Learning in lockdown

These are difficult times for many, but design and creativity, despite the difficulties, do not stop and are an essential tool to cultivate our well-being, to open ways to reinvent ourselves, to retake forgotten paths or take new paths that will broaden our perspectives.

Whether it’s playing with your kids through art, design and architecture, listening to a talk or visiting exhibitions, participating in a Webinar, starting an online course, reading books, magazines, or losing yourself in amazing archives… the opportunities to learn and project without leaving your home are endless and exciting. If you don’t know where to start, here are some ideas.

Play, listen to a talk or visit exhibitions from the sofa

Valencia World Capital of Design collects all kinds of design activities to survive the confinement on their portal Esto Pasará. From simple drawing games like the one proposed by the educational service of the Centre Cultural del Carme «Desde mi ventana» or «El Plano de mi casa» to Instagram live talks like our own ADI-Making of… design in times of emergency, the series «Creatives at Home» by Folch Studio, the CreaTV pills by The Creative Net in which Viviana Ballbé interviews creatives from her network or initiatives like «Roca Gallery Te Conecta», that every Tuesday and Thursday talks to an architecture or design professional.

If you are one of those who miss visiting exhibitions, most museums offer virtual visits through their video channels, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which offers us a guided visit to the Olafur Eliasson retrospective, or Tate Modern which offers us a curators’ guided tour of the Andy Warhol retrospective. It’s also a good time to check out other available digital content, like these interviews from the Vitra Design Museum archive, the Digital Design Museum in London, the cross-disciplinary itineraries that MACBA suggests, the virtual tours and family activities designed by the Barcelona Design Museum or the digital archive of the CCCB or the Canadian Centre of Architecture. The educational department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York has also shared some resources to teach and learn through art at home. Don’t hesitate to check the websites of your favourite museums!

Participate in a Webinar

If you miss the spontaneity of live teaching, one-off webinars are also a great option. We offer you a selection:

Engineering for Ergonomics, by Andreu World
Day and time: Thursday, April 9, 6:30 pm
Content: The course aims to explain how ergonomics has changed the evolution of furniture development and what techniques are performed in the furniture industry to achieve ergonomics that guarantee comfort and productivity.
+ Info and registration

Creative Richard Holman offers a one-hour long series of free webinars from now through September, aimed primarily at advertising creatives, but in some cases also useful for creatives from other fields. We have highlighted the upcoming ones, but there is so much more coming if you scroll down the list.

What the f ** k is a brand anyway?
Day and time: Friday 17th April, 2-3 pm
Content: In this session, Holman will make you learn from the best – and worst – examples of brand behaviour as well as exploring branding during a time of crisis.
+ Info and registration

How to Take (and Give) Feedback
Day and Time: Thursday 7th May, 2-3 pm
Content: Giving and receiving feedback well is essential to a successful creative department. In this session, Holman will get to grips with best practice in both giving and taking notes.
+ Info and registration

How to Write a Brilliant Creative Brief
Day and Time: Friday 29th May, 2-3 pm
Content: Without a great brief the chances of achieving creative excellence are almost nil. In this session, designed for those who regularly have to brief creatives, we’ll cover the fundamentals of creating simple, insightful and inspiring creative briefs.
+ Info and registration

Take a MOOC or a short course by Crehana or Domestika

MOOC is the English acronym for Massive Online Open Courses. Reputed universities and organizations around the world offer hundreds of free online courses that you can access through platforms like Coursera or Edx. This introduction to the architectural imaginary of Harvard University, which you can do at your own pace, a professional certificate in Product Design for the Health Sector by Delft University of Technology, or this course on Fashion as Design given by MoMA curators are a few examples, but there are hundreds of options in the categories of art and culture, design and architecture. In the field of Graphic Design and Visual Communication, you will also find a multitude of courses at Crehana and Domestika, which during the lockdown offers a selection of free courses.

Disconnect with a book, a magazine or exploring digital collections

With libraries and bookstores closed perhaps it is time to explore the digital book. Internet Archive has launched an initiative to tackle library closings, which primarily affects students, offering more than a million digitized books without a waiting list through the National Emergency Library. If you activate the Design filter, for example, you can download Design for the Real World, by Victor Papanek. The National Library of Catalonia also has many digitized collections including graphic work in the form of posters, drawings, architectural plans, photographs, musical scores and other treasures. Finally, architects, landscapers, urban planners and city enthusiasts will find interesting readings in this compilation of articles from the Places Journal archive.