On 29.09.2022 the Deutsche Designtag e.V. signed the Charter of the Pact for Skills
With the signing of the Charter, the Deutsche Designtag stresses the importance and shares the European Commission’s principles of a lifelong learning culture. With full conviction, the umbrella organization of
25 design organizations, representing more than 360.000 designers, in Germany has therefore signed up to the Charter of the Pacts for Skills, which sets out fundamental convictions on the development of skills that are necessary now and in the future. Equal opportunities, commitment to gender equality, and commitment against discrimination we consider in the sense of the charter as indispensable principles in the promotion of lifelong learning.
“In view of the necessary transformation of our society due to the manifold current crises, lifelong promotion of education and professional competence is essential,”
emphasizes Boris Kochan, President of the Deutsche Designtag.
“The design industry can make an outstanding contribution here. We are proud that Designtag already follows the principles of the Pacts for Skills Charter, both in its own ork and in the work of its member organizations.”
The promotion of entrepreneurial and transformative skills as well as the further training of competencies in the digital environment, especially with low-threshold offers, is already day to day praxis in many Deutsche Designtag members organisations. Those activities are already implementing demands the formulated principles in the manifesto of the Creative Pacts of Skills.
For example, all the professional associations in Designtag – the Typografische Gesellschaft, the Alliance of German Designers, the BDG Berufsverband Kommunikationsdesign, the Illustratoren Organisation, the Verband Deutscher Industrie Designer and the VDMD Netzwerk für Mode.Textil.Interieur.Accesoire.Design – regularly offer low-threshold training courses with valuable professional and business knowledge – often free of charge – to accompany the necessary further development of many small design studios and solo self-employed designers.
To strengthen the proportion of female managers in companies in the Hessian cultural and creative industries and to motivate young female designers to start their own businesses the German Designer Club (DDC) has developed a program called “Learn & Burn” to. The international Gender Design Network (iGDN) offers seminars for institutions and companies to introduce genderawareness into the designers’ processes and skill repertoire.
This is just a small sample of the wide range of offerings that already exist. Most of it is implemented with significant volunteer time. “It would be really important,” Boris Kochan notes, “that the Pact for Skills, with its massive funding programs, also recognizes the work that already exists among industry representatives and makes the programs available for small projects.”
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The Deutscher Designtag e.V. (DT) is the umbrella association of national professional associations as well as institutions of design in Germany. It operates at the interface between design, politics and economics.
The DT represents 360,000 designers and 60,000 design companies in Germany with a turnover of around 20 billion Euros to the government and administration of the Federal Government, the Federal States and the European Union in all general design policy matters.
The DT advocates the design profession interests in political authorities, for example in the Deutscher Kulturrat (DK), the umbrella association of the federal cultural associations in Germany and in this sense in the Kompetenzzentrum Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes. It promotes an understanding of design and stands for the value that design contributes to the development of companies, organizations, society and culture.
More information:
www.designtag.org
Image credit: Deutsche Designtag