B/SIDE DESIGN FESTIVAL
An unprecedented forum of debates and fieldwork, of practical and speculative experiments around creativity and urban futures.
The pilot Edition 0 of the Festival was held between June 20 - 24;
we will publish outcomes here soon. Stay tuned for our next events.
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DATES: JUNE 20 -24, 2018 | Beijing
LOCATION: Le Ping Foundation
All events and activities are FREE
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DOWNLOAD AN OVERVIEW OF THE 2018 PILOT EDITION HERE.
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THE GREAT LEFTOVERS | EDITION 0
2018
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‘’This is the research environment we want to tackle across its human, environmental, material and intangible articulations.
How can we address, divert, reinvent and improve the conditions of places, people and ecosystems of production that the grand race towards absolute gain, wasteful consumption and abuse have left disattended, unused or simply discarded?
We want to look at these conditions and residual states of existence via hands-on forms of lateral thinking, creative remaking and identify new visions and solutions to transform them into a new energy’’
WHY THE FESTIVAL AND WHAT IT IS
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B/Side Design Festival is an initiative of The Global School - a networked group of China-based and international professionals in the fields of design practice who explore the ramifications of contemporary innovation intended as a cross-disciplinary, networked system of research in action.
The festival is an exchange platform of ideas and knowledge-transfer around the social and environmental predicaments of contemporary development that by taking Beijing/China as an epicentre aims to facilitate and foster encounters among trajectories of combined experimentation and experience across private and public sectors – from academic investigations to the workings of corporate, institutional and independent fields of operation.
This first pilot edition of B/Side Design Festival is a 5-day journey of combined research/education/culture production, unfolding in a build-up narrative of 3 core Labs - an intertwined and radically multidisciplinary set of intensive workshops with public presentations, ideas pitches, lectures - and a one-day conference tasked to generate long-term collaborations and partnerships among professionals and stakeholders engaged with the edification of novel urban commonwealths and aspirational advocacies of sharing in our times.
This first edition of the festival sets stage for publicly launching operations of TGS - investigating a central theme - The Great Leftovers - from the perspective of complementary and intersecting knowledge areas. It sets in motion interwoven working sessions, mentoring and lecturing, with public programming in collaboration with local and international partners.
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EXPLORING
STRUCTURE
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The Festival is built around the development of 3+1 intertwined LABS, each designed around different knowledge areas (Datadatadata / Spatial Practice + Tangible Lab / Craftworks & Narrative Spaces / Visual Scapes) providing complementary vantage points to the investigation of the core theme of the festival - 'The Great Leftovers'.
The labs include workshops, lectures, onsite testing and demonstrations, mentoring by China-based and international lecturers invited to contribute to their making.​ and are interwoven with public narratives/programming and on site/hands on experimentation co-programmed with different counterparts.
The festival will therefore offer blueprints of focused research directions under the main theme for continued development by TGS in its future steps, thus generating actionable, long-term collaborations with various entities, professional and institutions.
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B/Side Design Festival is developed in close collaboration with the Le Ping Foundation for Social Innovation and was held at their location in central Beijing, in the hutong area of Beixinqiao.
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CHECK HERE OUR FANTASTIC 45++ SPEAKERS!
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Designers / Architects / Technologists / Scientists / Artists
Visual Story-tellers / Economists / Photorgraphers
Sociologists / Impact strategists / Anthropologists / Philanthropists
Engineers / Writers / Students / Journalists
Teachers / Start-ups / Chefs / Food Entrepreneurs / Data Analysts
Curators / Ethnographers
Photoreporters / Agronomists ...
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In Partnership with:
The School of Art & Design at BIFT
(Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology)
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With the support of:
Yanqing Academy at Pekin University
I: project Space
SKD Education