Design for Social Innovation
KAYE TOLAND
Award-Winning Transdisciplinary Designer & Educator
Since 2017 I have been developing a design practice that utilises design as a process and medium to create both practical and critical works that showcase the power of design to further public debate and tackle complex societal issues. With training in Art, Product Design, and Sustainable Architecture I have had the pleasure of working on a variety of design projects. For the first few years of my career my practice focused on the themes of space, power, and conflict but in the last year I have been reframing the issue of conflict as an opportunity to produce work that centers around the notion of care.
Whether it be my personal practice or my client work I advocate for design that is sustainable, sociable, and innovative. When I am not practicing design I am teaching it, either at Central Saint Martins where I teach on the BA Product Design course, or with groups, communities, or companies where I teach and facilitate design workshops and assist with design strategy and systems thinking. But design is only a process and the value of the work is in the communities it serves and the problems that it heals.
photo: O'Donovon, Chris. "Kaye in her Allotment during Quarantine." 2020.
EXHIBITIONS
NOVA X
COMING SEPTEMBER - London Design Festival - 2020
London Design Festival - 2020
MESS IS THE LAW
NYCxDESIGN - 2018
Wanted Design, New York Design Week - Featuring my projects Make It or Break It and mCycle.
WantedDesign is a platform dedicated to promoting design and fostering the local and international creative community throughout the year. Its two marquee events are held in New York during NYCxDESIGN.
CREATIVE UNIONS
London Design Festival
- 2018
Lethaby Gallery, London Design Festival - Featuring my projects Make It or Break It and mCycle.
Creative Unions exhibition demonstrates the ways in which designers continue to address our socio-political climate, illustrating how design can become an active agent in the dissolution of boundaries.
GROW YOUR OWN
Victoria & Albert Museum
- 2016
Victoria and Albert Museum, London - Featuring my project Living Pizza Lab.
A series of talks and demonstrations of innovative urban farming happening in the United Kingdom.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
20 YEARS WOMEN INTO PRODUCT DESIGN
(speaker)l - 2018
LVMH Theatre, CSM, London. On 14 November 2018, female BA Product Design alumni and special guests came together at Central Saint Martins to share their stories, experiences, insights and the challenges encountered as women in the field of design. This covered their time as students and their roles in a professional capacity – working in a firm or freelance, in the industry and in education.
IMPROVING LIVES IN A POST-CONFLICT SOCIETY
The George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security, and Justice, Queen's University Belfast. A conference of policymakers, third sector leaders and creatives discussing innovative ways in which to improve lives in a post-conflict society.
(speaker) - 2018
IN:SIGHT
(speaker) - 2018
A discussion into the potential of co-operation, craft, and industry to sustain rural economies with Kaye Toland, Amber Perng, Sarah Lincoln and Mollie Anna King. Part of the Bring Your Own Chair residency programme delivered by Workhouse Union and the Design and Craft Council.