Jenkins sets sights on CSD/DBA merger

The new president of the Chartered Society of Designers Nick Jenkins is pledging to move the CSD towards a remerger with the Design Business Association.

Jenkins, who started his two-year presidency at yesterday’s CSD annual general meeting, says: “I would like to think this is possible within the two years.”

Jenkins, who helped set up the then Design Business Group as a sub-group of the CSD in the 1980s before it broke away as a separate organisation, adds: “It was never our intention for it to split from the CSD.”

Cross-fertilisation between the CSD and DBA and joint representation to bodies outside design such as the Department of Trade and Industry are seen by Jenkins as steps towards a remerger.

“I’m not saying that the DBA should be part of the CSD in any subservient way, but we have to push them back together.”

Jenkins adds: “I will be talking to the DBA to see where we can go from here.”

Other key themes for Jenkins’ presidency are: better communication to designers and beyond the industry of what the CSD is and does; a campaign to improve how Government buys design; increasing the social aspect of the CSD; and creating a network of designers willing to be visiting lecturers to colleges – part of a wider drive on design education, which is “at an all-time low”, says Jenkins.

See Profile, page 16.