The teaching of design and arts and crafts has evolved significantly in recent years. While the creation of the DNMADE is probably its standard-bearer, the increase in theses and HDRs related to design research, and the development of master’s programmes in several institutions are other significant elements. The evolution of the learning public is also remarkable. Since the creation of the DNMADE, there seems for example to be a significant increase in the relative number of students coming from the general baccalaureate compared to those coming from the ST2A baccalaureate, which is nonetheless dedicated to these studies. We also note the statistically significant and sociologically noticeable increase in “top of the class” students (to borrow the expression of Jean-Laurent Cassely), that is to say, graduates from more traditional fields who undertake further training in an arts and craft profession. It is therefore worthwhile to reflect regularly on these developments and to invite all engaged perspectives to do so.
It is therefore appropriate for me to present here a perspective to which I subscribe, while emphasising that the plurality of perspectives is a strength in design, and an asset in its teaching. The multiplicity of perspectives is in fact constitutive of design and its practices. As design professor Alethea Blackler and her colleagues remind us, the ambition to define design is a long-standing endeavour and seems to be an interminable discussion within its communities. If it appears to be an unattainable quest, and probably a naive one, it is nevertheless very useful. It allows us to maintain together, within and between design communities, a dialogue made up of a multitude of perspectives, a wealth of constructive disagreements, and proposals that are constantly challenged and renewed. This then allows us to advance these perspectives, and to understand how they can contribute to design practices, and therefore to the field of design and arts and crafts as a whole, and of course to its teaching. The multiplicity of perspectives and the dichotomies they create are therefore not only a strength for research and reflection on design and arts and crafts, but also for their professional practices and their teaching.
The design philosopher Johan Redström shows us that design is fundamentally and historically structured around dichotomies. To think about its teaching, we are interested, among other things, in the dichotomous relations between methods and practices that take shape between the classroom and the workshop, between everyday concerns and global issues that distinguish design for experience from systems design, and between arts and industry which impact the underlying engineering.
These dichotomies are sites of friction that invite design to constantly question its positioning and its action. Design practice is therefore fundamentally reflexive. As a practice situated in a complex and ever-changing context, shaped by this very practice, design is elusive. In other words, and completing Johan Redström’s words, design is complex and colourful—that is, rich in its variety of practices, resilient and learning, engaged and transformative.
These colours of design thus revealed induce the possibility of a great variety of approaches to design teaching and its need to always evolve. I have been fortunate in my career to experience several approaches, several logics, targeting different design practices that will find their place in different parts of society and industry. My background indeed partly explains my positioning. I have studied and worked in the field of design for many years in 4 countries on 3 continents (France, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands), most often at the interdisciplinary boundaries between design and engineering, management, cognitive science, information and communication science, or the arts and crafts. I have experienced teaching design in different formats, contexts, and academic and industrial traditions, through which I retain a strength in each of these places and a richness in their differences.
The French landscape, which I have recently returned to, seems to embrace this diversity. What stands out first is in fact the tension experienced by the national project for design and arts and crafts education. At least four ministries oversee design and arts and crafts training. So many institutional focuses that impact training and practices through disparate, sometimes contradictory forces. And all the better, because design is this variety.
The will to harmonise, and the very idea of harmonisation, are in my view a mistake and a misunderstanding of what design can be. Once again, the variety of teachings, approaches, and visions of design made available to learners themselves coming from different horizons can only be a strength for the development of professions related to design and arts and crafts.
There are then five points that we will need to pay attention to in the future development of design and arts and crafts training.
First, we must ensure the great variety of practices in design and arts and crafts. They all share the ambition of transforming matter. But the nature of materials, the transformation techniques, and the visions engaged in their practices may vary. The plurality of teaching allows the expression of the plurality of perspectives. Harmonising training programmes would lead to a impoverishment of practices. The objective of a teaching and learning community is to highlight this variety. One can already differentiate design training in arts and crafts and design schools (e.g. Ensaama or Lycée Renoir), from those in schools under the Ministry of Culture (e.g., Ensad and Ensci), and those finally taking place in schools more oriented towards engineering (e.g. UTC or CY école de design). It is also necessary to differentiate between vocational and academic training. They do not have the same constraints or ambitions. In this sense, attempting to align all higher education programmes to an LMD structure is counterproductive for design and arts and crafts. In a perhaps simplistic way, vocational training should primarily aim at hand knowledge and hand power, academic training at critical reflection.
Obviously, this does not mean that learners must strictly choose one or the other. Bridges between programmes are an additional strength for each. I have already mentioned these graduates from the academic world who return to vocational training. This should also be possible in the reverse direction. Among the best students I worked with at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, a non-negligible number came from vocational training. Competent hands and a thinking head are the best one can hope for in an artisan or a designer.
If properly thought out and organised, these programmes can also be followed in parallel, one complementing the other. Thus, the possibility of organising a double degree offers a genuine opportunity for rich and complete learning to students. The Cnam and schools engaged in DSAA training are currently working on setting up a double degree that will allow students who wish to do so to complement their DSAA training with Cnam courses in parallel. This structure will allow them to both value their vocational training through the DSAA and their academic training through the Cnam’s design master’s programme.
Moreover, initial training in design and arts and crafts should clearly be able to start with a CAP and end with a DSAA or master’s in vocational training, and a doctorate in university training. Continuing education is also multifaceted, of which GRETA CDMA is probably the most visible form. The overall structure of training therefore has two temporal challenges: ensuring the continuation of initial training and enabling everyone to return to training during their professional career. Ensuring the continuation of training simply suggests that a person starting a CAP should know and have confidence in the existence and feasibility of a path leading them to the DSAA or doctorate. A training chopped into disjointed pieces should no longer be acceptable. Every design and arts and crafts professional should also be able to return to training, whether artisans wishing to undertake training in cultural engineering or craft-related entrepreneurship; whether designers wishing to undertake training to update the tools and techniques related to their field or training in design research; whether a design and arts and crafts teacher wishing to update their knowledge and tools for teaching and potentially to acquire new career development opportunities. There are many reasons why we must no longer think of design and arts and crafts training in a sequential way, but rather envision it as a continuum across the entire spectrum of initial training, which is itself a deployment extending throughout life.
Finally, we must continue to open up training programmes. This obviously involves work-study programmes as one of the possibilities offered for training in arts and crafts and design. Multiplying the forms of training will only enrich learning and therefore practices. This also involves the internationalisation of training programmes. The cultural and technical openness offered by bilateral internationalisation—that is, sending learners abroad and welcoming international learners—impacts both the quality of training and the professional, intellectual, and cultural development of learners. This finally involves mutually shared training pathways. An arts and crafts learner working with metal who wishes to receive technical training on different metals should be able to do so where technical knowledge is central, e.g., in an engineering school. And because this training enriches their initial training, it should be counted in their craft training, in their home school for the diploma it awards. Conversely, a textile engineering student should be able to undertake training in textile art or fashion that would be integrated into their technical training. This implies an effort to open up and pool training resources, in the service of the learner and their professional, intellectual, and cultural development.
At a time when the effort of reindustrialisation must be combined with ecological challenges and cultural vitality challenges, the crafts professions face the dual challenge of contributing to economic, ecological, and cultural issues on the one hand, and revaluing hand knowledge and technical and material expertise on the other. Where the fragmentation of these training programmes could be considered a weakness, both in their administrative structure and in their pedagogical forms, I argue it as a potential strength to be maintained and developed. The plurality of disciplines engaged in these practices, the plurality of practices and their deployment contexts, and the complexity in which they evolve are all arguments for claiming the multiplicity of training programmes and forms of training, and for promoting a coherence of this multiplicity through vertically rich pathways (from CAP to doctorate) and horizontally rich pathways (between artistic and technical training). Harmonisation is a danger for arts and crafts and design training. It is a collective intelligence between institutions, allowing the richness of a coherent and interwoven diversity, that will give full scope to arts and crafts and design training, which will then play a significant role in the industrial, economic, ecological, and cultural challenges of our time.