From Beneath the Surface to New Horizons and finally to Crossing Hemispheres the three year Design Island Strategy is helping to create a positive and progressive environment for craft and design in Tasmania.

Arts Tasmania's Design Island program stems from the highly successful inaugural Young Designers' Month exhibition in 2002. The State Government, the general public, designers and the private sector state-wide have whole-heartedly supported this unique strategy and assisted its growth into the event we have today.

In 2004 the Bicentenary of Tasmania offered a special opportunity to celebrate Tasmanian arts and artists on the national stage. With the generous support of our partner, Object: Australian Centre for Craft & Design and its Associate Director, Brian Parkes, Arts Tasmania's vision for a high quality craft and design exhibition was realised. This tribute to Tasmania's strength in design could not have been more fittingly placed. The refurbished Exhibition Hall within the Sydney Opera House provided the iconic space for Design Island, a simply named but poignant exhibition aimed at providing a snap-shot of contemporary Tasmanian craft and design.

An innovative three-year strategy followed on from the success of this exhibition and has leveraged an event that now receives acclaim internationally, elevates the status of Tasmanian designers, and assists them in developing their skills and knowledge.

Tasmania has long been recognised as a centre for excellence in certain areas such as wood design and ceramics. Masters such as Les Blakeborough and Kevin Perkins have both been recently acknowledged and promoted by Object as Australian 'Living Treasures'. In recent years there has been increased public recognition of the exceptional work emerging in other areas such as graphic design, jewellery, fashion and architecture. Arts Tasmania's Design Island celebrates and encourages all craft and design disciplines state-wide and facilitates the exposure of new designers.

The Design Island program of events, which includes exhibitions, talks, seminars and workshops, facilitates dialogue and partnerships between designers building their skills and their project capacity. Gradually, as a result of this interaction, truly unique and challenging work is emerging and is crossing over into different spheres such as public art, private commissions, one-off and production series.

Bay of Fires Walk
Workshop participants walking to the Bay of Fires
Photographer - Matthew Newton.

A sense of community is enhanced by the relative isolation of the island state of Tasmania. In addition, there is a strong connection to peers and trends nationally and internationally. Tasmanian designers are highly motivated to stay connected to the outside world through media and internet as well as international events such as Pecha Kucha. Events such as this explore what is happening both in and out of Tasmania and develop local networks between individuals and studios.

Aligned with this spirit, and proud of who they are and where they come from, Tasmanians are extremely generous in acknowledging the success of others in far-flung places. The simultaneously inward and outward looking focus of Design Island aims to spotlight Tasmanians wherever they might be, while each year bringing to Tasmania international design luminaries.

A signature event of the Design Island program is the forum. The 2007 forum Leap of Faith allowed our guests to discuss the risks that they may have taken in their practice.

Conscious of and connected to the reality of the design world, and with limited manufacturing industry in Tasmania, some designers have made connections with larger international centres. Taking very real 'leaps of faith', through careful plans or even serendipitous steps and clever networking, they pursue production-type work and expand their professional horizons. Other designers, many of whom are represented in the Design Island exhibitions, have taken a 'leap of faith' by exploring new materials and production here in Tasmania and by reaching out and exporting to mainland and international markets from the island state.

Wishful Thinking Workshop 2007
Participants at the Wishful Thinking Workshop, developed by Tal Lancman and Maurizio Galante from Paris, held at the Bay of Fires
Photographer - Matthew Newton

What is so inspiring about all the Design Island guests past, present and future is their lack of self-imposed boundaries and thus their potential to work on any project from any place.

Stories of success and even failure can be truly inspiring or alter the course of what we do. The speakers for the Leap of Faith forum were carefully selected to provoke the range of issues facing designers today and to show the ways that different designers find solutions and strategies to potential difficulties. The 2007 guests included Tal Lancman and Maurizio Galante from Paris and some of Australia's most talented creative individuals from architects to jewellers. All of these designers make a real difference to the sector by pushing boundaries and taking risks. Furthermore by inviting these people to Tasmania we are creating networks and avenues for communication and future collaborations, essential tools for any designer.

Maurizio Galamte
Maurizio Galamte speaking at the Leap of Faith forum, 2007
Photographer - Matthew Newton

An outstanding part of the program to date is the internationally unique Bay of Fires Walk Workshop. This project delivers on the above by bringing together a small group of Australia's most talented emerging designers in a spectacularly remote and inspiring location. For the 2007 program Maurizio and Tal developed the brief 'Wishful Thinking' and asked the participants to explore their 'dream project'. This workshop spun the participants around by asking them to look at what they do, what they would ideally like to be doing and finding economic ways to express these ideas. The results of such intensity of questioning and analysis quite significantly changed the direction and focus for some and opened up all to interesting alternative ways of thinking and approaching their practice.

The Bay of Fires Walk Workshop will continue in 2008 with the generous support of Ken Latona the Director of Cradle Mountain Huts and Bay of Fires Walk. The challenge of finding the right mix of participants and presenters is further highlighted by the resounding success of this year's workshop.

High Tea with Mrs Woo
Juliana, Rowena and Angela Foong of High Tea with Mrs Woo speaking at the Leap of Faith forum, 2007
Photographer - Matthew Newton

Crossing Hemispheres in 2008 will be an event that focuses on the interchange of ideas across boundaries and notions relating to import/export/exchange. As a part of this we will be looking at how far Tasmanian design has come on the world stage and create a dialogue about our identity. In July 2007 we invited Vitra Design Museum curator, Mathias Schwartz-Clauss to Tasmania to 'scope' work for a potential exhibition that might leap over boundaries and boldly bring Tasmanian design to the rest of the world. By raising an awareness of the exceptional creativity of Tasmanians and delivering high quality and stimulating forums we will successfully bring the rest of the world to Tasmania.

Arts Tasmania's Design Island program builds bridges. The May 2008 program of activities will be announced later in 2007.

Pippa Dickson
Program Officer - Design Island
Arts Tasmania