The #cocreateDESIGN FESTIVAL 2023, hosted in Cape Town from 7 – 8 August, will gather policy-makers, business leaders, design professionals and civil society to address the pressing challenge of scaling up circular solutions in South Africa.
An initiative of the Mission Network of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in South Africa (#cocreateSANL), the annual festival celebrates and examines the power of design to tackle current socio-economic and environmental challenges within a local context. The festival is organised in collaboration with the Craft and Design Institute (CDI), and in 2023 has been curated in partnership with the City of Cape Town, GreenCape and Circular South Africa (CSA). This year’s festival will be hosted over two days at the Hasso Plattner d-school Afrika, based at the University of Cape Town.
The Festival is the culmination of a 2023 event series exploring the concept of circularity in South Africa – and offers a deep dive into local challenges, successes and opportunities for a circular economy.
“The aim of #cocreateDESIGN FESTIVAL 2023 is to facilitate conversations that can bolster collaboration, enhance innovation, and creative thinking, while breaking down professional silos. We need to defuse the ‘ticking time bomb’ of environmental damage. The Festival will help us explore how we can we move away from the current linear economy models that don’t take care of natural resources and create incredible amounts of waste.
This year we look forward to discussing, learning, and sparking new ideas that will help shape circularity within a local context,” says Hélène Rekkers, Consul General of the Netherlands in Cape Town.
Erica Elk, Group CEO of the CDI, adds that, “Creating a future with sustainability at the centre of how we work and live remains one of the biggest challenges of our time – through these dialogues we aim to create awareness and will explore solutions.”
“What we face is fundamentally a design challenge, one that encompasses how we design policy, and how we design systems, products and business practices. The first step to acting is knowing – that’s a really important goal of these gatherings – alongside cross-sectoral and cross-functional engagement because we need people coming together across complex value chains to work on meaningful solutions. We’ve seen how this is possible through initiatives like the Plastics Pact, but how can we foster this collaborative mindset further? And, of course, citizens have power. We need to foster a growing movement of people consuming differently. We invite engagement from across all sectors of society.”
The morning sessions on each day are free to attend but seating is limited, and booking is essential for in-venue attendance. For those that cannot attend in person, live stream links will be shared. The Festival has a series of smaller satellite sessions, and the outcomes of these strategic meetings will be shared via publication later in 2023.
The Festival follows two Creative Exchange events on circularity, which have laid the foundation for this year’s festival. (See recordings of the June and Julyevents). The festivalprogramme will cover circularity in the South African context broadly, and the fashion and tourism sectors as focal areas this year.
This year’s festival continues the thread of sustainability – in 2022 the festival brought into focus how we can design better processes, systems and products that can lead to a more water secure future. An outcome of this is a wonderful booklet which showcases some award-winning projects in water-sensitive design, and some best practice outcomes from a diversity of designers who have done remarkable work. Booklet: click here to download.
The 2023 Festival focus is timely, with the recent launch of a new Circular Economy Demonstration Fund, supported by the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and implemented by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The circular economy is an important source of inclusive economic growth, and the 2019 White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) was one of the first South African policy documents to identify its long-term potential. In addition, a research report released by the International Labour Organisation indicates that the transition to a circular economy could lead to the creation of millions of new jobs in the Global South.
Bookings are open on Quicket here: https://www.quicket.co.za/events/227178-cocreatedesign-festival-2023/
