Design Stories Warsaw
Dates: 20-21 November 2025
Location: School of Form, SWPS University, ul. Chodakowska 19/31, 03-810 Warszawa, Poland
Design Stories Warsaw is a free event but booking is essential via this link
Dates: 20-21 November 2025
Location: School of Form, SWPS University, ul. Chodakowska 19/31, 03-810 Warszawa, Poland
Design Stories Warsaw is a free event but booking is essential via this link
The Design Stories Warsaw is part of Looking Through Objects, a curatorial project that celebrates women’s contribution to change in Poland, the Baltic region, and beyond. Women’s role in design has changed over time from that of being muses and supporters to active protagonists, independent players, and thinkers.
The intention is to position the Design Stories conference at the junction of all the practices connected with design rather than make it solely academic. This approach is more in tune with the contemporary context of design, in which the fluidity of the practice is resisting the confined boundaries of given labels and titles. Due to this unique characteristic of design as a discipline, it is more holistic and realistic to hear from historians, as well as acting designers directly involved in design through practice. This provides a range of voices and perspectives (observers, researchers, practitioners), that will help audiences to draw their own conclusions on what design is today.
Design Stories Seminar conference offers an insight into design practice from women’s perspective. The ambition is to gather subjective and objective perspectives from the participating speakers. These will form the structure of the post conference publication.
Panel 1: Networks of Responsibility
Design operates within webs of responsibility — to communities, to environments, and to future generations. This panel explores how designers use networks as platforms for activism, advocacy, and ethical action. From grassroots initiatives to global campaigns, the speakers will reflect on how communication tools, design methods, and collective practices can shift cultural and political narratives. What are the ethical limits of design activism? How can practitioners balance visibility and responsibility without reproducing systems of exclusion or exploitation?
Key words: activism · communication · ethics
Panel 2: Searching for Solutions
Design is often positioned as a discipline of problem-solving. But whose problems are we solving, and how? This panel considers how practitioners frame social, personal, and civilisational challenges in their work. Moving beyond surface-level fixes, the conversation will address the tensions between pragmatic solutions and deeper systemic transformation. Are designers mediators between individual needs and collective futures, or does this responsibility overreach the discipline?
Key words: social issues · selfhood · civilisation
Panel 3: Narratives in Making
Making is more than a process — it is a form of narrative. This panel examines how designers use material practices to tell stories, build collaborations, and reimagine traditions. Whether through ceramics, product design, or transnational practices, the speakers will share how material choices communicate values, histories, and futures. How does the act of making become a dialogue between people, places, and resources?
Key words: materials · storytelling · collaboration
Panel 4: Curating Design Futures
Museums are powerful agents in shaping how design is valued, remembered, and taught. This panel explores the role of institutions in collecting, exhibiting, and educating through design. Speakers will reflect on curatorial strategies that foreground underrepresented voices, challenge canonical narratives, and expand what counts as ‘design’. How can museums keep pace with the urgency of contemporary issues while also serving as archives of the past?
Key words: museums · collecting · education
Panel 5: Pedagogies of Practice
Design education is not just about skills — it is about shaping ways of thinking, reflecting, and engaging with the world. This panel brings together practitioners who experiment with methods that bridge disciplines, from sound and textiles to AI, robotics, and craft. Their practices open questions about how design pedagogy can embrace uncertainty, hybridity, and collaboration with more-than-human intelligences. What pedagogical models are needed to prepare future designers for the challenges of a rapidly transforming world?
Key words: methods · pedagogy · reflection
Design Stories is part of the Looking Through Objects project exploring women’s contribution to change through design and creative practices. The project includes a touring exhibition, lecture series, talks and interviews organised in different locations across Poland, the UK, Belgium and the Baltics.
Design Stories Warsaw is a collaboration between Royal College of Art, SWPS University with the support of the British Council, and in partnership with Disegno Journal, and part of the British Council UK/Poland Season 2025.
In September 2024 we organised and produced a panel discussion at Royal College of Art, in collaboration with Disegno Journal. This event acted as a springboard to this conference. You can can listen to podcast episode of the discussion at this link.
Organisers and curators:
Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka is a design curator with a background in visual arts, interested in how local context influences design identities. Columnist, events organiser and jury member of design competitions. Agnieszka is the dean of the Faculty of Design at SWPS University in
Warsaw. Previously, she was the artistic director of the Łódź Design Festival and the launching editor-in-chief at Elle Decoration Poland.
Gian Luca Amadei is an architectural historian, researcher, curator and Acting Senior Tutor on the Information Experience Design MA at the RCA. His interests intersect between architecture history, urban planning, sociology and cultural context. Gian Luca is an advocate of life-long learning and a Lecturer at the Royal College of Art in London. He is also the author of the books: Discovering Women in Polish Design (2009) and Victorian Cemeteries and the Suburbs of London (2022).