Threads of Identity: 2021

Issue #009, 2022                                                                              ISSN: 2581- 9410   Design Education for Recognition I was honored and humbled to receive the Design Guru award from the Association of Designers of India and JK Lakshmipat University Institute of Design.  I was especially honored to be associated with MP Ranjan.  Ranjan was a mentor, a friend, and an exemplary design educator.  He was a pillar in the development of design education in India. I am not trained as a designer.  And I hope that MP Ranjan, being a challenger of conventional norms, would appreciate this anomaly.  Certainly, Ranjan enthusiastically encouraged me when I set out to begin a program of design education for artisans in Kutch.  Ranjan’s biography says that his father was an entrepreneur.  I recall that he thought of him as an artisan.  In any case, Ranjan had great affinity to and respect for artisans. So, here is my “MP Ranjan Memorial Lecture 2021,” which concerns the evolution of the design education program that today operates as Somaiya Kala Vidya, and how I feel it illustrates Design Education for Recognition. The idea of design thinking as a particular approach to creatively solving problems- of which I believe MP Ranjan was a proponent- evolved in the late 1950s- early 1960s.  It evolved in an academic context, through studies on creativity by highly respected scholars.  As such, design was established as a respected discipline. When design as a distinct discipline wa...