Design Skills

Overview

Project duration: 4 years

Project partners: Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE), Design and Crafts Council Ireland (DCCI), Institute of Designers in Ireland (IDI), National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Design Educators Ireland (DEI), Design Skillnet, Industry Research and Development Group (IRDG), Service Design Network (SDN) and The B!G Idea.

Impact

We set out three years ago to understand the demand for designers in the digital, product and strategic design disciplines. Undertaking primary and secondary research to map the scale, nature, needs and issues facing design in Ireland, we contributed to the development of the Together for Design report, establishing a road map for design policy and sectoral enhancement. Fast forward to today and we realise that Ireland is facing into a designer shortage, like many of our European colleagues.

To tackle this shortage, we formed an Implementation Group to address the recommendations from the Together for Design report. Through working together, we have managed to seed some of the policy and sectoral interventions needed to encourage more school leavers into the profession as well as initiatives to encourage those seeking to transfer into the sector.

One of the main benefits to accrue from our Implementation Group is that it has brought the design community together to tackle the large hurdles we face in embedding design thinking and planning into our educational system and State enterprise agencies. Taking the recommendations from the Together for Design report, the Group has tackled the project as one big design challenge. How else would a bunch of eclectic designers go about their work!

Talent in the workplace has become Ireland’s new competitive edge, and creative talent is becoming even more valuable. We must therefore do everything within our capability to continue to grow our indigenous designer base.

Challenge

The work of the Design Skills Implementation Group focussed on delivering recommendations under four of the five main themes identified in the Government’s Together for Design report, namely:

• Policy Interventions to Address Skills Shortages in Design
• Collaboration between Education and Enterprise
• Develop Career Pathways in Design
• Design in Education

Process

NCAD researchers contributed to the group, and Professor Alex Milton, Head of the School of Design at NCAD and Chair of Design Educators Ireland, produced datasets for the Together for Design report and subsequently led the EGFSN – Design Skills Implementation Group ‘Collaboration between Education and Enterprise’ and ‘Develop Career Pathways in Design’ themes.

Membership of the Group included the Design and Crafts Council Ireland (DCCI), the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Design Educators Ireland (DEI), the Institute of Designers in Ireland (IDI), the Industry Research and Development Group (IRDG), the Service Design Network (SDN) and The B!G Idea.

The EGFSN Secretariat based in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) provided administrative support to the Group between March 2020 and February 2022.

In addition, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) also contributed to the Group through the provision of regular updates on the actions underway in their Department to support the delivery of the goals outlined in Together for Design.

Output

A series of reports were produced including:

Together for Design (2020)

Design Skills Implementation Group: Year in Review 2020-2021

Design Skills Implementation Group: Year in Review 2021-2022