design42day

IED presents TEDxIED
Creativity is a Profession!
20 September 2012, 6.30 p.m.
IED Milan, Via Sciesa 4 – Aula S10
Live webcast on IED.tv

On 20 September, IED Milan is presenting TEDxIED: the first TEDx ever to be organised by a school in Italy will be entitled “Creativity is a profession”. Keeping faith with the philosophy, method and objectives of training at the IED, TEDxIED has given itself the remit to explain how creativity is in every way a profession, one of strategic value for getting the economy moving again.

TED (Technology Entertainment Design) is a non-profit organisation established 26 years ago in California with the format of a four-day conference whose aim is to disseminate ideas worth spreading with the potential for changing attitudes, life and, ultimately, the world. Since then, the TED conference has provided a platform every year for the world’s leading thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes or less. These contents are made available free of charge on the website www.ted.com and shared with the public. Past TED speakers have included such famous figures as Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Philippe Starck and Isabel Allende, as well as thousands of others.

In 2009, the founders decided to issue local licences for organising independent events: the result is TEDx, a programme of conferences designed to offer communities, organisations and individuals the chance to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level, offering the public a brilliant blend of live speakers and video TEDTalks.

“Embracing the TED mission – ideas worth spreading – to the full, we are convinced that the IED, as a training and research establishment, is not only a key venue where valuable ideas and contents are born and grow, but above all a strategic channel whose duty it is to disseminate them to contemporary society”, states Emanuele Soldini, director of the Milan IED. “For 46 years, the IED has been training professionals in the creative disciplines of design, fashion, communication and the visual arts: these are professions whose creative nature is enhanced by teaching the culture of design and by the tools and skills that students acquire as they learn and interact with the real working world. Creativity – the ability to generate, develop and give shape to new ideas with the potential for catering for the functional requirements of today’s world – is a value for contemporary society: that is why we believe that it deserves to be recognised as a profession in its own right”.

“In a period of dramatic economic and cultural crisis, creativity provides the vital thrust towards innovation that is more necessary than ever today. Creativity as a driver of productivity is our philosophy”, adds Alessandro Rimassa, director of the IED Research Centre. “That is why this 20 September is a crucial step forward for us: this partnership with TED signals the launch of a form of payback for creatives, who still do not enjoy the esteem they deserve, especially here in Italy”.

The event is open to the public, but places are limited. To register, go to www.tedxied.com From Monday 24 September, all the speeches and contents from the TEDxIED will be online on this website, ready to be shared with surfers everywhere. The event will be webcast live on IED.tv.

www.tedxied.com
#TEDxIED on Twitter

TEDxIED: THE TOPICS

Eight top-ranking speakers from a variety of professional backgrounds will look at creativity in terms of eight different standpoints and key concepts, contributing to an overall description of what it consists of.

INTERDISCIPLINARITY – Franco Bolelli
These days, more than ever before, anyone who practises a creative profession is obliged to come to terms with cognitive pluralism. What that means is that we have to consider the links between disciplines that our cultural system has (mistakenly) trained us to think about in watertight containers, but which in actual fact are clearly related. This is the only way we can interact positively in a real world where interdisciplinarity is not a slogan, but the way things really are.

Franco Bolelli is a writer and philosopher, although he doesn’t really identify with any definition. He is passionately interested in building new models of thinking, feeling, behaving and living. A prolific author, his titles include Con il cuore e con le palle, Cartesio non balla, Giocate! and Viva Tutto!, written in partnership with the entertainer Lorenzo Jovanotti Cherubini.

SOCIAL VALUE – Ottavia Spaggiari
Creativity leads to innovation. And when something is innovative, it is necessarily functional to improving the quality of life. Creativity has a significant social value, as it finds solutions to existing problems, but also to problems that do not yet exist, while simplifying otherwise complex processes, making them cheaper and sustainable… in a nutshell, it does good. So it should have a professional role to play, so that people who practice it can do so full-time and enjoy suitable safeguards.

Ottavia is a journalist, author and videomaker. She has worked with several production companies and international cinema festivals. She produced the first V-Day in her hometown to promote awareness of women’s rights. She is also the creator of Film Voices, a project to make the movies accessible to the blind

CREATIVE PROCESS – Christian Meyer
The idea that suddenly pops up in your head like a lamp being switched on is a myth. More to the point: it will never amount to anything unless it is developed properly. Because creativity is not improvisation, but quite the opposite: it is a process that involves all sorts of different abilities, types of knowledge and tools.
The ability to recognise and master its various component phases is a fundamental characteristic for every creative, who has to be capable of dedicating the right energies to every moment.

Christian Meyer was born in Milan in 1963 and started studying drumming at the age of 11 with the maestro Lucchini. After playing Dixieland for a while, he moved to Frankfurt in 1981, where he started working professionally with Brazilian musicians. Back in Italy in 1983, he worked in various musical genres, with a special soft spot for jazz, playing with leading Italian and international musicians, taking part in concerts and festivals in Italy in Italy and abroad and featuring on numerous recordings. In 1991, he joined the band Elio e Le Storie Tese, whose line-up is still together today, recording numerous albums, going on the band’s tours since 1992 and starring in several videos, which have become something of a cult.

SHARING – Davide Dattoli
Sharing, working together, exchanging thoughts and partnering: in creativity, those who share are one step ahead of the others. That’s because their work benefits from the inimitable added value that comes when different points of view, areas of expertise and abilities interact, generating an impact between different cultures and values. There’s no need to worry that someone will steal your ideas: sharing them leads to even better results.

Co-founder of the Talent Garden, the first co-working venue in Brescia specialising in the web and communications, Davide Dattoli works on creating and installing locations, conducting the search for and selecting participants, promotion activities and organising events and training courses.

ECONOMIC VALUE – Alfredo Accatino
A substantial part of what makes a creative project good is its ability to innovate, a crucial characteristic whose real economic value is far too often denied recognition. Every innovation is the result of a process of training and creating, of sharing ideas, of inter-relating skills and of investing time and energy. It follows that no creative design phase should ever be taken for granted, but must always be valued and paid for what it is really worth.

Alfredo Accatino is the creative executive director of Filmmaster Events and is the man behind several of the most important events in recent years, including the opening ceremony at the XX Winter Olympics in Turin in 2006. He is also the author of humorous books and of publications about image education and communications.

RETE – Riccardo Luna
The contemporary world is a global network in which the web plays a fundamental role in establishing and maintaining contacts. Things are no different in the working world: in fact, in your professional life, it’s even more important to build yourself a network, get to know more people and enhance your image of yourself (or of your business or your idea), otherwise you run the risk of getting shut out of the global market, the only one worth thinking about these days.

Riccardo Luna is a journalist who was the first editor of the Italian edition of Wired magazine and a promoter of the Internet’s candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize. Passionately interested in innovation, he writes about it in Repubblica, Vanity Fair, Wired, Traveller and Il Post. He is also President of Wikitalia, an association whose aim is to spread transparency, open data and participation in Italian politics by using the web.

TEAM WORKING
The general public often sees creatives as somehow intangible, mysterious characters who spend their time locked away in their ivory towers, cut off from the real world and incapable of interacting with it. Wrong: the best results actually come from teamwork. It is when different abilities and visions mix, match and even clash that real value is added to the final outcome.

Lorenzo Palmeri is an architect and designer whose professional scope encompasses product design, interior architecture, lecturing and composing and producing music. His mentors include Bruno Munari and Isao Hosoe, with whom he worked for several years. A lecturer since 1997, he has taught in some of the top design schools in Italy and abroad. The exhibitions and projects he has curated while working as an art director include Milanosoundesign, with Giulio Iacchetti; 16 Designers for Invicta, in 2007; Lefel, in 2009- 2010; Arthemagroup, since 2010, and Valenti Luce since 2011. He has written soundtracks for the theatre and installations. In 2009, he brought out the album preparativi per la pioggia, his first collection of songs, featuring prestigious guest artists, such as Saturnino on bass guitar and Franco Battiato.

TIME
Like everything in life, developing and designing ideas is an activity that takes time. Both the decision-maker who commissions a project and the professional whose job it will be to come up with the idea and then execute it have to make allowance for the time necessary for every phase. In a nutshell, haste is not helpful, but actually stops ideas from achieving the shape they could (and should) reach.

Lorenzo Petrantoni was born in Genoa in 1970. After studying graphic design in Milan, he moved to France to work as an art director with Young & Rubicam. Returning to Italy, he kept partnering with several leading communication agencies, before devoting himself full-time to his career as an illustrator. His passionate interest in graphics and his fascination with the nineteenth century combine to inspire his illustrations, which he populates with images borrowed from the old manuals and period dictionaries he comes across in his perambulations among second-hand bookshops. There is no mistaking these illustrations, which bring otherwise forgotten words, events and characters back to life. He has used his art to create campaigns for prestigious brands, partnered with international magazines and shown in numerous exhibitions, both at home and abroad.

THE ORGANISER
The organiser of TEDxIED is the IED Research Centre: since 1975, the place where research meets experimentation, where training meets the working world, has been working with firms and students to devise innovative solutions in the fields of design, fashion, communication and the visual arts, practising a multidisciplinary approach, a participatory working method and the principles of design thinking.

http://centroricerche.ied.it

PARTNER
TEDxIED is being organised in partnership with Legami, Ferrarelle, Walk On Job and Iknowmonki.it