Our design programme in India seeks to celebrate and create opportunities enabling design to have significant social impact. Part of the programme focuses on developing skills to document and capture design stories through writing, curating and developing programmes that involve and inspire the wider public. Our design writing programme has included partnerships in India with Kyoorius design magazine and UnBox festival since 2011. Working with UK-based writers, journalists and academics we create programmes aimed at building a culture of capturing design stories in India, resulting in a fanzine at UnBox, and a publication for Kyoorius’ major annual design conference DesignYatra.

The design curation programme is run through our partnership with the National Institute of Design (NID). Following an open call for applications, 2013 saw the first Curator-in-Residence Tom Wilson travel to Ahmedabad to work with NID staff and students on researching and reinvigorating their archival material. We also used this opportunity to develop a public facing programme as part of the annual Design History conference, which sought to show the relevance of design to a larger audience, including an exhibition curated as part of the residency.