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Canberra Today 25°/28° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Arts / A festival by design

DESIGN is all around us, but is it art? After all, designers are not freewheeling creatives just doing their own thing, they have to address a brief, so just how imaginative can they be?

Beautifully simple graphic design by Zoo Advertising.
Beautifully simple graphic design by Zoo Advertising.
These and other questions are about to be addressed in a seriously big public event, the Design Canberra Festival, organised by CraftACT and running all around town from November 20-23.

There’ll be pop-up installations, design labs, exhibitions and shops, the “MODERN’ market, the Capital of Culture Tours and the DESIGN Buzz conversation and lecture series.

Helen O’Neil, the president of Craft ACT’s Craft and Design Centre reminds us that Canberra has always been a city where designers and artists are being confident enough to “rethink, rework, renew and innovate”.

To her, the event will be “a challenge to us all to use our creative skills to make the most of the great opportunities and strengths of this city”, a city founded on an international design competition.

So, “change the way you think” is the theme of Design Canberra, captured in a beautifully simple graphic design by Zoo Advertising.

Proof that this is a city of design can be seen in the extensive program, which shows individual artists, major institutions such as the Museum of Australian Democracy and the National Portrait Gallery, the ANU and the University of Canberra, private firms such as Cox Architecture, who are running tours and a myriad of small design businesses pulling their weight with exhibitions and talks.

Highlights of Design Canberra include MoAD’s “Fusion: the art of eating” on November 19, where food and fine design come together, the $2500 “Design + Craft” award for participants, a guided bus tour of artists studios, workshops starting at Canberra Glassworks and a marketplace offering “something for everyone”.

First cabs off the rank were the Gallery of Australian Design with an unusual poster exhibition called “Do Good” and a multipronged exhibition at Craft ACT itself.

This is above all an optimistic festival and a sign, O’Neil says, “of confidence in our future and belief in our cultural strength.”

Design Canberra Festival, all around Canberra, November 20-23, for all details and bookings at designcanberrafestival.com.au

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Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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