White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 4profession, which combines knowledgeabout material aspects and intangiblevalues -now the basic elements inproduct innovation processesinevitablyrequires a high level ofuniversity education.The possibility of benefiting from thistype of programme is only a recentachievement: in Milan the first courseof industrial design was created in1993. In 2000, after a university reform,the degree course was transformed intoa Faculty of Design. Until then,university-trained designers were onlyever engineers and architects who hadspecialised in design during theiruniversity career and obtained mastersor post-grad degrees. In Italy mostschools offering specialised courses areprivate and concentrated in a few bigcities: primarily Milan (ScuolaPolitecnica del Design, IstitutoEuropeo del Design or IED, and theDomus Academy).This situation made access to theprofession difficult for all those whohad completed a high school educationin one of the many specialised art highschools or technical collegesthroughout the country and wished togo on to university. For a long timeprofessional designer was considered acareer which could only be entered byan elite of people had had theopportunity (and at times also theeconomic resources) to attend coursesorganised by the few private schools inItaly (Milan and a few other large cities,such as Rome and Turin for the IED),which would enable them to go on topursue a career as an independententrepreneur. As a consequence of the2000 university reform, the number ofdegree courses and design facultieshave risen, as has their spreadthroughout the country. Currently,according to a study by Aldo Bonomi(2007), the greatest concentration ofdesign graduates (from highereducation institutes or university) from1991 to 2005 was recorded inLombardy and Piedmont: out of a totalof 24,932 graduates, 15,545, or 62.77%,graduated or obtained their diploma inLombardy, and 2,433, or 9.75%, inPiedmont. They are followed byuniversity/high school graduates inRome: 2,321, i.e. 9.30%. Dividing upthe university/high school graduatesaccording to various specialised fields(product or industrial design, visualcommunication, interiors and fashion),in 2005, over 40% of graduates werespecialised in industrial design, 28% invisual communications, 17% ininteriors and 12 % in fashion (Bonomi,2007).As far as access to the labour market isconcerned, university graduates indesign, whose number is growingdespite a limited number of places,seem to have no problems finding job.The real problem is the quality and therelevance of education programmes totheir work requirements. As in allsectors in which the creative andartistic component is crucial, findingwork is based on acquired relationalcapital, i.e. the individuals’ ability tomake themselves known and tonetwork, which can createopportunities for work on jointprojects. This is even truer fordesigners, who unlike architects andengineers, have no professional registerWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 111