Designing Services in Brussels
Premiere hosting of the exhibition by young artists outside their homeland
The Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region (RDA LUR) opened the exhibition ‘Designing an Agenda, or, How to Avoid Solving Problems That Aren’t’ in Brussels on Thursday, 26 September 2013.
The exhibition of service and information design in the field of health and sustainable transport, which was in May 2013 displayed in the atrium of Ljubljana Town Hall, was on this occasion hosted by the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in the Kingdom of Belgium and was prepared by the Regional Centre of Creative Economy (RCKE) under the auspices of the Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region.
By way of introduction the participants were welcomed by the Chargé d’Affaires at the Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in the Kingdom of Belgium, Mr. Jean Pierre Vonarb. The ceremonial speaker at the exhibition was the director of the Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region, mag. Lilijana Madjar, who in her address outlined the path along which the Agency had come to reach the creative solutions presented, while at the same time also presenting the importance that the Agency attaches to design.
The opening of the exhibition coincided with the event European Design Days 2013, hosted by the Flemish Parliament. The Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region presented its project ‘Designing an Agenda, or, How to Avoid Solving Problems That Aren’t’ and the resulting solutions at this event. The event, which was, in addition to the prominent institutions in the field of design in Europe (Design Wales, Design Flanders, BEDA, Dansk Design Centre and others), also attended by the representatives of the European Commission, was an important event at the regional level. Besides the most topical examples of good practices, it also prides itself with the latest information, presentations and viewpoints of the European Commission in the field of design and more widely within the field of the creative and cultural industries. This year’s viewpoints and preparations for the new calls for submissions and actions in the promotion of this field were presented by Antti Valle, DG Enterprise and Industry, Innovation Policy for Growth Unit.
The project ‘Designing an Agenda, or, How to Avoid Solving Problems That Aren’t’, as well as the publication of the same title, were extremely well received by the audience and were mentioned in the closing speech of the event itself.
From ideas to solutions that have come to life in practice
The concepts of the exhibited services took shape at the international event “Creative Camp Ljubljana”, which took place during the first half of the year as part of the European partnership project, “Creative Companies in the Alps Region (CCAlps)”.
The currently best-known creative solution has already grown into the free mobile application “A to B: LJ”, which works in the iOS operating system. The mobile application offers the user an extremely easy way of finding the optimal travel options between any selected points in Ljubljana. The application combines three forms of sustainable transport: bicycle – BicikeLJ, bus – Ljubljana Passenger Transport (LPP) and walking. It is one of the first instances of including a bicycle as a sustainable, publicly accessible means of transport in the mobile application of a European city. In this way, we enriched the available information on sustainable transport for users of mobile devices, while RDA LUR also commemorated European Mobility Week 2013 with the application at the same time.
The strength of the exhibited concepts is actually based on the methodology of service and information design as well as on the interdisciplinary co-creation of young design professionals, creative individuals with different educational backgrounds, design students, as well as participants and users from the field of research: health and sustainable transport.
The given results present us with the responses to the challenges of the contemporary times that differ in content and are based on quality and sustainability. The presented concepts encourage the visitors to the exhibition to change the established view of the situations in which we find ourselves on a daily basis, as well as the new business opportunities that service and information design offers.
A book on service and information design entitled ‘Designing an Agenda, or, How to Avoid Solving Problems That Aren’t‘ by dr. Petra Černe Oven and dr. Barbara Predan (both from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design and the Pekinpah Association) was also published to accompany the May exhibition in Ljubljana.