The Honourable Kevin Rudd MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
Parkes ACT 2600

August 6, 2009

Dear Prime Minister

I am writing to draw your attention to the capacity of Australian designers and design researchers to contribute to greater Australian productivity and the transformation of our economic and social life. CHASS recommends that design and designers have a major role in building the new economy and stronger society that you have set as a goal.

In your essay The Building Decade: the Long Hard road to Sustainable Economic Recovery the Council noted your section on innovation concentrated on the necessary investment to provide Australia with access to digital communications and collaborative tools through the broadband network. There is also an urgent need to recognise and boost our capacity to innovate using the new infrastructure. Innovative design will improve the quality of the infrastructure itself as well as make it easier for all Australians, expert or not in the digital society, to use it effectively.

Australian designers, whose focus stretches from arts based practice through urban design, architecture and landscape sustainability to service design and product development in every facet of the economy, are immersed in world class projects to imagine, scope and build the new ways of sustainable city living, of new services and ways to incorporate creative and cultural work in Australian life.

Recently CHASS hosted a meeting of design researchers from some of the universities who are experimenting and documenting the design approach to solving and managing the complex challenges before Australia. The Design Dialogue roundtable, which also included major practitioner and professional organisations, finished with strong consensus about the case for designers and design organisations as leaders in the innovation debate, and argued for better use of design knowledge and skills in meeting the challenges before Australia. Australia risks its education goals, its urban planning and sustainability aims and its need to keep talent in the country if it does not use this expertise.

The practitioners and researchers at the Dialogue believe design is the third element of innovation investment.

Policy must be directed at building capacity and utilisation in research, design and development.

The Design Dialogue noted several State Governments have active and comprehensive strategies to use design knowledge for development of creative industries, to improve planning and to add to cultural experience. However at national level there is a gap in design policy.

The first important steps have been taken in some areas: your Government has appointed leaders in design to the Major Cities Unit in Infrastructure Australia and designers are part of the Built Environment Innovation Council in the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. Climate Change is discussing an exciting and important project with the Australian Council of Built Environment Design Professions in which design is grouped within key drivers for change within a sustainability framework. The project aims at adaptation and mitigation for climate change through a national sustainable settlement policy.

Now is the time to draw these initiatives together and extend them to other areas of the economy which would benefit from strategic use of design. We should not tackle the major challenges before Australia with our knowledge and skills divided into "silos" where important innovation will be lost because of the lack of collaboration.

There are several international models: UK Design Council and the UK's National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) are active in promoting design and have successfully made design part of the innovation system - a tool in the strategies for economic recovery. In the Netherlands there is considerable work in design policies and concomitant work in mapping and tracking progress. CHASS has previously sought establishment of an Australia NESTA as part of the national innovation system as a way of achieving a cross disciplinary use of knowledge and skills and can brief your Department on its structure.

In Australian universities there are outstanding examples of this collaborative approach, taking RMIT University's Design Research Institute and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at QUT as just two examples. The establishment of the Enterprise Connect Creative Industries Innovation Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney will create a focused approach to business development in the area. CHASS will be working on a project to identify research and education capacity across Australia and there are several groups also working to ensurebring design knowledge supports Australian recovery.together to contribute.

With more than 100 member organisations, the Council is an active network of specialists across humanities disciplines, creative arts, and research and professional practice in the social sciences. CHASS promotes and provides advocacy for the Humanities, the Arts and Social Sciences. It serves as a coordinating forum to link academics, students, business, practitioners and the broader community.

CHASS would be delighted to discuss how to boost innovative economic and cultural growth with your office and department.

Yours sincerely

Helen O'Neil
Executive Director

CC: Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research,
Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts
Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development
Minister for Climate Change

 

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