Dr Andrea Siodmok has been appointed by Cornwall Council to be Programme Director of Dott Cornwall. She will be leaving her job as Chief Design Officer of the Design Council to take up the post in Cornwall in August.
Dott (Designs of the time) is the second in a pioneering initiative from the Design Council using design to help communities create their local services and develop solutions to local problems. The Design Council will deliver the 18-month programme in partnership with the new unitary Cornwall Council and University College Falmouth.
As Programme Director, Siodmok will run a series of community design projects intended to give the people of Cornwall and the Scilly Isles the chance to help design the places where they live, work and play and the services they use.
Dott will also provide new skills and new opportunities for the Cornish design sector. One of the key aims of Dott Cornwall is to grow professional design skills in the region, and 24 Cornwall-based designers have already been recruited to work on the various projects.
Commenting on the appointment, Kevin Lavery, Chief Executive of Cornwall Council, said: "The Dott programme is a big opportunity to tap the creative potential of Cornwall and deliver better business and services for our county. Andrea's appointment gets us off to a strong start as she has a wealth of experience in bringing diverse communities together with designers and industry."
David Kester, Chief Executive of Design Council, said: "Andrea is a first-rate designer thinker, practitioner and educator. She brings with her a huge amount of innovation at a local and national level. We will miss her as our Chief Design Officer, but our loss is certainly Cornwall's gain."
Over the last fifteen years Siodmok has promoted a strategic approach to the future of design, running major innovation programmes in service design, sustainability and social innovation and speaking on design across five continents. As a design consultant Andrea has developed consumer products, interactive media, websites and interface design. She has taught at leading UK universities and is a visiting fellow and PhD supervisor in co-design methods for social innovation. As Chief Design Officer at the Design Council from 2007, Siodmok occupied a pivotal leadership role for design, defining and developing new programmes such as Design Bugs Out and Design Out Crime.