The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) is launching the second edition of a competition to design an innovative, sustainable and creative design product, including packaging, with a strong civil society message.

The European Commission Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry, CUMULUS (International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media) and EIDD (Design for All Europe) will join forces to increasing the communication impact and enhancing European institutions involvement in sustainable design practices and innovation.

The winning object will be distributed during 2012/13, European Year of Active Ageing and Intergenerational Solidarity,

By this initiative, the EESC is taking on a double challenge: fostering sustainable, innovative, smart and creative design, and investing in sustainable public procurement by promoting a new, social-driven, environmentally-friendly form of communication tools: a promotional gift, with functional and ethical qualities.

Purpose:
Following the successful outcome of the award first edition (EESC Design ZeroNine) won by the Irish designer James Ennis with his biodiversity tool “Bee House”, EESC is now launching the second edition of the European Design Award For A Sustainable Present.

The design award, initiated by the European Economic and Social Committee, intends to support smart and sustainable European products, by the same time putting focus on the work of organised civil society. The peculiarity of this competition is that it includes the production of the winning object and its distribution throughout an international network of institutional stakeholders.

Aiming at creating a strong statement communication tool as well as a functional, good design product, EESC Design Eleven keeps on supporting sustainable design practices.

The second edition will be focusing on a quite important issues: Intergenerational solidarity in times of an ageing population.

Design students and young designers are asked to be confronted with a quite increasing global change, by creating innovative and pertinent solutions, through a process of participative design (final users taking part in the design process) and/or co-design (cross-generation team-building – young and elder designers collaborations).