In Conversation with Bethan Gray on the Importance of Design Mentoring.

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I am so excited to share with you my (virtual) conversation with Bethan Gray. Bethan is a brilliant British designer (and human), who was recently involved with mentoring six young creatives shortlisted for Lexus Design Award 2020, which will culminate with the Grand Prix winner announcement on 1st September 2020. As a designer who’s highly focused on kinship and nurturing young creatives, Bethan was a natural choice as a mentor for the awards that supports emerging talent. Bethan’s work centres on close collaboration with master craftspeople globally, in addition to making a real effort to nurture, connect and encourage new design talent in the UK.

For the uninitiated, Lexus Design Award (LDA) launched in 2013 an international design competition for up-and-coming global creators. The award fosters ideas that contribute to society by supporting designers and creators whose works can help to shape a better future and Design For a Better Tomorrow.

Now in its 8th year, the worldwide competition fielded entries from a record-setting number of 2,042 submissions from 79 countries, of which six finalists were chosen by a panel of four prestigious judges: Paola Antonelli, Jeanne Gang, John Maeda and Simon Humphries. Each finalist created a prototype under the mentorship of a globally recognized designer: Bethan Gray, Philippe Malouin, Joe Doucet and Shohei Shigematsu. To learn more about the esteemed panel of experts, I highly recommend watching ‘Episode 1: Meet the Judges & Mentors’ over at Lexus Design Award website.

Lexus Design Award 2020 Mentors in New York in January. From left – Joe Doucet, Bethan Gray, Shohei Shigematsu and Philippe Malouin.

Due to the unique circumstances presented in 2020 (geez, thanks a lot COVID-19), Lexus has modified plans for the Lexus Design Award 2020 Grand Prix selection to a virtual venue in August, instead of during Milan Design Week 2020 as originally planned. Regardless of the change, Lexus remains committed to LDA’s historical mission more than ever, which is to provide an effective launchpad for the next generation of creative leaders.

Back to Bethan! Alongside her three distinguished colleagues, she took part in live (pre-COVID) mentoring sessions in New York City in January 2020. After the workshop, each finalist has had ongoing access to her via one-on-one online sessions, while they continue to develop their prototypes for the final award presentation.

Today Bethan generously shares further insight into her involvement with LDA, the importance of nurturing young talent for a better tomorrow, while reflecting on her own practice and the journey that’s led her to become one of UK’s most celebrated furniture and homeware designers working today.

Lexus Design Award 2020 Finalist – Biocraft. Biocraft introduces materials to replace the inert objects in our daily lives with ones that actively engage with their surroundings. “Biocraft removes carbon and other harmful compounds from the air using 3D printed biopolymer filters made of ecologically sourced materials,” says Garrett Sutherlin Santo of LA-based studio Sutherlin Santo. He is in charge of material development and other physical aspects while Paul Sutherlin Santo takes care of software coding and applications such as 3D printing.

Tell us a little bit about your involvement with Lexus Design Award 2020 – how did it come about?

Lexus got in touch out of the blue – which was a really nice surprise. They’ve been running the Lexus Design Award since 2013 with the aim of nurturing up-and-coming designers and help them realize their visions around the future of design. They had seen my work and my focus on kinship – I collaborate closely with master craftspeople all over the world and also make a real effort to nurture, connect and encourage new design talent in the UK, so I think they saw that there was a resonance there and felt I would be a good fit as one of the mentors for the 2020 Lexus Design Awards.

Have you done much mentoring in the past? How have those experiences compared to LDA?

I have done quite a bit of mentoring actually. As Head of Furniture Design at Habitat and within my own design studio, I have always taken a very nurturing approach to management and tried to make sure I am a mentor first and a boss second – I think that’s just part of my job. I have taught at Central Saint Martin’s and taken a similar approach to teaching, so I have lots of informal mentoring experience. On a more formal footing, I launched a Prize for Women in Craft with Cardiff Metropolitan University when I was made an honorary fellow there and part of that prize involved having me as a mentor, which has been a wonderful experience.
I think every experience of mentoring is different because it all starts with understanding your mentee’s creative vision and their values. The role of a mentor is to support and encourage them to bring that vision to life in a way that aligns with their values – and give them the toolkit and self-belief to do that – so in each case, my approach has been bespoke.

Lexus Design Award 2020 Finalist – Feltscape. Feltscape is a breathing cloud that fosters the philosophical idea of isolation. It is made of felt and recycled bio-plastic with an innovative robotic fabrication process. By the implementation of sensors and kinetic mechanisms, the cloud will follow the visitor’s breath. The membrane rhythm gradually accelerates or decelerates guiding the occupant to inhale/exhale slower. Théophile Peju from France and Salvatore Cicero from Italy conceived Feltscape as a breathing cloud made of felt and thermoplastic that traps noise and can be used for customizing interior acoustics and illumination.

Lexus Design Award’s moto is Design for a Better Tomorrow (which seems more relevant than ever right now!), with three overarching principles – Anticipate. Innovate. Captivate. How did these values inform your guidance of the young designers?

Lexus asked me to take on quite a specific role and offer mentoring around showcasing the shortlisted finalists’ work, so we really focused on ‘captivate’ and how we could make an emotional connection with the audience visiting the Lexus Design Awards. They were due to be exhibiting at Milan Design Week in April, but have had to pivot to a virtual showcase, so it’s all been about how we captivate an online audience in that virtual space.

Your work is incredibly tactile and honours luxurious natural materials, age-old craftsmanship and cutting-edge technology. Although perhaps not immediately evident at first glance, did you find any overlap between your own practice and the incredibly varied and truly fascinating projects by the six finalists?

Yes – the core of my practice is really an exploration of materiality and craftsmanship. I am known for pushing the boundaries of craft techniques and what means for natural materials such as birds-eye maple, leather and brass, but it all comes back to material exploration. Working with the shortlisted finalists, and materials as diverse as biopolymers, felt and plastics, it was all about exploring the materiality of their work and how we could push the boundaries of what new innovations make possible with those materials.

Feltscape designers’ mentoring session with Bethan in New York, January 2020.

I know it’s not cool to play favourites, but could you talk about some of your personal favourite projects? What about them appealed to you?

I definitely can’t name any favourites – the judging process is still underway and although I’m not on the judging panel, I wouldn’t want to sway the outcome! On a purely personal level, Feltscape is a made from felt and thermoplastic that captures noise and customizes interior acoustic and lighting qualities – I would be really keen to try out a meditation space made from this innovative new material. I think it would be incredibly calming and grounding.

Was there anything you learned from your involvement with the Lexus Design Award? Did the experience push you out of your comfort zone at times, or perhaps make you reflect on your practice and your own journey as a designer, even in a small way?

Reflecting on my own journey as a designer as part of this process, I was really struck by the importance of mentors. When I graduated from De Montfort University in 1998, I had the chance to exhibit my graduate collection at New Designers. I was awarded the Habitat New Designers’ Award by Tom Dixon and went on to work for him, eventually becoming Head of Furniture at Habitat. Throughout my career, even while I was still at Habitat, I have tried to ‘pay it forward’ and facilitate similar opportunities and offer mentoring to new talent coming up through the industry. It’s so important, at every stage of your career, that people believe in you and take chances on you – that’s what the Lexus Design Award is all about.

Lexus Design Award 2020 Finalist – Pursewit. Presented by young Pakistani industrial designer, Aqsa Ajmal, Pursewit simplifies sewing machine use for the visually impaired. The operation is made more intuitive and tactile, aiding in the cumbersome process of sewing. The project was inspired by her friend who was blinded by an accident. “She couldn’t find a job that she could do with her disability. She felt hopeless. I wondered how blind people could make a living for themselves. I thought that being able to sew could be a gamechanger in Pakistan with its thriving sewing industry, so I came up with Pursewit.”

Do you have a top takeaway from this experience?

I was really impressed by how much all of the shortlisted designers have progressed throughout this process. They have really used everything the mentors have shared with them to bring their ideas to life. I think that demonstrates the importance of focus and working within a nurturing environment, whether that’s in the context of something like the Lexus Design Awards, or the spaces you create around you and the people you surround yourself with throughout your career. I think the main takeaway was that being a designer is always a journey – you never stop learning and developing.

Any other interesting stories and anecdotes about LDA you could share with us?

I think the main thing the shortlisted designers have had to deal with is pivoting everything we had planned for Milan to an online showcase because of lock-down. It’s been incredible to watch their resourcefulness around developing their prototypes and working out how to showcase them virtually – one of the shortlisted finalists even enlisted the services of an animator which I thought was a really smart move.

Lexus Design Award 2020 Finalist – FlashPak. Installed on the lamp posts, FlashPak makes life jackets easily accessible and provides protection to people in high-risk flooding areas. By utilizing the natural buoyancy of the life jacket, it allows the life vest to rise up to the water’s surface for easy access regardless of how high the water is. The project is presented by Yaokun Wu, an industrial design student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Lexus Design Award 2020 Finalist – L.I.C.K. A portable body cleaner devised to help people who are unable to use a bath, present by Russian product & furniture designer, Irina Samoilova. The device has a soft cleaning surface like a cat’s tongue similar to how cats clean their body from impurities. This cleaning surface has papillae with a U-shaped cavity and different hardness like cats’ tongues.

We are living through a particularly turbulent year that’s highlighting a need for radical and sustained changes in our behaviours and attitudes all around the world. What hopes do you have for design and designers in playing a part in creating a better tomorrow for us all?

We are indeed, and with everything that’s been going on, you’d think that environmental issues might have slipped down the agenda but, if anything, I think they have only felt more urgent. There is a real need for change and, in the design industry, in particular, I think that has to be about adopting a circular economy model. We’ve got to find ways of challenging the linear take-make-waste-model of production and consumption that uses non-renewable virgin materials and fails to take end-of-life considerations into account. I developed my Exploring Eden collection, launched in Milan last year, in collaboration with Nature Squared. Each piece of furniture and every accessory in the collection is made from waste and surplus materials, mostly from the food industry. This means that we’re taking less from the earth and keeping waste out of landfill – all while providing employment and supplementary incomes to fishermen, farmers and craftspeople both in developing nations and in the UK. I am still relatively early in my journey into sustainability, but the events of 2020 have only served to strengthen my conviction me that it’s the right way to go.

Lexus Design Award 2020, Finalists & Mentors together in New York at Intersect by Lexus in January 2020.

Learn more about Bethan’s involvement with LDA 2020 alongside the esteemed panel of mentors and judges at Lexus Design Award website, including their thoughts on ‘Mentoring for a Better Tomorrow’ and how ‘Design can Change the World’. The six finalists continue to develop their prototypes for their final presentations to the judges, with the Grand Prix winner announced on 1st September 2020. This year’s Grand Prix trophy was designed by the winner of the first Lexus Design Award in 2013, Hideki Yoshimoto, who has become a successful designer working with a number of global brands. The trophy design incorporates his engineering background and commitment to Takumi craftsmanship.

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[Images courtesy of Lexus.]

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