At 5pm on 26th February 2016, a global design event will kick off in the city that will once again place Dundee on the map of creativity. The Dundee Service Jam will offer participants just ‘48 hours to change the world’. Click here to book your space.
The Global Service Jam movement began in 2011 and has grown ever since, with over 120 locations and nearly 3,000 people taking part around the world in 2015. Dundee participated for the first time three years ago and has hosted the ninth largest jam in the world, with more attendees than either Los Angeles or New York. It was the biggest jam in Scotland, second to London in the UK.
Like other locations all over the world – from Cairo to California, Amsterdam to Athens, Stockholm to Shanghai – the Dundee Jam will provide an inventive, engaging, and fun environment for designers, students, professionals and the community to address serious global issues. New design methods will be used in a collaborative way to develop new service ideas. These could be health services, commercial services, community services and new business ideas.
Like a music jam, a design jam is also about improvisation and working fast and risk free to try out new ideas and new ways of working, all while generating a buzz of excitement through connecting with other ‘jammers’ all around the globe using various social networks.
Why Jam? You will:
• Experience design for real – be part of a real intense design project.
• Learn service design – gain expertise in the world’s fastest growing design field.
• Collaborate with others – be in a team with students, creative professionals, medics and people who work in a range of public and private service organisations.
• Connect with with people all over the world – there’s 100 jams taking place across the globe at the same time – we use Twitter and Skype to connect with them.
• Have fun – meeting new people, some of whom are in different countries.
• Be fed and watered and provided with entertainment too!
• Learn more about a design-based approach to problems.
• Pick up a load of new ideas and work practices.
• Meet a lot of cool people at all levels of experience.
• Have your work and ideas reviewed by your peers, and presented to the world, where they can be seen by potential customers or employers, or people who could make them real.
• Design something that could become a real business.
As Linsey McIntosh, one of the event organisers explains: “We’ve now hosted five design jams in Dundee, and our success in attracting participants and collaborating in real time with people all over the world is one factor in us securing UNESCO City of Design status.”
The Dundee Service Jam is being organised by a group of design professionals and students in the city. They have already secured generous sponsorship to help ensure that the event is a success.
For student designer Megan McKee, this helps achieve a key goal: “This Jam will show how the creative process is not just an exclusive club for people who have studied design. We have a range of people who get involved, from hospital workers to small businesses so it doesn’t matter what industry you’re from. What is important is the passion you bring to problem solving.”
“We will have organised opportunities to connect with fellow GS.Jammers around the world through use of live video links. In previous events this was quite an entertaining chance to share our ideas and have a bit of fun. It’s all about connecting with people on a global scale as well as locally in order to think creatively about the challenges we face.”
The Jam is organised by a team of staff and students from the University of Dundee’s DJCAD and School of Medicine, and includes other people in the city. This year it is sponsored by Healthcare Designed in Dundee and Dundee Makerspace.
Dundee Service Jam opens at 5pm on Friday 26th February and closes by 6pm on Sunday 28th February. It is taking place in Dundee’s Vision Building. Click here or scroll down to book tickets. Promotional video produced by Dylan Drummond of Son of The Sea.