About

GIDE – GROUP FOR INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION is an international consortium of 6 higher education art and design European institutions, established in 2003, who collaborate annually in order to enrich the creative and cultural experiences of students, staff and participating institutions.

GIDE’S main objectives are to promote the exchange of design approaches, best practice and widen the intercultural experiences across the European Union and beyond. GIDE promotes the exchange of design education with an ethical dimension exploring multidisciplinary and intercultural experiences, working practices and competences designed to raise awareness in students of the future of their professional networks.

Though emerging from Interior Design higher education GIDE is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary with collaboration between interior design, industrial & interaction design, art and design practice, visual communication and services.
Participants of the intensive international week are also working closely with PhD, Masters and active research groups.
The GIDE experience brings learners, academics, researchers and local cultural organizations together each year in a different country to explore ethical issues through creative design thinking within a host city and a partner school.
Academics and students investigate a common project theme in the international workshop week where participants share creative experiences, cultures, design capabilities, skills, methods and approaches.
Each year, the GIDE network organizes an international workshop week hosted and organized by a GIDE member school. Aim of the workshop is to bring international students’, academics, researcher’s and regional enterprise, and cultural | community organization together through an experimental theme over an intense and highly creative week. The exploratory outcomes and experiences of the workshop week act as a catalyst for a formal and shared project delivered autonomously within individual GIDE member schools in the Autumn semester.

GIDE currently consists of six international higher education partners:
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design
University of Dundee,Scotland/UK
Faculty of Design, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Politecnico di Milano, School of Design, Italy
SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland
Thomas More University College, Mechelen, Belgium
Universidade da Madeira, Funchal, Portugal

Nominated international coordinators in each nation are responsible for evolving the network. This core team sets the activities and agendas for the network with key responsibility for strategic planning, events, exchanges and co-editorial responsibilities of annual design research publications.

A key part of the network involves inviting visiting professors and students as guest participants at annual workshops on regular basis. In the recent past GIDE has welcomed visiting professors from the following institutions UNTexas, College of Visual Arts (USA), Jangnan University,Wuxi, China and has also benefited from the creative and critical input of other schools in Europe with past GIDE members. In addition to the annual workshop, exchanges and publications GIDE also delivers annual public exhibitions of outcomes shared projects involving up to 48 student design proposals from the partner’s institutions.