During last month’s edition of Design Days Dubai, Esra Lemmens, the Dubai based Design Industry powerhouse and self-styled ambassador of the creative community launched the Pop Up Academy. Outside the institutionalised environs of design schools de rigueur, the academy hopes to bring design students and professionals together on an informative, intellectually challenging and as the founder hopes, career enhancing platform.
“I believe in a future with highly qualified designers who understand the world’s needs and contribute their creativity and experience back to society,” says Lemmens, herself a designer and lecturer with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and Design and a Master’s in Product Design from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Maastricht in her native Netherlands. “We plan to give access to influential and inspiring people, those outliers in the creative community who inspire the world, and connect them with the global design community.”
As per The Atlantic Business Report, in 2015, 44% percent of college graduates surveyed were jobless. In its aim to close the gap between a design or arts school education and a meaningful job in the creative industry, the main mandate of Pop Up Academy is to advocate mentorships in a global community. The inaugural edition featured contemporary design impresario Marcel Wanders where he talked about the importance of humanity in design. “I have always been an observer of things around me,” he told me ahead of the lecture. “It was second nature to look at and think about those products and decipher how they represented what people like and need. I have also always been fascinated with people and what drives them. My inspiration has been to bring a product or experience to people that changes and improves their life in some way.” Through such intimate interactions, the Pop Up Academy hopes to demystify the successes of these ‘design gods’, present their struggles and triumphs in an fashion that could potentially inspire future designers.
Design and Commerce go hand in hand, yet design schools don’t usually equip their students with real understanding of the element of entrepreneurship and consequences of their career choices as they step in to the professional design world. In her book ‘Conceptual Commercialism Commercial Conceptualism’, Lemmens delves into the dynamics of creativity and commerce, explaining how designers need to work and collaborate in order to maintain a strong position in today’s design environment. Through its programmes, the academy hopes to impart to the design community tools it desperately needs to build lasting relationships with creative wheel’s commercial cogs.
Given her clout in the design industry, I can’t help but wonder if the academy will end up being a promotional platform for her famous friends. “This is not a vanity project and the designers who have agreed to be featured don’t really need publicity,” says Lemmens when I share my concern. During her own college time Lemmens struggled with the modern education system - she was a critic, questioning the system and that made her an outsider. It also made her determined to change that for the students of the future, hence her chosen career as a lecturer in Fine Arts and Design. “The academy is born for a passion – passion for design and a passion to give back to the global community that has enriched both me and my lecturers’ lives.”
Originating from Dubai, the academy with its combined conceptual and commercial approach has the potential to improve local design businesses as it investigates the possibilities and opportunities in the established environment. Laying its foundation in the Arabian Gulf, the academy has plans afoot to be accessible globally and its events run parallel to leading world design events. Think Milan, Basel, Miami, The Netherlands, Shanghai, India – ‘pop-ups’ at established and emerging design markets will allow a wider cross-section of the global design community to experience the biggest names in design first hand, and to learn from their experiences.
“We started with Wanders; it will be a handpicked selection of the design stars who have found their own voice and inspire the world,” says Lemmens on her criteria for selecting the lecturers. “You see no matter what their background is or where they currently stand in the design industry hierarchy, the one thing designers and design students have in common with their industry heroes is the drive to succeed and make a difference in the world. I hope the Pop Up Academy can inspire discussions and trigger emotion… just like design does.”
Pratyush Sarup is design manager at one of the UAE’s premium interiors firms.
