Design Council sends missive to year 2045

Project 2045 – the Design Council’s flagship 50th anniversary event – kicks off this week as about 2000 time-capsules are sent to people and organisations to predict designs of the future .

The council is issuing a last call for participants to fill the last few of the 2045 places available.

Project 2045 asks “the nation to put forward its visions for design and living in the year 2045”, says a council spokeswoman.

Designers, businesses, celebrities and students will seal into time-capsules their ideas of how the future might look.

Design consultancies taking part include Dragon International, Pentagram and Fitch. Fashion designer and retailer Paul Smith is also joining in.

Participants, who are being asked to look ahead 50 years and envisage developments in communications, buildings, food and drink, leisure, clothing and transport, are to store or bury their time-capsules on 10 March.

Fifty time-capsules will have their contents recorded on CD-ROM before they are stored in a Perspex wall in a public site, possibly at the children’s museum Eureka! in Halifax, West Yorkshire. The CD-ROM will be available for the public to view.

Pentagram partner Ken Grange is one of the designers teaming up with the Nuffield Design and Technology Project to run a dozen seminars for teachers throughout the UK to consider the education opportunities of Project 2045.

*The Design Council’s interim managers, Pamela Taylor, Angela Dumas and Wendy Powell, have agreed to stay on until the permanent directors are appointed, which could be in June, according to new chief executive Andrew Summers. This week sees the arrival of Natalie Coney as policy adviser. Coney is a past adviser to the Confederation of British Industry on international trade and investment policy.