Memefest: an innovative model for socially responsive design & research

The majority of communication design as practiced in western democracies serves instrumental interests of the market and is reproducing predatory neoliberal capitalism (van Toorn 1998, 2010). In his paper, Sustainability as a project of history, Clive Dilnot states: 'Sustainability is that which most cruelly exposes design. Nothing reveals more sharply both the necessity and inconsequentiality of design: its (absolute) necessity as capacity, and its almost complete irrelevance as a value, or indeed as a profession' (Dilnot 2011). Design education mostly produces designers as service providers who do not have the capabilities to seriously confront the urgent issues of radical uncertainty and environmental degradation, which are defining conditions of today's societies.