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Two weeks ago the Ministry of Culture announced new initiatives at the forum of Latvian cultural employees. We do not wish for any revolutionary reforms, because in its essence, reform requires the denial of that which has gone before. However, our approach is not to deny that which is, but to create a new added value to that which exists. This is a conservative approach, which is personally close to me. Shocks in cultural life or cultural education are not necessary. The forum two weeks ago was the first gathering in the series of seven conferences planned for this autumn, which has been given the name of the “Seven Sisters”. Today’s conference about design education is the second of seven.
It is necessary to make a disclaimer that these conferences do not represent the whole cultural community – not even close. Their aim is to speak about the new contribution to the field of culture, which has been determined by the modern world in which we live, and, our wish to somehow change this world into something good. New work directions, which we plan to discuss in future conferences, are wide-ranging. This is the further development of the creative industry – including national cinema, advertising design and other fields.
We are determined to create a European example of innovations in the preservation of intangible cultural heritage. Latvia is the leading nation in Europe with the development of an integrated digital joint computer catalogue, in which information about museums, archives and libraries can be found together. Similarly we are pioneers with the “Gaismas tīkls” (Network of Light), the National Digital Library, cultural mapping in the digital environment, the portal “kultura.lv” and the plan for a national digital encyclopaedia. By digitalising our cultural heritage, we will make it closer to contemporary people and will include it into the education system. Also this autumn we have planned to discuss the founding principles of collecting contemporary art and the development of a cultural canon.
Clearly, all of the just mentioned tasks will be linked with the content of cultural education in the most direct way. With new methods, new information retrieval methods and new content, horizons will widen – for teachers and students alike.
Today we are going to have a discussion about design, or more accurately, about design training: and we have come together in the name of a larger goal. This word or combination of words is national competitiveness. Of course, we can strike a pose and refer only to spirit, soul and art for art’s sake. We do this at the times when we have been inspired by some aspect of art or participation in common processes, such as the Song Festival. That is valuable in itself, there is no doubt, like a serious choice – and it is always a choice, not some natural endowment – to be a Latvian and to maintain our sense of being Latvian.
Nevertheless something has changed, which makes us view our cultural field in a wider context. The world has changed and Latvia’s place in it. The guidelines of economic existence have changed, which influence our field directly. Technologies have changed as have the ways in which young people communicate with the world. I have substantiated suspicions that the current ninth graders would classify our event today as a very boring meeting. Although even progressive young people often do not understand that the significant changes of our time are not initiated by technological and economic networks. Richard Florida, one of the biggest creative economic gurus in the world, and someone who I have invited to take part in a conference dedicated to creative industry in November, comments that: “deep and prolonged changes in our era are not technological, but social and cultural”.
The conformism of a prosperous society is no longer the central social indicator, but we, although we haven’t yet reached Western affluence, have a clear idea of the direction in which the West is developing. It is creativity, new social links, taking larger risks and less social guarantees. This characterises people, professionals, who create almost a third of the gross national product in the USA, for example. This is the pronounced mobility of people, their ability not only to adapt to the market, but to create new micro and macro markets.
We have to adopt the positive side of these development experiences, the same way in which many of us learned computer skills in the nineties. I’m not saying that the current direction for global development is something particularly good. Besides the general values which we gain mostly from the family, school and church, people also strive for money, for self realisation and ‘interest’. If they don’t have this stable base, a young person is irretrievably washed into the dregs of the entertainment industry, which creates their world view. Today the most competitive people become stressed under constant pressure and people’s relationships are becoming more superficial. Some explain this as the degradation of personality as such. However alongside individual growth is also the growth of the nation and society, because only in this way can we think about social justice, which is not possible to implement without the increase of competitiveness.
A real art experience helps to maintain a sense of humanity amongst people, which is a daily miracle. Your task is and remains to be pedagogues, educators. The nation’s task, in turn, is to strengthen competitiveness, and today we will justify this with new educational content. Teachers at art schools and universities, the same as librarians, need to become informative pilots of our inescapably dynamic world. Ship pilots, as we know, are specialists who sail ships into places which are difficult to navigate. The Latvian government in the guise of the Ministry of Culture, and hopefully also soon in the guise of the Ministry of Economics and Education will partly provide you with the opportunities to broaden your professional abilities.
Librarians have already modernised to a large degree and become more knowledgeable. This has happened in the last two years, thanks to an investment worth millions – the “Gaismas tīkls” (Network of Light) throughout Latvia, new electronic databases and a librarian training course which affects or will affect thousands of specialists.
The improvement of the material and technical basis of schools can only work if it is combined with new content. Let us remember that European funding, which our system has to be able to attract, is aimed towards creating high added value. This cannot be achieved only through applied and fine art, no matter how much we want it to, but it can be encouraged by training in the field of design.
I must say that Latvia is a unique nation in Europe. And not only because of our blue cows or a few people flying, or many people singing, as are shown by advertisements for Latvia, but also with our network of art and music schools. There is no other nation in Europe that has such a dense and branched art and music school network, which allows every child learn to draw, paint or sculpt according to their own abilities, or to play some musical instrument or learn the history of music. To my mind, this network of 150 art and music schools is one of Latvia’s largest treasures – it has a huge positive effect on society: you could say that a person who has completed art or music school has certainly become a better person.
You can always wish for more money, more equipment, and larger attention from society and the mass media. However we shouldn’t forget that even the wealthiest nations in Europe cannot imagine allowing this kind of extravagance. Nowhere else, in such conditions of limited state and regional resources, is such a wide and branched network of art and music schools maintained. These schools are our worrisome children, but on a much larger scale – a huge opportunity. I think that the maintenance of such a wide music and art school network is in Latvia’s strategic interests.
Our conference today is the first road stop in a wider process, the aim of which is to supplement the content of art school education with a new design training programme. What are the Ministry of Culture’s responsibilities in this process, and what are your, the teachers, tasks?
The resolution of the Ministry of Culture, the Arts Education Centre of Latvia and Design Information Centre is to cultivate art school education programmes or to develop the foundations for design education. In turn, the existing educational content at universities needs to be improved. This will not happen in one day, it is possible that it will not happen even in a year, but I will speak about deadlines a little later. Therefore the state will be responsible for design education programmes in art schools.
Colleges and universities will each individually have to create their own profile and attract funding from Europe. The government until now has supported the introduction of multimedia and digital technology education at the Latvian Academy of Art and at the Liepaja School of Art, which, I hope, with the assistance of the Arts Education Centre of Latvia will soon become a college. With the budget adjustments of this year, 100 000 lats have been apportioned to the development of new educational content in art schools, with the involvement of international experts. The Arts Education Centre of Latvia and Design Information Centre are responsible for implementation – this is a good example of the fact that national functions can partly be delegated to non-governmental organisations.
The implementation of all of these tasks is answered for by the professionalism and prestige of one particular person, because nothing ever happens under the conditions of anonymous responsibility. This person is the new and energetic director of the Arts Education Centre of Latvia, Agnese Miltiņa. A few weeks ago, Agnese began to study the Danish experience, and I am mentioning this for a reason. As is noted by the most prominent international experts, that alongside the USA, the Nordic countries are developing the most rapidly in the field of creative industries, and to a large degree this is happening thanks to the prolonged, carefully-aimed educational policy of their governments. It is true that the development of the creative industry is one of the priorities of the policies of Great Britain and now also Germany, although the success story of the Scandinavian countries is more strongly associated with cultural education.
At the moment we have a number of barriers in our way, which are not associated with the material and technical basis, wages or education programmes. One of the barriers is the lack of information and prestige. We lack knowledge, and alongside this we lack motivation about the potential competitiveness of this profession. I have written letters to all art school directors, encouraging them to allow all students access to the publications published with the support of the Cultural Capital foundation, including the magazine “Dizaina Studija”, which has been published for almost a year. It is a very good, interesting magazine, which also includes a section entitled “Design School”.
Design education itself lacks prestige. Attendance in these courses is not as hotly contested as that of courses in communication sciences, law, economics, political science offered by many institutions of tertiary education. Here it will not be enough to simply explain, we will need to organise campaigns – similarly to that which was organised recently by the Ministry of Health to encourage young people to study medicine. We have invited Agnese Miltiņa to not only develop the new education programme by May, but also to establish a special internet portal, employing the services of Latvia’s leading specialists in advertising.
Why are we attracted by Andrejsala in Rīga, where we will all go today to open the first International Design Biennial? Because it is interesting there, because there are sparks of creativity and originality there, because it is an environment aimed at young people.
The Latvian Art Directors Club, led by Ēriks Stendzenieks, has done a good job in popularising the field of design, which regularly gives awards to the best new designers, in this way connecting the field of design with a generally prestigious field of advertising.
If the role of design is valued in the field of advertising, or put more precisely - that advertising couldn’t exist without design, then the rest of business is in a very sad way. Many businesses in Latvia still lack understanding about the role of design in the production of any contemporary products with high added value. However, that which currently rules globally is an obsession with design – there is mobile telephone design, fashion design, television design, furniture design, internet and magazine design, car design and even hairstyle design. In other words, design has changed from a field to an irreplaceable component in the manufacture of any product.
By definition, good design is the application of high-quality function and aesthetic criteria in the manufacture of products. Therefore good design has to be made a component of every product manufactured in Latvia. In the ‘Diena’ newspaper supplement published last week, which was dedicated to the month of design, the Associate Professor at the Academy of Art, Holgers Elers said: „I have clever students with great intellectual potential and ambitions. I hope that many of them will be professional designers with international experience and successes. They own the future, but I doubt that will be in Latvia. Because our society does not have an understanding of what design is. Manufacturers do not understand that they have to invest money in the development of design. Modern manufacturing equipment is being bought, but there is no understanding about what should be manufactured. The majority produce SOMETHING for the Western market, because the only thing we can compete with is the production price. The situation is rapidly changing, because the cost of resources is nearing the European level, and in two or three years our products will not be needed by anyone.”
This is what Holgers Elers said, and I agree with him to a large degree. Although establishing the problem is not enough, it has to be overcome. I hope that in the near future some non-governmental organisation, for example, the Institute for a Creative Economy will begin a wide explanatory campaign, aimed right at the entrepreneur. Here it is possible to attract EU funding; only there have to be entrepreneurial people who can implement it all.
Autumn is a good time to speak about design. The leaves are turning red or yellow, many have noticed that autumn clouds have a particular form or colour or design.
However I should repeat that design is not just an aesthetic phenomenon – it plays a much larger role in people’s life, creates high added value in manufacturing and helps make a qualitative living environment. Design is an irreplaceable component in the competitiveness of a modern nation.
I would like to invite everyone to discuss this.
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