The most recent Creative Industries Mapping document estimated that design-related activity within the UK employed one million people in around 240,000 companies. According to the Design Council, 90% of the UK’s growing businesses say that design is integral and essential to their development and operation. This suggests clearly enough that design, and the investment in design, is crucial to our economy. As Professor Geoffrey Crossick, the Chief Executive of the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) has said: ‘Design is a vital source of competitive advantage for UK enterprise. It contributes to the country’s wealth creation, affects social inclusion and impacts on people’s quality of life.’
As a consequence of this, the AHRB and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) are collaborating for the first time on an initiative called Designing for the 21st Century, which was officially launched on the 22nd March 2004, and which will provide funding for practitioners from a wide range of design-related disciplines. Over the next five years, they are committing at least four million pounds to the project. For the first phase – which they refer to as People Working in Design – they are inviting researchers to submit proposals for “research clusters”. They consider it crucial that the design research community should have the opportunity to contribute to the development of the intellectual framework of the initiative before it is put into practice. The aim of People Working in Design will be to draw together design researchers from a range of backgrounds – academic, industrial, creative, etc. – and address the problems of communication and culture inherent in any interdisciplinary endeavour. Awards of up to £50,000 to cover the operating and support costs of each research cluster will be made available, and it is expected that AHRB and EPSRC will fund between about fifteen to twenty clusters through this first call.
But who exactly can apply?
The research cluster proposal must be submitted by a researcher (called the Principal Investigator) who will be responsible for the development and management of the research cluster. Co-investigators can also be named if the cluster is to be managed jointly, but other individuals participating in the cluster do not need to be identified as co-investigators. Principal or co-investigators must be permanent employees of a higher education institution directly funded by the UK higher education funding councils. Each research cluster should involve a group of people covering a range of design disciplines, and offering a diversity of expertise and experience. The group should be constituted as widely as is needed to achieve the bridge-building aims of the call. For example, it could include representatives from higher education, industry, design consultancies, government laboratories, or other users. The group should be based in the UK, but may include collaboration with people outside the UK. The AHRB and EPSRC wish to draw the initiative to the attention of all researchers with an interest in design – including researchers within the applied arts, architecture, computer science, creative arts, design management, electronics, engineering design, environmental and interior design, ergonomics, fashion design, graphic and communication design, history of design, industrial design, landscape design, manufacturing, management, materials science, product design, psychology, sociology, textiles design, theatre design and urban design.
And what kinds of activities can be supported?
The AHRB and the EPSRC state on their website (see contact details below) that they will be looking in particular for activities which reflect the creative world of designers, and which offer innovative and thought-provoking ways of achieving the research cluster aims. Applicants are encouraged to think creatively and widely about the range of activities, participants and topics for which they might seek support. Activities could include summer schools, team working events, workshops, lectures, debates and seminars.
The AHRB and EPSRC are working to a fairly tight schedule: the closing date for research cluster proposals is 30 June 2004 and the decisions will be announced in September. All the proposals will be assessed by a panel of leading figures from a range of design disciplines, drawn from the AHRB’s and EPSRC’s peer review networks. The panel will agree a rank order from which proposals will be funded within the limits of the available finance. They want all the research clusters work to the same timetable so that cross-cluster discussions can take place and the different projects can emerge on the same timescale. All clusters are therefore expected to run from 1 January to 31 December 2005.
What will happen after the research clusters?
One of the purposes of the clusters will be to help specify the broad research areas that will feed into the next stage of the initiative. The Initiative Director will collate the outcomes of the research and then identify the areas that will be funded during the next stage of the initiative. There will be opportunities for cluster participants to apply for further funding at the next stage, but new participants will also be able to open to consideration. The next stage of proposals will be tailored to the needs (as they have emerged from the research) of the design research community. These are likely to include multidisciplinary research grants and fellowships that will provide opportunities for those involved in design to work in a new context, as well as some distinctive dissemination activities. For more information on this, refer to the EPSRC website.
When reading about the Designing for the 21st Century initiative, one may wonder why the funding is not being broken up and targeted more specifically. But as Alison Henry from the AHRB said when I put this question to her:
‘We believe that many of the areas where there is potential for really exciting new work in design are at the interfaces between existing design disciplines. In looking for these novel multidisciplinary proposals, we believe it best to consider the full spread of design-related research. Since AHRB and EPSRC currently support different elements of that spread, a joint initiative was considered essential to maximise the opportunities for building the bridges that are needed.’
There has, as yet, been little commentary concerning this project in the media, mainly because it is being covered in quarterly journals like Engineering Magazine, the latest edition of which has not been issued yet. But one hopes the project will get the range of response it needs.
For more information on People Working in Design and the two subsequent phases of the Designing for the 21st Century initiative – Understanding Creativity, and Application of Design in Practice – visit the EPSRC Research Zone, or contact Andrew Clark, EPSRC Associate Programme Manager for Design and Manufacturing, tel: 01793 444186, email: [email protected]; or Alison Henry, AHRB Senior Programme Manager, tel: 0117 987 6664, email: [email protected].
