Europe-wide database to help design students

Students, tutors and careers advisors at 500 European design schools will be able to look up information and make contacts through an interactive database to be launched later this year.

EDEN (the European Design Education Network) is the result of extensive collaborative work between Napier University in Edinburgh, Delft University in the Netherlands and the University of Compiegne in France.

“We want to accumulate those people in design schools who are interested in being proactive internationally,” says network director Alec Barron.

Students and careers advisors will use the database to look up courses around Europe and pinpoint bursaries and design staff will be able to establish academic contacts through which they can exchange information.

The database will be an updated electronic version of the Directory of European Design Schools, published by EDEN three years ago (DW 1 May 1992), and will feature schools in some 17 countries. The deadline for design schools to register data is 1 May, when the information will be entered free of charge.