The Norwegian professor Liv Merete Nielsen is an external member of the steering committee of the Danish Centre for Design Research. In her work, she focuses on user-involvement in design processes and in ways for children and young people to train their visual literacy skills in school to help them become full-fledged participants in democracy.

By Jacob Vestergaard, journalist.

The instrument may be something as low-tech as a pencil. Nevertheless, it is democracy that is at stake when Norwegian schoolchildren learn to draw, paint or cut visual expressions and opinions in the school subject ‘art and craft’. In addition to learning to express themselves, the children learn to navigate in a democracy where many decisions are made on the basis of visual presentations such as drawings, manipulated photos, digital animations, figures, graphs and ads, says Liv Merete Nielsen, who is a professor at the Faculty of Art, Design and Drama at Oslo University College.
“School is in touch with all children, regardless of their later position in life – whether they become designers, nurses, executives or politicians. Hence, school and a subject such as ‘art and craft’ can be viewed as the nation’s largest and most important non-commercial culture project,” she says.

Design Knowledge Makes for Better Decisions
“I see ‘art and craft’ as a very important subject, because it embraces our material and visual culture – that is, everything that surrounds us in everyday life. No other school subject addresses these topics and the choices we make as consumers. That’s why the subject is so important, both from a consumer perspective and an environmental perspective as well as in relation to culture and experiences,” says Liv Merete Nielsen, who sees schoolchildren as tomorrow’s consumers as well as tomorrow’s decision-makers.
“The path to a sustainable society has to start early, and in school, ‘art and craft’ gives the children an alternative to the commercialised world that puts increasing pressure on children and their parents to consume more and more,” she says.

She hopes that knowledge of design, art, craft and other creative subjects may prepare the future decision-makers better.
“In Norway, at least, companies don’t do enough to include design in product development and profiling efforts. The executives are laymen when it comes to design. If tomorrow’s leaders learned more about design, we would see better decision-making as well as better products,” says Liv Merete Nielsen.

Drawing is visualization. It may be a visualization of something not yet in existence, or the visualization may fixate time and space in a way not easily obtained in other media. Drawing 2003 by Christoffer M. Lorenzen

Drawing Is Still an Essential Skill
The professor does not consider drawing and painting old-fashioned, although graphic programs for computers and mobile phone cameras have become ubiquitous.
“The new digital tools have only increased the interest in visualisation, but you still can’t photograph something that isn’t there yet,” says Liv Merete Nielsen.
“Thus, in order to visualise an idea, you still have to be able to draw or otherwise express yourself visually. That means that it’s still necessary to practice your ability to visualise and communicate visually,” she says, adding that visual literacy skills can enhance citizens’ ability to participate in democracy.
“In a democracy, skills such as reading and writing are crucial, both for locating and comprehending information and for expressing opinions. The same is true of visual literacy, where it’s limiting if one cannot decode, comprehend or express oneself visually,” says Liv Merete Nielsen.

Design Education in a Nordic Context
Since November 2007, Liv Merete Nielsen has been one of two external members of the steering committee for the Danish Centre for Design Research, where she contributes with her insights into research and design in general and with her experience of the role of design in another Nordic country.
“Each country develops its own systems and cultures, and the Nordic countries display similarities as well as differences,” says Liv Merete Nielsen, who took her degree as a visual arts teacher in Stockholm, and who defended her doctoral dissertation in art education in 2000 at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

Currently, her main focus is on training researchers in the fields of design and design education, and as the head of the research network DesignDialog, she is an active contributor to interdisciplinary research and the development of competencies with a view to strengthening the dialogue between users and designers. She also teaches art education in the Master’s programme in Art and Design Education at Oslo University College.

A Cradle-to-Grave Perspective
In Denmark, Liv Merete Nielsen has given a presentation to the Network for Children and Culture under the Danish Ministry of Culture.
“Liv Merete Nielsen has a holistic view that’s invaluable,” says Senior Consultant Jan Helmer-Petersen from the Network for Children and Culture, who was involved in laying the groundwork for strengthening and integrating creative subjects such as art, design, woodwork and needlecraft better in Danish schools.
“Liv Merete Nielsen sees the creative subjects in a larger cradle-to-grave perspective, where the Danish approach to subjects and topics is much more piecemeal,” says the senior consultant.

Since the enactment of the new Danish teacher education act in the summer of 2007, several teachers’ colleges have been offering material design as a main subject. So far, however, the new subject has drawn limited interest, apparently because it has yet to be introduced in the elementary and lower secondary schools, where woodwork and needlecraft are still separate subjects.
According to the official guidelines for the subject, material design aims to enable the student to work ‘in practice with design processes and craft activities’ in order to be able to ‘comprehend, create and develop material culture’.

www.designdialog.no
DCDR Steering Committee

Mind Design #15, 2009