Call for speakers

We invite designers, theorists, architects, urbanists, activists, social entrepreneurs, and everyone else interested in designing the social to submit their ideas for active participation in this years Digital Bauhaus Summit.
We welcome submissions for lectures, workshops, and other formats on all aspects of this year’s topic, “Designing Society.”
We are looking especially for entries tackling the following topics:

Think Big: Social Visions and Design Utopias

Which grand social visions can be discerned behind current design trends? Is there a utopian potential in design?

Small Is Beautiful: The Power of Micro-Innovation

Is social change a matter of small steps?

Reinventing the Wheel: What’s New about Social Design?

What is the social impact of design? Does the social design buzz really generate innovation, or is it all just a reprise of failed projects from the past?
 
Apart from a lively intellectual atmosphere, ample occasion for exchange with an international audience, and the charming surroundings of Weimar, we can also offer a modest honorarium.
If you wish to participate, please submit your proposal (max 2,000 characters) to info@digitalbauhaussummit.de by no later than March 15, 2015.
You will be notified by mid April whether your submission has been accepted.
 

Digital Bauhaus 2015

Designing Society

Date: July 3-4, 2015
Location: Weimar

In its time, the Bauhaus was as much a social experiment as an aesthetic undertaking: epitomizing the multifaceted Lebensreform movement, it oscillated between social romanticism and utopian grandiosity. Design or Gestaltung was understood as a social phenomenon and meant to engender a new, more democratic society. Where are we now? What are today’s design fictions of an ideal society? Do we need to think big in order to imagine a better society, or does the beauty lie in small changes? Is social design really the high road to progress, or are we just reinventing the wheel?
In its second year the Digital Bauhaus Summit takes on the motto “Designing Society.” Having buried the deadly political utopias of the twentieth century, we encounter utopian visions of social engineering and re-design anew – from the microscopic to the large scale. Design has become a leading theme of our epoch, expanding from its traditional domains of objects, products, and surfaces into the realm of consciously shaping and reforming everything else: from technology to work, from money to law, from social processes to politics. But can design really live up to such grand expectations?
Digital Bauhaus is an annual summit for the creative economy. Set in Weimar, home of the original Bauhaus, it focuses on a specific topic each year and features hands-on workshops, keynote talks, panels, and ample time and space for exchange and dialogue among the participants. Join us in Weimar this year from July 3-4 in an attempt to explore and critically reflect the politics, economics, and aesthetics of designing the social.