer and our industrial processes. This day will involve lots of hands on creative thinking with break out master classes and presentations.

Dan Epstein, Head of Sustainability and Regeneration, Olympic Delivery Authority
Dan will be curating a day on new innovations in sustainable materials. There will be opportunities to talk and brain storm with material experts, innovators and inventors and see first hand what the future of landscape of materials could look like.

Each curator will be working with additional partners and organisations with each day having related research trips to landfill sites, factories, workshops and sites and we will be announcing these through August. All designers, directors and interested people should sign up for a whole day to get a full understanding of the subjects and to get the most out of the curators programmes.

All events held at the Design Council in this week will be free and booking will begin in August through this site so sign up to our mailing list to hear first about events and join our community to contribute to the discussion and for more information. The 2009 greengaged programme will run for five days from Monday the 21^st to Friday the 25^th September.

Looking forward to seeing you there in September - Sophie Thomas, founder of greengaged.

About GreenGaged

Greengaged is a not for profit organisation founded in 2008 by Sophie Thomas from thomas.matthews, Sarah Johnson from Re Design and Anne Chick from The Sustainable Design Research Centre at Kingston University.

Greengaged aims to advance the design industry’s capacity to respond positively to key environmental challenges such as climate change. This is done by offering thought leadership, creating spaces for dialogue, and opportunities for knowledge sharing - within the industry and beyond.

About Sophie Thomas

Sophie Thomas is the Co-Founder of Greengaged, thomas.matthews and Three Trees Don't Make a Forest.