On Sunday afternoon October 29th, the number of visitors of the Graduation Show reached the astonishing number of 50.000!!! This year we welcomed 51.236 visitors in total, compared to 46.000 visitors last year. Almost everyone was impressed by the show, the work and the way our graduates present and communicate. All 158 graduates have had an intensive, no doubt exhausting but very successful week; most of them were present practically the entire time and were able to get in touch with potentially interesting visitors.
Nearly every morning we organized breakfasts for diverse groups: alumni, friends of DAE, companies and institutions, national and international partners. It was striking for this edition of the GS that a lot of ‘VIPs’, mainly companies and acknowledged professionals, visited the show anonymously and without giving notice; obviously, looking for talents and ideas. Of course, there were also VIPs we formally welcomed and gave a tour, like the Mayor, the Chair of the first chamber, members of the first and second chamber and the Commissioner of the King.
The Arena in ‘de kop van 4’ was crowded; every day The Arena offered an ongoing programme of alternative forms of expression like performances, talks, presentations, films, and debates with students, graduates, alumni, prominent professionals and others from the extended DAE community. The topics all addressed current issues in design and in the world, like ‘Fluid Politics’, ‘Post-labour Futures in a New Age of Automation’, ‘Designing for consequences’, ‘Crafting narratives in the age of technology’. It was impressive to see how well the graduates were able to present their work and their ideas, and how they managed to chair a heated discussion.
Again, this year, the winners of the Keep an Eye Design Talent Grant were announced during the formal opening of the Graduation Show. An expert jury chaired by Marije Vogelzang has selected 4 alumni whose talent and vision have been judged exceptional. The winners are: SuperLocal (Pim van Baarsen and Luc van Hoeckel), Desiree van der Gracht, Bastiaan de Nennie and Guiditta Vendrame.
Several graduates won individual prizes with their work. Théophile Blandet won the Kick That Ass Award, Aurore Brard and Mirjam de Bruijn won the Hema Design Award and Allisa Rees won the Accenture Innovation Award.
We welcomed almost 300 journalists during the show, they published dozens of articles, RTV-items and Social Media posts. Graduate Alissa Rees presented her work in a few programmes on Dutch television -De Wereld Draait Door, VPRO and Omroep Max-. Local, regional, national and international broadcasters reported on the GS and the work of our graduates. Most publications, in particular in magazines, will follow coming months. We published daily articles ourselves on our website on topics mainly related to the programme of The Arena, and we posted news and current issues on Facebook and Instagram.
From Monday till Saturday we offered several times a day a ‘Talk & Tour’ to potential students and other interested parties. There was a lot of interest in the information sessions about our Bachelor as well as about our Master.
Next to the GS our exhibition in the Van Abbemuseum ‘Beyond Generations’ attracted many visitors and received positive feedback and critiques. With the exhibition series ‘Traces’ DAE will spend the next five years investigating the traces the Academy has left in the city, region, nation and the world; and in the design field itself. Traces #1 Beyond Generations demonstrates how over a 70-year period new visions were developed by generations of designers –all connected to the Academy- through responding to each other, which in turn kept changing the profession.