Budapest Design Week will be back in October

Budapest Design Week festival is the largest design event in Hungary, which sets the primary aims of attitude forming and promoting cooperation between designers and businesses in order to strengthen the economic role of Hungary’s design ecosystem.

Programmes to boost the economy
The organisers will offer multiple programmes emphatically aimed at boosting the economy. In the framework of a series of presentations stretching over multiple days and addressing the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises in the creative industry in particular, experts will respond to the most frequent questions regarding strategy, financing, trade, copyright, and communication. A series of presentations targeting decision-makers in companies will be dedicated to good practices, in which successful Hungarian companies will point out the benefits of the strategic application of design, sharing their own experiences with the audience. The Service Design Day programme, a series of presentations and workshop illustrating the connection between strategic planning and design through examples, will also be held this year; moreover, Design Management Awards will be conferred for the eleventh time this year by the Hungarian Design Council in recognition of successful practices of corporate governance with a design management approach.

This year’s main topic: FLOW
Close cooperation between designers and entrepreneurs for a greater good: in order to create a strong design ecosystem that is competitive also in the international market, and all members of which believe in the development of  themselves, their business and society, and are also willing to work for it helping one another – this is the FLOW state we seek, and this is what Budapest Design Week intends to contribute to by its own means. The programmes related to the topic of FLOW in Budapest Design Week serve a dual purpose: to facilitate contact between economic decision-makers and designers, and to promote organic integration of designers with the entrepreneurial scene, on the one hand; on the other hand, to make the general public experience though as many programmes as possible that the use of design is not only a significant factor at the level of companies but also an experience that makes our lives richer, more beautiful and meaningful. In order to meet these goals, a number of community building events will take place during the Design Week: workshops, kids’ programmes, events related to corporate social responsibility, networking programmes, roundtable discussions and design yoga.

Guests of honour: the Baltic States
The guests of honour of Budapest Design Week in 2019 are the Baltic states: the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Latvia and the Republic of Lithuania. The nature-minded approach of the three states, the attitude of their designers respecting while reforming traditions, the fast adaptation of new technologies, materials and other innovations, as well as digitisation, which infiltrates a growing part of life have recently created a rapidly changing and enormously inspiring design ecosystem in the Baltic states, which may be paralleled to Hungarian examples from multiple aspects, and which provides an opportunity for exchanging experiences. The recent design achievements from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will be presented by the organisers at exhibitions and workshops.

Permanent programmes and events outside Budapest
The permanent programme components of Budapest Design Week will be back: Open Studios, which allows peeks into designers’ workshops; Design Tours, which guide visitors to interesting spots in the city; the ceremony of conferring the Hungarian Design Award, which was founded 40 years ago, and the Design Management Award –  both with a dedicated exhibition –; and, the platform of tertiary education in the creative industry, a schools fair called “Where next?” will also be held this year. The choice of partner towns in the country will also broaden: in addition to the successfully participating cities of Debrecen, Győr, Pécs and Sopron seen in the previous years, the city of Eger will join as a new entrant to ensure that a Design Week will be held to facilitate contact between local designers, institutions and businesses in five Hungarian cities other than Budapest in 2019.

A detailed event programme will be disclosed by the organisers in August.

Budapest Design Week is curated and funded by the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office, and is organised by the Hungarian Design Council.

www.designhet.hu     www.mft.org.hu