Design Tasmania, the state’s leading centre for design, will host its Australia-first annual Women in Design colloquium, Agents for Change: Women Leading Design, focusing on the visibility of women in areas such as publishing, archiving and collections, and emergent fields of contemporary design.
According to Design Tasmania Artistic Director Michelle Boyde, Agents for Change: Women Leading Design is an important opportunity to reflect on the significant contribution of women to Australian design historically, as well as to champion and hear from women leading the way forward now.
“Our speakers are all leading proponents in their varied design disciplines, and will bring their unique perspectives to the conversations that we will be having throughout the event,” she said.
“We are really looking forward to providing a platform to hear from these exceptional women working in the contemporary design field, and to explore together the ways in which we can continue to collaborate as a national design community.”
Encompassing an opening night cocktail event, full-day symposium and long-table networking dinner, Agents for Change: Women Leading Design is Design Tasmania’s eighth iteration of the event and will be held from 1-2 November at various locations in Launceston.
Design Tasmania is a destination attraction for cultural tourism in the state’s north, welcoming over 30,000 visitors each year and promoting design and craft through exhibitions, collection, retail, colloquiums, and workshops. It houses one of Australia’s most significant contemporary timber design collections in its award-winning building at Launceston City Park.
The colloquium draws together delegates from all over Australia for discussion, networking, knowledge sharing and professional development.
This year’s event has been curated by Launceston’s Professor Harriet Edquist, architectural historian and theorist at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne, and Dr Helen Norrie, architecture and design academic at the University of Tasmania’s School of Architecture & Design.
The program will focus on women in design and adjacent fields, in order to show how their work helps to question and shape practice paradigms and cultural infrastructures by collaboration across disciplines and within communities.
The full-day symposium on Saturday 2 November at UTAS Launceston will commence with an opening address from Professor Edquist, followed by talks from three senior women in publishing, exhibitions, collections and events:
• Dr Karen Burns, architectural historian and theorist at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne, and co-editor of The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960-2020
• Dr Megan Patty, Head of Publications, Photographic Services and Library at the National Gallery of Victoria, and Founding Curator of the Melbourne Art Book Fair
• Justine Clark, Co-Founder of Parlour, an award-winning advocacy group for gender equality in the architecture industry.
A panel discussion with the three speakers, led by Professor Edquist, will follow.
The afternoon session is convened by Dr. Norrie, featuring six pioneering women designers from Tasmania and interstate. Each will present a particular aspect of their practice in a series of rapid-fire, short presentations.
A round table discussion will follow, focusing on how their various practices explore new paradigms and create emergent design ecosystems, as well as the value of collective work in supporting diverse design futures.
Participants include:
• Vanessa Ward (Tasmania): Systems-Led Regenerative Designer
• Emma Bugg (Tasmania): Jewellery Practitioner and Artist
• Simone Bliss (Tasmania): Landscape Architect
• Liz Walsh (Tasmania): Architect
• Marta Figuerido (Melbourne): Speculative Furniture Maker and Multidisciplinary Artist
• Marlo Lyda (Sydney): Furniture Maker and Curator
An evening cocktail event at Design Tasmania will commence the event, with the colloquium’s renowned long table networking dinner at Design Tasmania on the last night.
This year’s dinner will be design-led by Design Academy Eindhoven-trained designer Marlo Lyda, in collaboration with much-loved local chef Jamie Yates.
Tickets for the full program are priced at $275 per person. Symposium-only ($150 per person) and dinner-only ($150 per person) tickets are also available. For more information and to book, visit www.designtasmania.com.au.
Image: Participant Marta Figuerido's Elementary Abacus / supplied.
