Acting Director-General of the Department of Arts and Culture, Vuyo Jack, officially brought the Conference to a close on Saturday 18 October, saying: “Imagination coupled with design results in clarity of thought which enables you to have a plan which then enables you to have action.
Form is a great and necessary principle, without it our task fails and our purpose is not attained. The reality we face today includes economic turbulence, increasing inequality and volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Design needs to help us move through that.”
He continued: “The Department of Arts and Culture has various programmes but we need to distil these into a philosophy that will result in action and see tangible results.
There must be value creation, value capture and value circulation – these are the core of what the National Development Plan encourages which is at the core of the Department’s programmes.
We are going to create incubators that are going to be taking the imaginations that people have and help them channel these into thoughts that talk to the reality and needs of people. Part of that will be helping to take design to business and business to design, enabling people to create value through the development of skills and reinvest that value back into helping other upcoming designers. The department is also using government spend to create markets for the creative entrepreneurs. In this way we will drive creative entrepreneurship.”
“We will use design to shatter the systems that perpetuate poverty and achieve radical socio-economic transformation,” concluded Jack.