Featured Speaker
Design for the other 90%
Dr. Paul Thompson, Rector and Vice-Provost, Royal College of Art
The transformative role of design in developing countries demonstrates how very simple existing technologies can create profound change—lifting communities from subsistence to market trade. A program initiated by Paul Thompson while Director of Cooper-Hewitt, the “Other 90%,” refers to the percentage of the world’s population which lives on less than one dollar a day. He will demonstrate how design solutions can transform need and sustainability.
Biography: Paul Thompson
Paul Thompson has been at the forefront of art and design education in both London and New York. After completing a PhD at the University of East Anglia in 1987, he worked as a researcher for the Design Council, then at the London Design Museum, where he was Curator of Contemporary Design, then Chief Curator, before becoming the Museum’s Director in 1992.
In 2001, Dr. Thompson was appointed Director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York City. His passion for education was manifest in the dramatic expansion of national education services offered by Cooper-Hewitt. Under his leadership, in-service teaching training and project-based programs were established in communities ranging from rural Texas, to inner-city Philadelphia, to post-Katrina New Orleans. In 2007, Dr. Thompson initiated the “Design for the Other 90%” program and appointed the world’s first museum curator of socially responsible design. He also led a $64 million revitalization project with architect Richard Gluckman, aimed at doubling Cooper-Hewitt’s gallery space and dramatically improving visitor services, conservation and collection storage facilities.
Dr. Thompson returned to London in September 2009 to become Rector of the Royal College of Art. He will direct phases two and three of the Battersea campus development, dramatically increasing and improving facilities for the Schools of Fine and Applied Arts.
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