Designing Together | UK and India sign MoU on Design Collaboration

Creative Industries and Design is a relatively new area of interest for the SIN-India, but it has been a regular topic on our blog over the last year and a new call was announced this week to support people to attend the Unbox Festival on Future Cities. Here’s some more hot-off-the-press news on Indo-UK Design collaboration.

“What India needs is not Foreign Direct Investment, But Foreign Direct Ideas! We don’t want to re-invent the wheel; we want to tap into the experience that the UK has developed.” – I was particularly impressed by Mr Mahindra’s comment today at the CII-NID Design Summit in New Delhi.

The SIN team was present at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the UK Design Council and the India Design Council (IDC) this week at the CII-NID Design Summit to facilitate cooperation between India and UK for promotion of design. The MoU was signed by Mr Pradyumna Vyas, Member Secretary, IDC and Mr John Mathers, CEO, UK Design Council in the presence of Mr Anand Mahindra, President, IDC.

The SIN-India team sponsored the visit of the UK Design Council to India, and have been facilitating the discussions leading to the MoU signing, so it’s a pleasure seeing this come to fruition. The UK Design delegation comprises of delegates from UK Design Council, NESTA and Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network. The delegates will visit Delhi, Mumbai and Pune to explore possible collaboration opportunities with the Indian design stakeholders. They will also look at the role of design in building future cities. We will share an update on that next week. So watch this space!

The MoU will focus on mutual exchanges in design policies and facilitate design promotion in order to enhance understanding of emerging trends, design domain developments, sharing of design knowledge and resources through focused activities and joining in existing activities on either side. The expansion and development of cooperation between the two organizations will contribute to enhanced cooperation between India and United Kingdom in the domain of design. We hope this will build a firm base for a bright future and could be a platform for both the parties to leap onto the next level of design.

Within the MoU, both the parties will encourage and develop cooperation and exchanges in the field of design on the basis of equality, mutual benefit, and reciprocity.

Further reading:

• Official Press release