This year's London Design Festival is well under way and involves hundreds of events across the capital, but it hasn't all been about Champagne-fueled parties: LDF has also been educational. For me, the most interesting and informative event so far has been a discussion called To Make in Britain?, which took place yesterday morning at Portobello Dock, the canal-side HQ of designer and entrepreneur Tom Dixon.
Chaired by Vicky Richardson, director of architecture, design and fashion at the British Council, the event addressed the often contentious issues surrounding Britain's manufacturing industry, or lack thereof. Questions were put to a panel comprising Marek Reichman, design director of British car manufacturer Aston Martin, James Woudhuysen, professor of forecasting and innovation at De Montfort University, and Tom Dixon.
Richardson began by asking the panel whether we need to make things in the UK and how design relates to manufacturing.
Dixon said that, while he had started off making his own products, when he tried to get things made industrially in Britain he found it 'very, very hard'. However, he went on to say that things are changing: 'What's happening recently is that the near collapse of Western economies along with developments in digital technology mean it's getting much easier for people to make things in Britain.'
James Woudhuysen identified a strand of British nostalgia and patriotism that he called 'backward-looking. It's unrealistic if we think a real [manufacturing] revolution can begin here even with the assistance of computer controlled machine tools.' He also pointed out that wages were a diminishing proportion of manufacturing output' meaning that manufacturing won't necessarily stay where wages are lowest. But Woudhuysen, who co-authored Big Potatoes: The London Manifesto for Innovation, counselled against 'a sentimental journey to the past'.
Reichman, whose company manufactures some 90 per cent of its cars in the UK, said that at the high end of manufacturing Britain is still going strong due to highly skilled workers but this hasn't filtered down.
While Richardson suggested that the onus must be n the design industry itself, the panel seemed broadly to agree that the Government should be dong more.
Dixon concluded the talk by saying: 'If only the Government would get on with spending some money and taking responsibility for this rather than being three steps removed then we could improve everything; we could employ designers, make manufacturers busy and improve live for everybody - I think that's relatively simple.'
