Design Manchester / DM13

This week saw the launch of Design Manchester, a week-long festival celebrating creativity, collaboration and inclusivity.

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the highlight of the week, DM13, held in the prestigious Manchester Town Hall.

The Inaugural festival took ‘Longevity’ as it over arching theme and comprised of talks, workshops and evening events spread across the city in various creative spaces.

Yesterday’s conference featured an impressive line-up of speakers including Peter Saville, Mark Farrow, Kate Moross and Malcolm Garret, the festival curator and ambassador. Each speaker was asked to discuss sustainable design and it’s importance to our economic and environmental future.

Other speakers included RSA’s Nat Hunter and Mark Shayler who talked about their sustainability initiative ‘The Great Recovery’ project which aims to encourage designers to minimise waste from their products created and consider design from sustainable manufacturing point of view.

Independent type foundry Colophon; Greyworld’s Andrew Shoben and The Manchester’s School of Art professor Dave Crow also spoke on the day.

Overall DM13 was a fantastic mixture of talks, interviews and a Q&A session. A must for any creative hungry mind and not just students starting out in the industry. After such an impressive launch I can’t wait to see what’s in store for next year.