This is something I bumped into today and I am really, really impressed. This woman has indeed re-conceptualized design education in such a simple and subtle way that makes me wonder, why didn’t anyone think of this before. Genius, bravo!
Stacie Woolsey approached four practising designers she admired: Thomas Thwaites, Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Seetal Solanki and a contact at Room Y, the innovation arm of UK department store John Lewis. She asked each of them to set her design briefs to complete in her own time – an idea she describes as “freelance learning” – and completed all four briefs over 18 months of self-directed study (…) Woolsey didn’t feel that she could burden the designers with every question, so she started approaching industry professionals with different skills and asked them to be mentors, for project-specific help. She built her own network of peers – one of the benefits of attending an established institution – by approaching people her age across a variety of fields and asking them to follow her progress and be her first port of call. She hosted meetings as a way to set deadlines and present her projects (…) Rather than try to get her course of study accredited, which “felt a bit irrelevant” and would be “almost cheating on the idea a little bit”, Woolsey searched for a means to “validate it in a different way”. Instead, each of the designers who set briefs are writing a statement to say how well they think she answered it – more like a reference than a grade.
Dezeen: Stacie Woolsey creates her own masters course as “viable alternative” to design education
The designer is exhibiting the results in a “degree show” she named Make Your Own Masters, which opens this week at Somerset House in London.