The Eindhoven-based collective DIT tries to unite, connect and create by working together – DIT is an abbreviation for Do It Together. They have a festival dedicated to their concept this May, resulting in DIT edition #1 featuring the expo DIT is Design Academy Eindhoven by second year DAE-students.
DIT had a goal for the festival: to organize an amazing festival with creative and innovative participants who can sign up online thus fading the boarders between visitor, participant and organiser. A lot of artists, creatives, front-runners and do-ers have collaborated for the event. Together they created a line-up filled with music, design, film, talks, tech and food. The design part is filled by second-year students from Design Academy Eindhoven who have designed settings and stages for the festival and transformed the top two floors of Vershal Het Veem (Veemgebouw) into an expo called ‘DIT is Design Academy Eindhoven’.
The second-year students from DAE who are participating in the festival researched Eindhoven as part of a school project. In groups they investigated Eindhoven’s citizens and their rituals, their playfulness, their desires and their intuition. They portrayed the city and their neighbours, the homes and streets, to create installations and interactive spaces filled with colour, fun, light and texture.
The Maze, for example, transforms a space in an intuitive quest to add personality to the bigger picture. As intuition guides us through daily life, it will also guide one through the Maze. By sharing little souvenirs collected along the way on the final installation, wanderers participate in the togetherness.
For an equally mindful experience, one can visit Early Lights and Rituals, focussing on the precious hours of dawn. With first light starts the morning ritual, which is broken up in several installations, each representing an aspect of waking – tactility, colour, shape, light, smell and warmth.
To up the tempo, visit Home Run – a race through living spaces on mobile furniture. People change their interior to reset their minds, trigger fun and curiosity: exactly what the furniture race entails. Changing your location and the funky interior will – quite literally – sweep you off your feet.
The same spark for fun can be found in Playfulness, a project that inspires grown-ups to play again. Why is there a taboo on adults playing? Play, after all, opens the mind, gives freedom and happiness, and brings people together. The interactive space in the Versgebouw is the grown-up version of a creative playground.
Curious to visit DIT is Design Academy Eindhoven?
When: DIT edition #1, from May 13th to May 15th.
Where: Top floors (8+9) of Vershal Het Veem, Strijp-S, Eindhoven. Other input by DAE students can be found troughout the festival
Who: everyone - free entrance
For more information about DIT and DIT festival, visit their website.