Saturday 29 November 2008

brazilian design forum created yesterday




yesterday, november 28th, 2008, was founded at the "centro design rio" (located at the national institute of technology premises in rio de janeiro), the brazilian design forum, which aims to congregate professional and academic design associations and design promotion centers in brazil. for the first time ever it is established a common line of purpose and actions for the entire community of brazilian design.

the brazilian design forum was born from the claim of local and national associations gathered in rio de janeiro at the brazil design week last september, to promote the alignement of actions and demands, creating critical mass and representativeness to dialog with the government in the planning and execution of public policies for design and in the implementation of coordinated actions to promote brazilian design. in this regard, the forum will be a supra-institutional body, representative of all the associations and design promotion centers, whenever this is necessary. the forum is not intended to be, in any event, a new entity among the others, but a space where all entities shall find identity to lead the common ideals and fights of the brazilian design community.

one of it's first activities will be to support the work that already has been done by the plural committee constituted earlier to promote the advance of the project of professional regulation at the congress. this project, with the support of the forum, will gain much more political consistence and formal representativeness.

at the meeting where the forum was founded, the three major design associations in brazil were represented: abedesign (design companies), adp (product designers) and adg (graphic designers), as well as other important local associations from brasilia (adegraf), rio grande do sul (apdesign) and santa catarina (sc design), the federation of industries of rio (firjan), the state government's design program (rio é design) and the design advisory council (and the centro design rio, host of the meeting). which is undoubtedly a very significant constellation of design entities from brazil. 

as next steps, a manifesto is being drafted and will be available soon, opening space to other associations and promotion centers to be a part of the initial formation of the brazilian design forum. it's structure and operation, as well as it's targets, are expected to be released in early 2009.

although recognizing there are still ways to be paved in the effort to unite the broadest initial group possible, we believe that, before anything else, to seek for consensus we need to be united by common sense. 

...and we never seemed to be so close to it before!