What’s in a Manifesto?

Did you know, the LCC Design School has a manifesto? It’s an ethos consisting of eight points that distinguish the aims and beliefs of what studying Design at LCC should stand for.

This is your Design School Manifesto:

• We believe in design as site of action and agency to radically transform our world.
• We believe in the power of design to critique, confront and challenge inequalities.
• We believe in questioning geopolitical, socio-cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.
• We believe that design operates in an ecology beyond the human centric.
• We believe that learning is continuous, collaborative and creative.
• We believe in the power of making as critical practice and tangible intervention.
• We believe in embracing uncertainty through experimentation and risk-taking.
• We believe in the value of interrogating the past to shape our futures.

Do you use these principals in your design work already? It’s a rigorous attempt to use design to its fullest extent as a form of communication, and apply critical thought processes to visual outputs.

In conversations with the Associate Dean, Amanda Jenkins, she had this to say:

‘Putting these principles into action, I think at graduate level it’s really taken off very quickly because post-graduate students are using their existing learning and knowledge to solve problems.

‘We did a whole round of modifications to really place the social justice and sustainability agenda that spills out of our manifesto into all of the courses. And I think a good example is the relatively new course, Social Innovation and Sustainable Futures, the title is a bit of a clue. It’s really our manifesto.’

A key part of postgraduate courses at LCC is the applied nature of the creative avenues we’ve come to study and that means we’re all pushing our work to be applicable in the ‘real world’. A manifesto is a great way to start thinking about the intent and ramifications of our work. All design is there for a function or a message and particularly at postgrad, I think we’re aware that people deserve more from the things they see and use and it’s good that the university appears to support thriving for better.

It’s a great benefit to know what the School stands for, but does the College live up to this? LCC is a major player in the redevelopment of Elephant & Castle and the new building will sit on the site of the old Shopping Centre, the plans claim accessibility but only time will tell if the redevelopment enriches the current population or invites a new one.

Maybe that’s not the point, for now, the manifesto is a launchpad for critical thinking in learning and I think that’s what we need to take out into the world. Modern communication is bogged down with a lot of rubbish and isn’t that what we’re here to change?