TRANSFORMATION,  new directions in education
25.-26.04.2024, Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, Amsterdam

Please click here for the booklet with the program and find the pictures here.

Read the President’s message on the Summit here.

Education is a continuous work-in-progress, particularly in the current time of transformation: the world around us is constantly changing and at a rapid pace. We are facing major, cross-border, wide-ranging questions. The challenges – related to climate change, resource scarcity, energy transition, social inequality, and declining biodiversity, and more – are urgent, complex, and also all spatial issues for which answers must be sought now in order to maintain perspective on a sustainable and inclusive future.

What has changed since we wrote the pledge in Oslo during the first Deans’ Summit?

We’ve made a promise to ourselves, to each other, to our students, for the benefit of a livable and just future on the planet. And we, as educators have a responsibility.

‘We recognise the climate crisis as the most significant issue within our lifetimes, and our institutional responsibility to promote conditions that support quality of life and dignity for future generations and our planet. We promise to incorporate the current concerns into common values and to choose the right measures in aligning our curricula and research to confront these wicked problems with the urgency, leadership and prominence they demand, hereby aiming for the construction of a shared European frame of reference.’ (fragment of the Oslo Pledge) 

During the fourth Deans’ Summit in Amsterdam, we will be reflecting on the pledge together and discuss how our curricula have been transforming. Change requires a certain chaos; we’re all searching for new directions, and frameworks in education. Are we training students for the practice as it is now, or are we training them for a practice as it – given all the big issues- should be? Can we image what this practice can and should be in the future? How important is it to invite other disciplines in education, other forms of knowledge, in relation to the challenges of the climate crisis? What do our times demand and how can we help the new generation of designers to work in a regenerative way?

The aim of the summit will be to get inspired by best practices, ongoing changes in curricula, concepts in progress, proposals and other stories.

The summit starts on Thursday at 6pm with the keynote by Floris Alkemade,  Chief Government Architect of the Netherlands from 2015-2021., and will run through until the evening on Friday.
The program will be a mix of lectures, interchanged with curated discussions in smaller groups.

Please note that the registration below is free, but only open for Deans and Vice Deans, Heads of School or someone delegated by them to represent their institution.

Link to the full program

Interested to host the fifth edition of the Deans’ Summit? Click here.

The EAAE General Meeting, part 1, took place during the Summit, on Friday 26.04.2024, 13h45.