ICELAND DIALOGUE – GREAT TIME RUNNING A COURSE IN ICELAND
A break exercise driven by Ólöf Ingólfsdóttir, one of the mentors in the course
For two weeks in January I am running a course in the Iceland Academy of Art in Reykjavik, Iceland. The academy where I established the new Faculty of Design and Architecture ten years ago. It is always great to return and participate in activities there, teaching, planning or research.
I have made an indipendent blog site for the activities that take place during the project and it is named Icelanddialogue.
The location ÚTGERÐIN where the course takes place on the old harbour front in Reykjavik. This building was once a very active fish plant but is now empty and houses innovative and creative startups and various courses initiated by the Iceland Academy of Art and the Reykjavik Business School, named Hugmyndahús Háskólanna. It of course smells of fish. The name means ‘the fish producers’ – an old company name I think.
The object of the course apart from being about talking together is to wonder if there will be an other society in Iceland in the future or if it will just go back to the same grove it was in before the crash in 2008. Many wonder if anything will change and we will forget fast and love our bankers and business men again. Or should the creative people be more active in the future of society?
The argument for this course is that the academic system today is result driven where one course comes after an other and there is no time to take time to have a dialogue, and especially between the different fields in the academy. The course includes students from all the faculties in the academy and the students work together across specialized fields having a dialogue and disseminating to each other. The course is split into 10 different groups with one mentor driving each group.
A presentation by Dalli, one of the mentors in the course
January 23, 2011
Posted in: DESIGN, ICELAND, PONDERINGS
