Rory Spence Lecture Theatre, The Workshop, Inveresk campus, University of Tasmania, Launceston
Summary:Can design help restore relationships between people and the planet?
Presenter(s):
- Dr Vanessa Ward, Lead of the Design Program at the University of Tasmania
- Dianne Dredge, Director of The Tourism CoLab
Design has always been about making things, what is changing is where it is being applied. There is growing demand for design practice in contexts that are messier, more consequential, and more deeply entangled with how communities and ecosystems interact.
Join Dr Vanessa Ward and Dianne Dredge for a conversation exploring regenerative design across tourism, education, ecological restoration and community-led practice. Drawing on projects from Tasmania's kelp forests to regenerative tourism initiatives on Flinders Island, they will consider how design can respond to the environmental and social challenges shaping our future.
Together, they will explore how systems thinking, collaboration and place-based approaches are asking what it means to practise design when the goal is not a finished product, but a healthier system.
Speakers
Dr Vanessa Ward
Lead of the Design Program at the University of Tasmania
Dr Vanessa Ward leads the Design Program at the University of Tasmania, where she conceived and built the Bachelor of Design, a program training designers to work at the intersection of ecology, community, and systemic change. She holds a PhD in Design from The Glasgow School of Art and brings a decade of industry experience from design studios in San Francisco, Singapore, and Toronto to her academic practice.
Her research asks how design can generate net-positive outcomes for living systems, work that has taken her from Tasmanian waters, where she has been developing kelp cultivation substrates from sea urchin waste, to the agricultural landscapes of South Tyrol as a Visiting Researcher at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.
Dianne Dredge
Director of The Tourism CoLab
Dianne Dredge is a regenerative tourism practitioner, researcher and educator with over thirty years of experience across academia, policy, environmental planning and community practice. She is Director of The Tourism CoLab, a global online community of practice delivering regenerative education, and Place Ecologies, the coaching practice through which her place-based, community co-design work is grounded. Based on Flinders Island, Tasmania, she designed and implemented the Islander Way, a regenerative tourism living lab on the island, and continues this work through the Furneaux Collective.
Parking:
Free parking, including accessible spaces, is available at the venue.
Pre-event refreshments:
Head to the venue early and enjoy complimentary refreshments from 5.30pm.
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