The theme of this year’s fellowship is set in the context of the unexpected and our attitude to risk. Those of us familiar with filling in risk assessments understand the difference between various obvious risks with avoidable consequences and their likelihood of occurrence, but the tendency is only to pay lip service to the extremely unlikely with far reaching consequences. Rare events, because of their nature tend to be far apart in time and the intellectual capital acquired in dealing with them can wither between the generations. Much of what we design is for an unambiguous purpose, whether it is a product, a service or a system in response to a clear market demand. Even where there is no apparent demand brilliant design can create one and there are many examples of aspirational products becoming highly successful and celebrated. Designers are often motivated to be inventive and set trends, or to create desirable products with ever increasing (but not necessarily used) functionality – to perpetuate the allure of the latest model can lead to wasteful obsolescence, while nevertheless admired as good business. What if we re-thought our approach to design in the light of scarcity of resources? Climate change
is making us re-think in so many ways our response to new environmental and social pressures. We are witnessing the search for certainty in science vying with the pragmatism of politics as we wrestle with a pandemic. Suddenly, simple but ingenious solutions to problems are welcomed. Flexibility and adaptability are invaluable to provide fast responses to crises; in what way, large or small, should we design for resilience in advance?

The Fellowship will result in a detailed report with serious, well-researched and practical proposals that address the question and challenge designers to take the outcomes into account. The means of dissemination should be carefully considered to provide maximum impact and genuinely make a difference.