Hear from some of Australia’s leading designers and design educators: Dr Matthew Harkness, Emma Peters and Dr Trent Jansen, and be part of the timely and important discourse around sustainable design.

Following brief presentations by all, Matt, Emma and Trent will discuss the role of creatives to influence, challenge, educate, and generate solutions. The session will conclude with an audience led Q&A.

Come with your questions and soak up the Environmental Art & Design Prize exhibition. The 2023 People’s Choice Awards from each venue will also be announced on the night. 

Free event

5.30pm - welcome drink 6pm - talk

Drinks by Seadrift Distillery, EADP Event Supplier. Wine by Little Ripples, MAG&M Events Partner

Panellists:

Dr Matthew Harkness is an early career designer and researcher from Vancouver, BC Canada with a practiced-based Ph.D. from UNSW School of Art & Design, where he currently teaches. Matt specialises in object design from critical making, speculative, co-design, and more-than-human perspectives. His research draws on these to interrogate the ethics of making, specifically, wasteful, exclusive and exploitative, maker practices. Through material experiments, his practice-based research includes waste plastic and bioplastic materials, ceramics, electronics, and repurposed objects.

Emma Peters is a circular textile designer, researcher, and educator, working on Darug and Eora land. Emma’s textile practice and research considers our relationship with material culture, specifically sustainability, narrative, and connection. She is interested in the tangible relationships we have with textiles, and how to creatively devise circular design strategies. Emma is a current Phd candidate and lecturer at UNSW School of Art & Design.

Dr. Trent Jansen is a designer based in Thirroul, NSW.  Trent lectures at UNSW School of Art & Design, and also lectures and holds workshops at various educational institutions across Australia and internationally. His expertise is in furniture and object design, Australian national identity and Australian material culture, furniture production processes and materials, design anthropology, and cross-cultural Indigenous and non-Indigenous creative collaboration.