OPEN WEEK – Gothenburg Design Festival: Powered by HDK

How do you make a university more open? During the new initiative OPEN WEEK – Gothenburg Design Festival, HDK – Academy of Design and Crafts will test new formats for displaying teaching, learning and knowledge production in design and crafts. Through exhibitions, events, symposia, talks and a public night school, OPEN WEEK will invite cultural organizations, industry, practitioners and the public to engage in activities and critical discussions concerning design and crafts, society and education in relation to the curatorial theme of “Open.”

Taking place at HDK, University of Gothenburg as well as venues and institutions across the city and surrounding areas the festival will ask questions and explore new ideas about teaching, learning, work and social equality in order to provide new insights that can further develop education, research and future directions for design and crafts practice. Addressing questions such as what does it mean to share knowledge? Why should design and crafts be open? How can universities promote education for lifelong learning, for the many and not for the few?

To display the diversity of practice and activity at HDK, OPEN WEEK will play a central role in creating new and alternative platforms to demonstrate the work produced in the many sub-fields of design, craft and arts education by students, tutors, technicians as well as local and international practitioners. OPEN WEEK will also make public the work of independent programmes and research centres connected to HDK and the University of Gothenburg.

The festival will include the annual degree show for Design, the Open House day and coincide with the exhibition of the Design award Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Prize. Furthermore, an online publishing platform will invite partners to share and archive a wide range of content generated through the planning, development and presentation of the week. As an axis for learning, the aim of the festival is to provide access, create opportunities for dialogue, exchange of knowledge, insights and opinions on the role of design and crafts and its wider intersection with society.

Festival sites and partners include:
Röhsska Museum, Gothenburg City library, Swedish National Archives, cultural center Blå Stället, Sites in Biskopsgården, Göteborg & Co, Svensk Form (the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design), ADA + others

A full programme for the OPEN WEEK will be announced in the fall.

Artistic Lead and Festival Curator: Onkar Kular, Professor of Design Interventions at HDK, onkar.kular [​at​] hdk.gu.se