PDW 2026: Opening Conversation
Thank you to everyone who joined us last night for our PDW 2026 Opening Conversation "Designing the Future".
Following our Welcome to Country by Dr Len Collard (and an impromptu didgeridoo performance by Landscape Architect Damien Pericles!), the event was opened by an address by Hon Simone McGurk, Minister for Creative Industries; Heritage; Industrial Relations; Aged Care and Seniors; Women. Minister McGurk highlighted the critical role of creative industries.
Designing the Future was a big topic! And Ella Loneragan did a great job moderating. Some key take outs from the event:
"We must start designing by stretching our imaginations further into the future and envisioning how we want to live on a planet that can sustain us."
Ella Loneragan
"AI doesn't 'care'. We need humans in the process."
Julian Bolleter, Director of the Australian Urban Design Research Centre at the University of Western Australia
"Creating spaces and experiences that encourage intercultural understanding, build intentional future Australian identity through the truth of its past, despite the discomfort this is where we can grow to understand ourselves as a nation and design for the future."
Ilona McGuire, multidisciplinary artist
"We need to make the tough calls when it comes to sustainability".
Huia Adkins, GHD Sustainability and Circular Economy Portfolio Lead, and Circular Economy WA Chairperson
"Design is expanding beyond making pretty things, and we are now engaging in complex systemic change. Designers need to focus on generating processes, not just objects, that cultivate sustainable change."
Christopher Keuh, Associate Professor of Design at Edith Cowan University
"Fostering design practice and creative practice research is a way to reclaim agency in the age of AI. Designers are in a unique position to reimagine the ecologies of the future with and without machines."
Claudia Westermann, Associate Professor of Creative Practice in the School of Design and the Built Environment at Curtin University
"The built environmnet is uniquely placed, with existing technologies, to move beyomnd net zero to net positive."
Simon Blackwell, Associate at HIP V. HYPE
We're looking forward to many more great conversations over the next week.
From left to right: Julian Bolleter, Claudia Westermann, Chris Kueh, Ella Loneragan, Simon Blackwell, Huia Adkins, Ilona McGuire and Sandy Anghie.
An impromptu didgeridoo performance by Landscape Architect Damien Pericles with Dr Len Collard.
Photo galleries by David Broadway.