Design+Change, Master Programme

The Master Programme in Design + Change is an advanced-level two-year programme within Design, the main field of study.

WHY? Exploring new roles of designers: Design involves creativity, criticality and transformation. Design calls into question the state of things and makes an impact. Design challenges preconceptions, prejudices, norms, and stereotypes and provokes emotions, thoughts, sensibilities and actions. Design can enhance our lives and our relationships to the world. It can make us attentive and empathic to the ecological and socio-cultural systems in which we live. In a world of many challenges, design can be an agent for sustainable change.

In shaping our futures, designers will face unprecedented challenges compared to what conventional designers faced during the twentieth century. In fact, the role of the designer will and should change. Instead of only designing for mass production, which was important during the first phase of industrialisation, designers of futures must handle multiple roles and increasingly complex issues. As agents for change, we believe designers will play key roles in shaping futures of sustainability and we are looking for those sharing this vision to join us in exploring it together.

HOW? Transdisciplinary study in design: On the Design + Change MFA Programme at Linnaeus University (LNU) we challenge the traditional role of the designer, working across disciplinary and media boundaries to define new roles that meet contemporary and future needs. For design to confront the crises we are now facing, we need to work together with other academic disciplines and cultural practices and in partnerships with professional designers, community organisations, businesses, activists and governmental bodies.

Students on the Design + Change MFA programme can choose to extend their existing knowledge in a specific design discipline/field or explore new ones. The programme focusses on artistic and experimental processes and artistic research. Students will develop their capacity for critical and creative reflection in making well rounded and futures-oriented design proposals and?purpose-driven interventions. Particular attention is paid to contemporary and emerging design disciplines such as critical, disruptive and speculative design and design in climate and ecological emergency, while referring to other design practices such as social design, metadesign, design activism and design for social innovation. Furthermore, students are introduced to and practice relevant methods for questioning the current state of things, opening up to ways of thinking and shaping futures creatively and differently through shifting paradigms such as the change from human-centred to life-centred design processes.

The programme consists of a progression of project-based courses in which students encounter specific themes and design fields concluding with an independent thesis project in the last semester of the programme. Developing transdisciplinary perspectives remains at the core of the programme and students have the opportunity to independently initiate and develop collaborations with external partners.

Career

NEXT? Design for the real-world:The career perspective of design is very diverse. Our aim is to develop artistic maturity and foster responsible designer roles with a focus on wider perspectives of sustainability and design (practice) as a change agent. At LNU, you will gain knowledge through?exploratory work, concept development and implementation, in complex projects. The Design + Change MFA programme thus provides you with many useful skills, overarching knowledge and an interdisciplinary approach that can be incorporated in whatever specialisation you decide to pursue, allowing for different career paths depending on your interests and aspirations as well as opportunities to conduct doctoral and other research degrees in design and related fields.

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (Main field of study: Design)

Växjö – the student city with a living campus

Just south of Växjö’s city centre you will find Linnaeus University’s campus. In Växjö, many students choose to live on campus.