Those who work as 'creative' have power. Power to come up with solutions that have real impact. But such influence also comes with responsibility: what do you use that talent for?
With this programme, we want to give creatives first-hand experience of how to use their talent as a lever, a crowbar with social value. The goal: to stimulate a new generation of architects, designers, copywriters, filmmakers and other makers-slash-thinkers to initiate change.
The Professional Master Class 'Design for Impact' is for the seekers. The questioners. The ambitious ones with entrepreneurial spirit in the broad sense of the word. Those with a hunger for other disciplines and an unstoppable belief in cooperation. Those who want to get to know themselves better and who understand that you do your best thinking by doing.
We want to sharpen your faith in your own creativity. By making you think about the role of creatives and how they can work on different and better. By giving you projects that transcend the conceptual and giving you responsibility from concept to execution. By letting you work together, across fences, with businesses, governments and other creative talent. Because if we want to tackle the Big Problems, we have to dare to come up with radically new solutions.
That's why, for five months, you will work directly with the impact sector. You attend inspiring sessions, work on real cases and constantly reflect on your own role in the co-creating network you are building. You polish your soft skills. You question yourself. But you also get to know methodologies, from design thinking over artistic activism to social, society-centred design, which you critically examine with the aim of finding your own method. Never dogmatic, always pragmatic.
Our ultimate goal is to help you, as a creative, gain a better insight into your own qualities so that you can get a head start on the labour market. On the other hand, we make you the spark at the fuse: the catalyst that ignites the creativity of others, the reason why multidisciplinary teams create synergy, the profile that realises the power of creativity. A force for good.
For more info (in Dutch) and pictures visit https://www.visual-design.be/design-for-impact.
Soft is the new hard
21st century skills, the so-called 'soft skills', are central to this programme. Creativity, cooperation, communication and critical thinking are at the core.
Doing is the new learning
We learn rooted in the real world, and work with and for professionals on real, complex problems.
Partners are the new mentors
Learning is better in tandem. Because you learn with and from people you trust, who believe in you. People who mean well by you, are honest with you and support you, no matter what.
A better me makes a better world
Working on the world is also working on yourself. Knowing what you like to do, knowing what you do well and knowing where you want to go: that makes you a self-assured impact creative.
You follow the professional masterclass for a minimum of 18 credits; this includes the basic module of Design for Impact and 2 impact projects. You can then complement the master class with other impact projects or modules, with an impact internship or with an international impact field trip up to 30 credits.
Other practical information such as cost price, SME portfolio, assessment can be found at the bottom of this page (or via the page menu under 'Start').
Design for Impact is open to candidates who already hold a bachelor's or master's degree. Participants are admitted to the programme on the basis of an intake interview. During the interview, we mainly sound out your 'Drive for Impact'. We also find it important that your expectations are in line with what we offer. In addition, we try to put together as diverse a group as possible.
Sign up!
Questions? Be sure to contact fabienne.beernaert@luca-arts.be.
The total amount is calculated on an individual basis and depends on a number of factors:
As an entrepreneur, you can apply for a subsidy (20% to 30% support) through the KMO-portefeuille to improve the quality of your business. LUCA School of Arts is a recognised service provider.
Check here whether you are entitled to this support: https://www.vlaio.be/nl/subsidies-financiering/kmo-portefeuille.
Curious?
Click here for a virtual tour on our campus in Ghent!
Contact us:
ingwio.dhespeel@luca-arts.be
fabienne.beernaert@luca-arts.be
Do you still have questions about the quality of our education? Click here.
We believe that the designers of the future will be creators of sustainable solutions to complex problems. They made the transition from user-centred design to society-centred thinking and design. They thrive in cross-disciplinary teams and can also manage such teams themselves. They are trained in communicative, (inter-)creative and coaching skills and have a highly developed self-regulation.
You will be guided by a mix of professionals and teachers with a lot of experience and expertise. The creative work field contributes to the programme, providing content, lectures, workshops, expertise, network, real life design challenges, mentoring, etc. The LUCA team is responsible for coordination, quality control, 'soft skill mentoring', coaching and guidance of the personal trajectory.
Daan Annemans is an ethical digital designer at Altruïs. His mission statement is: 'designing for happiness'.
Daan studied Visual Design at LUCA-arts Ghent in the Digital Studio, then he got a Master in Philosophy at the VUB. He researches how we can apply ethics in design processes and how we as humanity can better deal with the digital. From ethical web-creation to coaching workshops and campaigns, he inspires people to altruism in the digital society.
Jasper Bloemen is an impact entrepreneur and co-founder of GLIMPS.bio, a Ghent start-up that wants to shape a sustainable future based on biotech, design and circular economy.
Together with his team, he helps companies, governments and starting entrepreneurs and creatives to make the sustainable transition possible, for example by helping to develop scalable solutions for waste streams in the city and to find connections with social impact. He is also specialised in giving talks and workshops on nature-based innovation and connecting entrepreneurs, designers and scientists around social challenges. In addition to his years of experience in the academic world, he has also helped set up two non-profits around making science and STEM inclusive.
Yonca Braeckman is the founder and CEO of Impact Shakers, a global impact ecosystem that addresses societal challenges through inclusive entrepreneurship. She is a mission-driven entrepreneur and investor in underrepresented entrepreneurs. She helped build the Belgian and European startup ecosystem and she has been a mentor for many international programmes such as SXSW, Slush Tokyo, General Assembly, Guild Academy, Village Capital, Shapers Impact Capital and guided many startups on their first steps abroad. She built a new smart city hub in Ghent, Watt Factory. She sits on the board of several non-profits and is the curator of TEDxGhent and the Techstars Startup Digest Reading List on Impact Entrepreneurship. Her mission is to make impact entrepreneurship inclusive.
Lore De Clercq is a top do-gooder. This translates into social passion and enthusiasm. Fascinated by behavioural change, she has helped build awareness campaigns and projects that encourage healthier living. Because she believes that people should always be at the centre of development processes, she found her niche at iDROPS. After a Masters in Design Thinking at MIT, she became fascinated by participatory processes that start from real needs, dreams and wishes. She now works as a project assistant and coordinator in the Care and Welfare team. Among other things, she wrote the toolkit for the Mantelzorghub.
Tomas De Groote is impact expert at the Sociale InnovatieFabriek. The Social Innovation Factory accelerates and promotes social innovation and ditto entrepreneurship in Flanders and Brussels. Tomas was one of the founders of Impact Wizard, an online tool that allows organisations to measure and monitor their social impact. As a process manager, he coaches social innovators and social entrepreneurs on impact, social business modelling, funding mix, and scaling scenarios. Before joining the Fabriek, he worked as a business coordinator and policy officer in the social-cultural field. Tomas holds a master degree in Psychology (KULeuven) and Philosophy (UGent).
Lien De Ruyck is a creative strategist who helps organisations, brands and individuals to think differently. Entrepreneur, possibilist & adventurer who believes in a makeable future. Specialised in communication strategy, disruptive design and social innovation. Particle accelerator in the interface between activism, creativity and sustainability. Tribe Chief of We Are Tribe, a collective that uses an activist impulse to create impact through strategy, content and design.
Daphne Fecheyr-Lippens is a bridge builder between people, ideas, disciplines and places. From seeing unexpected opportunities to working them out effectively and putting them on the map. An unquenchable passion for everything that has to do with positive impact. This starts with human wellbeing, from which connection and valuable partnerships follow, with the aim of building circular, future-proof organisations.
As a creative jack-of-all-trades, I have found my common thread in sustainable innovation. My expertise is Biomimicry - or nature-centred design thinking - where we learn from nature and see our humanity as part of nature. My entrepreneurial nature has translated into co-founding Jaswig, Hedgemon and Stashed.
Inge Ferwerda is an independent communication designer. Her message is 'as creatives we have the power'. Inge is a driven and experienced communication designer, she gained her experience in many leading advertising agencies, where she used every opportunity to contribute to designing a better world. She has been a teacher at LUCA for more than 15 years, first in Brussels in the Bachelor of Graphic Design and the Master of Social Design, now in Visual Design in Ghent. As a practitioner, her focus is on coaching and working with interdisciplinary teams to design smart solutions that have impact. Check out her latest project that aims to get the UN's Sustainable Development Goals on every design table > http://www.creativesforgoooooooooooooooood.be
Nathalie Goethals is creative director and inspirer of iDROPS. She is passionate about developing new projects in healthcare. She has her heart on her sleeve and is a stubborn go-getter. More than 10 years ago, Nathalie started to study innovation and the related processes and methodologies because of the lack of a hands-on approach in Flanders and the fact that it was lagging behind compared to Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon countries. From this profound interest, she gradually built up expertise, which translated into the start-up of iDROPS in 2010.
Polish writer Igor Walszborszki ate raw herring every morning and drank vodka with it. He wrote his first poem after a dip in the fresh ice. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize four times. Jill Mathieu was not. She is nevertheless a woman of words. And when she gives someone her word, she wants it to mean something. That is why she and her goodcopy.ink collective of copywriters for brands who use its vowels, oxymorons and Oxfordian commas to make the world a little better.
Ralph Nafzger is a "design thinker", graduated as an industrial product designer. He is passionate about concept development, creativity techniques and innovation processes with a focus on technology and social impact.
During his experience in both business and education he has always strived to establish multidisciplinary collaborations and to introduce as many people as possible to the various possibilities within the design process. Ralph is currently working as creative coordinator for Ministry of Makers, the design platform for East Flanders with Ghent as its home base.
Fabienne Beernaert is the source of energy of the Design for Impact team: her enthusiasm is absolutely contagious, she brings people together, she is never out of ideas. As a teacher and researcher at Sint-Lucas Ghent, she has really found her niche. She guides students in a personal way in an attitude of lifelong and collaborative learning. This is how she contributes to innovation in this rapidly changing society. Her basic attitude is one of equality, a genuine belief in the student's potential. Impact, purpose, creative activism, design thinking, research, soft skills. This melting pot of content areas fascinates her. She fully believes in the cross-fertilisation of disciplines, in empowering the student, in co-creation, in the cross-over between education, the professional field and research. That cross-over is also the bath in which she will teach you the ins and outs of design research and design thinking.
Lynn Piccu
is your coach in your personal development path. She will challenge you to find what makes your heart beat faster, what your creative passions are. Together with you, she will investigate which personal skills you can best use to have an impact. As a teacher, Lynn believes that growth mindset, creative confidence and student empowerment are necessary elements in empowering you.
Her interest in video, motion and interactive design led her to start the Digital Studio 13 years ago. She built an extensive network with creative agencies, where many former students now work. With a professional background in visual and audiovisual arts, Lynn has a passion for the image, for imagination, and for what they can bring about.
She will show you how to use storytelling to profile yourself as a designer. In this way, your portfolio becomes a reflection of the direction you want to take.
Edith Goddeeris strengthens the team from her expertise in coaching and communication skills. Communicating with impact, that is her focus. She will teach you the necessary soft skills to work together smoothly and fruitfully by creating a coaching climate with a constructive feedback culture. In addition, she will coach you in concretising and clarifying your objectives. Besides teaching Communication at LUCA, Edith is also active as a career coach at Kessels & Smit and as a (training) actress and communication trainer at Klein Barnum. She also gives theatre lessons in part-time art education. https://edith.works
Ingwio D'Hespeel is point of contact and coordinator of the Design for Impact programme and will help guide the Impact Design Student Teams.
Although Wio's teaching in recent years has mainly focused on ui/ux, design thinking and idea generation, he does not see himself as an expert in a specific design branch. 'My specialisation is not specialising,' you can often hear him say. My favourite spot is at the crossroads where different disciplines meet'. Wio has a background as an engineer-architect, was a long time teacher in an IT-programme, is fascinated by physics, likes to immerse himself in intangible heritage, looks back on a modest - ahem - 'quarter century musical career', is preparing a research project on 'creativity in lucid dreams', has an unquenchable passion for educational innovation, etc... So, plenty of intersections!
Together you make more impact! That is why we are building an enthusiastic and diverse impact network: creative agencies, impact organisations, accelerators, social entrepreneurs, startups, local governments, other educations, ...
We Are Tribe is a collective that uses an activist impulse to create impact through strategy, content and design.
Altruïs wants to boost well-being in the digital society so that the digital helps us to live a better life, for society and planet.
Creatives for goooooooooooood 's mission is to put the SDGs on the desk of every creative, and in every meeting room they enter.
Sociale InnovatieFabriek accelerates and promotes social innovation and ditto entrepreneurship in Flanders and Brussels.
Impact Shakers tackles complex social challenges through inclusive entrepreneurship.
iDROPS guides innovation processes around six societal challenges: Care, New Learning, Sustainability, Superdiversity, Global Innovation and Community Building.
GLIMPS.bio is a Ghent-based start-up that wants to shape a sustainable future based on biotech, design and circular economy.
Goodcopy.ink is a copywriting collective. They write good copy for good people.
Ministry of Makers links, as an innovation broker, research, creativity and design to ethical and sustainable entrepreneurship in the East Flanders region.
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