Dublin is now part of a network of cities that value design, a network celebrated through the biennial World Design Capital designation. On October 26th we will find out whether Dublin, Cape Town or Bilbao has been selected to host the 2014 designation. Dublin’s short listing is recognition that Dublin design is world class. The announcement will be made at the IDA World Congress in Taipei, Taiwan. We’re all looking forward to the designation announcement but in the meantime, we are continuing to work on some exciting PIVOT opportunities. This is just a brief outline of some of them, with more details to follow:

Innovation by Design.
Innovation Dublin 2011 is kicking off on October 17th and this year’s theme is Innovation by Design. We have been working closely with the Innovation Dublin team on what will be its most ambitious festival to date taking place over a month, and with a plethora of design events including Design Week (30 October – 6 November). The festival is a great opportunity to see what’s going on and to make more of those all-important connections between design, technology, business, policy and quality of life.

PIVOTDublin@HelsinkiWDC2012.
Dublin has been invited by Helsinki World Design Capital 2012 to participate in their International Design House exhibition which will be taking place in Helsinki in September 2012. The exhibition is an international showcase of design from around the world with a central theme of Everyday Discoveries. PIVOT Dublin in association with the Institute of Designers of Ireland (IDI) will be holding a design challenge on November 5th and November 6th 2011 to select an interdisciplinary team of designers to represent Ireland at the exhibition. We’ll be posting the details of the design challenge event shortly so don’t miss it!

PIVOT Dublin Seed Projects.
Ever since we announced the Pivot Dublin Seed Projects proposed as part of Dublin’s bid, people working in design fields across the Dublin region have been eager to get involved and are energised with many great ideas for using design to push social, economic, cultural or sustainable development in the city. We will be holding an event as part of Innovation Dublin 2011 to gather proposals and identify the steps for developing the programme. We’ll be sending out details of this event shortly.

We’re well and truly into the design season with Open House taking place 7th – 9th October, www.openhousedublin.com as well as Design Week featured as part of the Innovation Dublin programme from October 31st – November 6th,  http://www.designweek.ie .

Dates for your diary.

Innovation Dublin Festival: 17 October – 18 November
PIVOTDublin@HelsinkiWDC2012 design Challenge: 5 – 6 November
PIVOT Dublin Seed Project event: 19 October
Design Week: 30 October – 6 November