What's Next?

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. Several professions are entering the history books. Social services in Trelleborg have replaced administrators with AI. The death of the store is a fact. Shop assistants have been replaced by robots that flatly pack up what we click home. Driverless cars are driving around. 3D printers deliver everything from garments to artificial heart valves. Dystopian? On the contrary! It all depends on design. 

In order to create sustainable design, knowledge that was previously considered soft (and less valuable) is needed. And right now we see how the importance of different knowledge and skills changes places with each other. Social competence, curiosity and empathy are becoming more important than hard knowledge in mathematics, for example, as the need for numerical expertise decreases due to new technology. 

At Beckman College of Design we educate for today and tomorrow. In their work, students investigate, develop and question. Many work on solutions to various societal problems. In the graduation exhibition, we meet attractive waste sorting, a project that investigated whether the algae extract agar can replace disposable plastic and a program that makes our children conscious environmental citizens. Another project tackles involuntary loneliness. The theses also include plenty of personal stories. One family's flight from Kurdistan to Sweden via Iraq is behind a fashion collection that focuses on the stomach and breasts - the place in our body where everything is felt, from sadness and despair to joy. Of course, it is also recycled. Discarded materials are turned into something new. And maybe one project will actually deliver a solution to our digital pollution. 

Design is simply the future, not to mention education in design. Welcome to the 2019 graduation exhibition!   

Karina Ericsson Wärn
Headmaster