- For the second year, Global Grad Show is held in partnership with Investment Corporation of Dubai
- New curator announced as Eleanor Watson, whose previous curatorial work focuses on drawing visibility to the impact of design at the London Design Museum
- Curatorial themes will explore the spheres where innovation can create a positive impact, notably The Human; The Home; The Community; The City; The Planet
Global Grad Show, global gathering of young artists and designers, will return to Dubai this November (12-16) with the aim of creating projects which will positively impact the planet in partnership with Investment Corporation of Dubai. The event will be the world’s largest and most diverse gathering of universities and graduates working on social impact innovation.
For this year’s event more than 150 graduates from 43 countries are expected to travel to Dubai for the event. Curatorial themes will explore the spheres where innovation can create a positive impact, under the categories of The Human, The Home, The Community, The City and The Planet. In an expanded exhibition space, this year’s edition will house the largest gathering of universities to-date, following a record number of applications. Global Grad Show will feature 150 projects from a range of backgrounds, showcasing innovations from universities in emerging markets, including Chile, Uganda, Egypt, Pakistan and Thailand, next to the work of students from global institutions such as Harvard, Stanford and Imperial College. From the UAE, leading regional institutions such as Zayed University and NYU Abu Dhabi will present advanced solutions for problems ranging from aging populations to food security.
HE Mohammed I. Al Shaibani, Executive Director and CEO of Investment Corporation of Dubai commented: “For the past year, the Investment Corporation of Dubai has supported Global Grad Show in growing the reach, diversity and latitude of its programme. More young innovators across the world have now the opportunity to showcase and develop solutions for the society and environment” and he added “the renewed partnership is a ratification of Dubai’s commitment to build a better and sustainable future for all, leveraging the city’s position as a global innovation and entrepreneurship hub. We cannot wait for the world to see what this year’s show will bring.”
The programme also includes an “Innovating for Social Impact” conference, as well as an Entrepreneurship Programme for participating students. The show will be held as part of Dubai Design Week and will be free for members of the public to attend.
Bringing a fresh look to the event is the show’s curator, Eleanor Watson, who joined the team this year having previously worked for the London Design Museum.
“Global Grad Show is a coming together of the brightest young minds in the design industry, showcasing projects from over 100 schools this year. The curatorial approach of this year aims to show the connections between different spheres of human existence; as visitors walk through the exhibition, they will experience projects related to the human first, moving on to the home and community and finally the city, and planet. Our hope is that it will inspire others to think critically about how they live, while inspiring all of us to act consciously,” Watson said, speaking about the event.
From the UAE, leading regional institutions such as Zayed University and NYU Abu Dhabi will present advanced solutions for problems ranging from aging populations to food security.
Meanwhile entries from around the world include a thermally regulating cocoon, designed for premature babies born in low-income areas or developing countries, from a group of graduates from Nottingham Trent University, UK and an all-in-one container for communities with low resources, that produces energy from solar panels, and panels that condense humidity for air into water, from graduates at Politecnico Di Torino and College des Ingenieurs in Italy.
Global Grad Show will present a conference for industry professionals and academics, promoting knowledge exchange between institutions, titled the “Innovating for Social Impact” on Monday, 11 November. The conference will explore how universities can be catalysts for sustainable development across the world. Drawing from the experience of professors, graduates, entrepreneurs and stakeholders, it will shed light on the learnings from initiatives that use sustainable innovation in the fields of technology, architecture and design. The conference will be curated by Community Jameel.
A new initiative in 2019 is an Entrepreneurship Programme, which supports graduate projects through their next steps, up to market launch. The first phase of the programme is an online training, which covers the fundamentals of business-thinking and setting up a social startup. Next, up to 20 projects will be selected to attend a boot camp in Dubai, to fine-tune their startup concepts and pitching skills.
In the final stage, participants will be introduced to accelerators and UAE-based stakeholders from the entrepreneurship field, to explore collaboration opportunities. The goal of the programme is to offer Global Grad Show projects the opportunity to be further developed while attracting young innovation talent around the world to Dubai’s entrepreneurship ecosystem.
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Highlight projects
The projects for Global Grad Show are selected based on how they respond to a range of criteria, including how they respond to the four tenets of the exhibition; Innovation, Impact, Equality and Exchange. The students will be in Dubai throughout the week and will bring prototypes, films and original research material for visitors to engage and interact with.
Some of the identified themes within the system of spheres, are health, wealth & disparity, gender & equality, sustainability, education and technology. Included below are comments from the curator, Eleanor Watson.
Healthcare: “Global access to healthcare is an important theme in this year’s edition of Global Grad Show, as young designers find innovative ways of delivering care and treatment in the most challenging situations. Projects under this tenet present potential exciting advancements in the field”
- Excelscope 2.0 – Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands: A smart tool for diagnosing Malaria in rural sub Saharan Africa, designed to reduce workload and increase accuracy, decreasing the cost of diagnosis.
- Insulata – Nottingham Trent University, UK: A thermally regulating cocoon, designed for premature babies born in low-income areas or developing countries.
- Swiv – University of Pennsylvania, USA: A toothbrush for children with cognitive disabilities who struggle with the tasks of daily living, allowing them to clean their teeth with a single physical motion.
Wealth & disparity: “With wealth disparity remaining a pressing issue throughout the world, graduates are developing ways to ensure that underserved communities are acknowledged and empowered, making sure nobody is left behind in the age of automation”
- Epitent – Makerere University, Uganda: Inspired by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, a portable habitation solution for humanitarian emergencies was created.
- Hubvance – Politecnico Di Torino and College des Ingenieurs, Italy: An all-in-one container for communities with low resources, that produces energy from solar panels, and panels that condense humidity for air into water.
- Zambeel – University of Karachi, Pakistan: A two way carry bag that provides relief for the workers form rural areas who migrate to the city and send all of their income home, enabling them to securely carry their possessions and sleep at night.
Gender & equality: “Many of the projects in this section are designed to enhance women’s safety, wellbeing and health. Such projects are female-led, helping us all to understand the intricacies of design.”
- CAMSY – Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland: Women have a 50% higher chance of getting a false heart diagnosis because their symptoms are different from those of men. CAMSY is a wearable monitoring system designed to constantly check and register of irregularities to the cardiac values of the patient.
- Hale – The American University in Cairo, Egypt: Hospital gowns with self-aid and sensor features to aid a less intrusive form of health monitoring.
- Masectomy Caregiver – Design Academy, The Netherlands: Adaptive and protective knitwear for women who have experienced a mastectomy, which places a protective shell around mastectomy scars where space and comfort is needed.
Sustainability: “As the climate crisis becomes an unavoidable part of our daily lives, designers are facing the difficult task of addressing issues around global systems of production and consumption. Young people are working to find ways to make better use of our resources in a creative way”
- Blue Gas – UCL Berlett School of Architecture, UK: A grass roots solution for an affordable transition to production, storage and clean cooking using biogas and locally sourced organic materials that connect in an easily replicable and constructible system.
- Organico – University of the Arts Berlin, Germany: A biodegradable lightweight compressed material intended for furniture making, which can be manufactured with little ecological footprint.
- Impacto - Collège des Ingénieurs, Italy: An online platform that encourages people to live more sustainably by using a reliable algorithm that calculates your positive environmental impact by reducing plastic consumption in your life.
Education: “With a keen understanding that knowledge offers both opportunity and agency, young designers are developing tools to promote better education for all.”
- Class is over – Hunan University, China: An educational board game designed to teach children about basic health and safety to avoid accidental injuries.
- Designing Tactile Schematics – New York University, USA: A set of design standards developed to make electronics and DIY projects more accessible for the visually impaired.
- Water Scale - Louis Bruno Bindernagel, University of the Arts Berlin, Germany: A digital scale displays the amount of water used in the production of our groceries thereby enabling us to make our own fact-based decisions on consumption.
Technology: “As technology continues to develop at its own dizzying pace, graduates are leading conversations around the development and use of these powerful new tools. These graduate projects raise questions around how the development of new technologies will play out in the future and how they can bring a positive change.”
- Roblox – UCL - Bartlett school of Architecture, UK: Modular construction system which allows the creation and reconfiguration of a large variation of structures of multiple scales.
- Jarvis - University of Pennsylvania, USA: A mixed reality headset, enabling doctors to accurately measure the brain’s response to distractions or activities when conducting cognitive tests for severe head trauma, pharmaceutical efficacy and ADHD.
- Mi Data – Royal College of Art and Imperial College London, UK: A gateway for users to view the type of raw data they are sharing as well as their derived data psychographics by augmenting the experience in personal data transparency.
- Ro-Biotics – Royal College of Art and Imperial College London: A microscopic robot created from 4D printed materials to be ingested in the place of an antibiotic, which captures infections in the blood stream.
About Global Grad Show
Global Grad Show is the world’s largest and most diverse gathering of universities and graduates working on social impact innovation. A not-for-profit initiative, the exhibition showcases graduate projects covering the fields of design, science, technology and engineering from over 100 universities worldwide. The world’s leading universities will show alongside universities from emerging countries, offering firsthand access to the next generation of graduates who are designing solutions to tackle today’s challenges.
https://www.globalgradshow.com/
About Eleanor Watson
Eleanor has worked in the curatorial department at the Design Museum since 2016. While there she has worked on a number of exhibitions including the Beazley Designs of the Year in 2018 and Imagine Moscow: Architecture, Propaganda, Revolution. She is responsible for the museum’s free displays, curating a triannual programme to complement the main gallery exhibitions. The most recent of these was a retrospective on UK architect Peter Barber, ‘100 Mile City and Other Stories’. The exhibition was the first time Barber’s work was presented in a museum and was listed in the Guardian’s top five architectural moments of 2018. She has also set up and curates a free reading space within the museum, working with the Learning department to showcase the museum’s public programme. Prior to joining the Design Museum Eleanor worked at a number of cultural institutions in the UK and abroad, including Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and The Southbank Centre. Eleanor graduated with First Class Honours from UCL with a BA in French and Russian before undertaking a Masters in History of Art at The Courtauld Institute of Art under a full scholarship from the V-A-C Foundation.
Investment Corporation of Dubai
Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD) is the principal investment arm of the Government of Dubai. It was established in May 2006 by decree (11) of 2006 and mandated with the consolidation and management of the Government of Dubai’s portfolio of commercial companies and investments. ICD was also assigned the provision of strategic oversight to portfolio companies through the development and implementation of effective corporate governance policies, and sound investment strategies. ICD is focused on maximizing stakeholder value for the long-term benefit of the Emirate. ICD’s portfolio comprises some of Dubai’s most recognized companies and represents a cross-section of vital economic sectors that the Government of Dubai has deemed strategic for the continued development and growth of the Emirate. The sectors include financial services, transportation, energy and industry, real estate and leisure, retail, and other holdings. In addition, ICD has embarked on a disciplined and sustainable strategy of global investments, which are synergistic with its existing portfolio, to extend Dubai’s presence and expertise into international markets.
About Dubai Design Week
Dubai Design Week is the region’s largest creative festival, reflecting Dubai’s position as the design capital of the Middle East. The free-to-attend programme is made up of more than 200 events covering design across a range of disciplines including architecture, product design, interiors, multimedia and graphic design.
An accessible meeting point for the global design community, Dubai Design Week, staged in partnership with Dubai Design District (d3), is a platform for regional design as well as a catalyst for the growth of the creative scene in Dubai. In its 2018 edition, the annual event attracted 75,000 visitors to Dubai Design District (d3) alone.
The festival’s varied programme consists of design-related events, exhibitions, installations, competitions, talks and workshops. Key events include the region’s leading design fair, Downtown Design; Global Grad Show that brings together works from 100 of the most innovative universities across the world; and Abwab, the curated and interactive project containing original design from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
Dubai Design Week is managed by the Art Dubai Group and is held under the dedicated patronage of Her Highness Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairperson, Dubai Culture and Arts Authority (DCAA).
For more information, please visit www.dubaidesignweek.ae
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