About us

We are value driven: building a unified European voice for design and hence the ability to influence policy at all levels of governance.

Taking stock, leveraging impact, looking ahead – we take action.

Since 2019 BEDA has focused on key topics in its policy to position design as a problem framing and solving competence in the EU Commission on decision making level: sustainable growth, digitalisation and inclusiveness to contribute to the success and prosperity of Europe through design.

Ecology

  • Use design for circular economy to lead the paradigm shift and ‘close the loop’ by innovating production means and methods and changing consumer behaviours.
  • Embed sharing and collaborative economy principles into communities and education programmes.
  • Use design as a collaboration and consensus building method to bring together all stakeholders to co-develop key policy documents such as European Climate Pact,
  • New Circular Economy Action Plan and Strategy for Green Financing.
  • Re-think the future of rural areas, farming and sustainable food chains using design futures and speculative design scenarios.
  • Educate about our impact on the environment and making the right choices through compelling data visualisation, inspiring graphic design and clever user interfaces.

Economy

  • Co-design the new future-proof Industrial Strategy.
  • Simplify business legislation and redesign support mechanisms for innovation and business growth from the enterprise perspective.
  • Integrate design into funding programmes for start-ups and SMEs and promote the concept of return on design investment.
  • Use design to co-create venture capital and social entrepreneurship funds with users.
  • Integrate design skills as collaboration, empathy, user experience, creativity, visualisation and programming into the new skills agenda, to enhance design literacy and demand for design solutions in the wider private and public sectors.
  • Update the standardisation syste for collaborative economy including a focus on user needs, prototyping and iteration.
  • Adopt NACE code 74.10 to represent diverse design disciplines.

E-Europe

  • Promote the triumvirate of design, data and digital for a modern world through new Digital Education Action Plan.
  • Build a capacity for service design in public sector while digitalising public services to ensure they respond to user needs.
  • Apply design to support inclusive dialogue on the ethical use of data to create ethical and legal frameworks that protect citizens while encouraging creative use of technology.
  • Provide funding to support the role of design in big data, robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, smart cities, the internet of things an high performance computing.
  • Invest in research, experimentation and pilot projects, where private sector and citizens cocreate solutions to solve greater challenges and drive demand for new technologies.
  • Launch discussion on digital ecology and cutting down the digital pollution through visual campaign.

Ethos

  • Use design and digital technologies to facilitate civic participation in decisionmaking to reinstate the legitimacy of public policy-making.
  • Use design to create visions for the future, different scenarios and perspectives to inspire and create discussion on the future of Europe and European values, starting from the Conference on the Future of Europe.
  • Train civil servants and policymakers in design methods to equip them with the tools to apply the processes to their daily operations.
  • Update public procurement guidelines including a focus on usercentred solutions.
  • Engage citizens in co-creating European values to build a sense of pride and ownership in them.
  • Strengthen the brand ‘Europe’ and promote the best European practice on the global stage.
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