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Daniel Charny announced as keynote speaker for BIG 2014

We are delighted to announce Daniel Charny as the latest keynote speaker to be added to the BIG 2014 line-up.

Daniel Charny is a creative director, curator and design educator. He is director of From Now On, where clients include the British Council, Design Museum, Heatherwick Studio, Cathedral Group and William Grant & Sons. Charny was founding curator of the Aram Gallery before going on to curate major shows for the Design Museum. His exhibition “Power of Making” for the V&A and Crafts Council was their most visited free exhibition since 1950. His latest projects include the Maker Library Network with the British Council, an open design mentoring platform that connects makers in South Africa and the UK. Since 2013 Charny works with Cathedral Group PLC on the development of the Central Research Laboratory, a hardware makerspace and incubator in The Old Vinyl Factory in Hayes, for which he is founding director. An internationally recognised expert, Charny contributes to multiple design juries and professional advisory boards. He has been involved in design education for 20 years including as Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art, and is currently Professor of Design at Kingston University and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In 2012 he co-founded Fixperts, an international open design creative social platform. The Fixperts project connects people. People that are good at thinking and making are invited to meet and help someone they don’t know with a day-to-day problem that has been frustrating or difficult for them to overcome. At BIG 2014 Daniel Charny will also present The FixHub which will be located in the Market Place exhibition area. It will be run by Fix Ambassadors and is a self-contained pop-up hub that will demonstrate the importance of fixing and personalised design as a way of thinking for the future. Don’t miss it!

Daniel Charny (centre), with his team and  designer Thomas Heatherwick at the officially launch of The Maker Library at Design Indaba Expo.

Daniel Charny (centre), with his team and designer Thomas Heatherwick at the officially launch of The Maker Library at Design Indaba Expo.