DesignSKILLS

The Design & Craft Council of Ireland (DCCoI), in partnership Junior Cycle Teachers (JCT), are delighted to announce DesignSKILLS, a new Arts in Junior Cycle initiative for teachers and students of Junior Cycle Visual Art. This initiative is co-funded by the National Creativity Fund through The Creative Ireland Programme.

DesignSKILLS is a nationwide post-primary level programme which aims to support the integration of the principles and key skills which underpin the Framework for Junior Cycle (2015), the Arts in Education Charter (2012) and the Creative Ireland Programme (2017 – 2022), Pillar 1 Creative Youth. In 2018 the programme will run in 26 schools across the country.

The DesignSKILLS programme provides an opportunity for teachers of Visual Art, with their students, to work directly with a designer/maker.  Junior Cycle Visual Art ‘provides the learner with a space within which it is safe to experiment, to fail and to learn’. Through DesignSKILLS, a designer/maker will work in partnership with teachers and their students to focus on the front end of the design process.

The emphasis in DesignSKILLS is on investigating initial ideas, researching, experimenting and developing students’ own ideas through a range of hands-on practical methodologies and approaches, including using sketchpads. The focus of the programme is based on research conducted by Sandra Reid during her studies at DesignCORE in IT Carlow - learn more HERE

The Creative Ireland  Programme is an all-of-Government culture- based initiative designed to promote individual, community and national wellbeing. The core proposition is that participation in cultural activity drives personal and collective creativity, with significant implications for individual and societal wellbeing and achievement.

DesignSKILLS is supported by: