Message from Steven Kyffin, Dean
With our roots in one of the first UK Government School’s of Design, our history stretches back over 160 years and yet, in spite of the passage of time, we still have much in common with our pioneering ancestors. Their goal was to create ‘new’ Design and define the future trades while building the skills to deliver them; ours is to envisage the future through new know-how and design ideas and equip ourselves, and others, with the skills to deliver them. In this way we can both change the world and propose new roles for Design.
In other words, whether working with our students, or collaborating with leading research, education or business partners, we want to enable creative transformation. To transform the ‘things we make’; the services and systems that deliver them and the people and places they touch.
Driven by five academic communities; Fashion, Industrial, Visual Communication and Innovation Design, and Creative Entrepreneurship, we offer award winning and integrated learning and research programmes. This, together with our successful track record for collaborations with like-minded business, research and education partners, and indeed the local community, enables us to address the global issues facing the world today and tomorrow.
Northumbria School of Design is a hugely passionate team of people: a team I am absolutely delighted to be a part of. In order to drive the design debate and enable highly creative designers, innovators and strategists to go on to become leaders within international design and business arenas, we are building an innovative community of students, practitioners, researchers and organisations who share in our passion.
If you have the same drive, ambition and desire to work with others to make the world a better place and want to become more than you ever imagined you could be – why not join us? You are all very welcome indeed!
And, remember, in the words of Daniel Burnham, Chicago Architect and Planner, who said in 1901, "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir the blood; it’s their minor scale, which makes them insignificant. Make big plans and never forget that a noble design, once created grows, and attracts new ideas and new designs and in doing so your design, your creation, your hope, is easily capable, of singly, changing the world".
Professor Steven Kyffin
Dean, School of Design,
Northumbria University
