DRIVE for change

There’s less than a month to go until this year’s Dutch Design Week (DDW)! Last week we revealed plans for Design United’s Up Close and Personal exhibition but what about DRIVE?

For those of you who are new to IDE, DRIVE is an annual event on the Dutch Design Week calendar. CLICKNL (the Dutch consortium for Creative Industries) organises the DRIVE festival, a symposium celebrating Design Research and Innovation in the Netherlands' four technical universities (4TU). 

DRIVE is taking a slightly different form this year: rather than a two day event, there will be a programme of two hour sessions throughout DDW, that will see design researchers from across the Netherlands discuss their cutting-edge work. Each session has its own theme, including thought-provoking topics such as Mobility, Circular and Biobased Building, and Security. In these sessions, experts will share state-of-the-art research, knowledge and innovations that respond to current societal challenges.

DRIVE coincides with the beginning of CLICKNL’s latest vision project, exploring how design research can contribute to the themes covered in the daily sessions. A number of researchers from the 4TU have been connected with these themes, including IDE’s Professor Sicco Santema and Dr Suzanne Hiemstra-van Mastrigt, who will explore the theme of Mobility and Assistant Professor Nynke Tromp, who will delve into the topic of Safety.

This year’s festival will be held live online via Zoom, alongside a small in-person audience of experts in Eindhoven. To find out more about the sessions and sign up, check out the DRIVE website.