About the festival

Idea

 

Gdynia Design Days is a festival about finding solutions to current challenges through design. It culminates in events and exhibitions held during the summer, but we are active in the field of design all year round, including organizing meetings, discussions, lectures, and exhibitions.

At Gdynia Design Days, we believe that design is a tool for change, allowing us to create solutions that are good for people and the planet. Design is not elitist, it is for everyone, democratic. That's why we want to include as many people as possible from different backgrounds in the design processes and discussions about them. We show both bold projects from the area of speculative design, as well as real solutions and processes, proving that design concerns each of us. We want to build individual responsibility and social solidarity, and we focus on locality in our activities.

As the Gdynia Design Days team, we are not afraid of self-reflection and change. The values we talk about during the festival, we try to implement in our daily work. We are constantly learning, making mistakes and learning from them. We want everyone to feel comfortable and invited to build together the reality we live in during Gdynia Design Days.

festival theme:

 

Gdynia-Zdrój

 

While Gdynia has never been a spa town, it holds all the potential to become one. Throughout the festival, we extend a warm invitation to Gdynia-Zdrój, a resort town 2.0 designed to meet present-day challenges. Gdynia-Zdrój is where the economy, the planet, our society, locality and people (including ourselves) can regenerate. We want to redefine the concept of renewal, harnessing its semantic capacity – without disconnecting ourselves from cultural and historical associations, yet responding to real, contemporary needs.

It is no coincidence that we chose Gdynia as the place to seek renewal. This is where both residents and visitors come in search of regeneration, balance and a high quality of life. Gdynia offers renewal through contact with nature (proximity to forests, parks and the Baltic Sea) and its modern character of a smart city, designed to facilitate everyday life.

Inspired by the customary activities of traditional spas, Gdynia-Zdrój embodies a commitment to physical and psychological well-being. However, we want to move away from the medical context, associated with invasive treatment of advanced problems, towards prevention and self-care. Consequently, we hope to engage in an open dialogue about how we feel, about our (dis)comfort, empathy and inclusivity. It is also a pretext to look at health in the literal sense – pay attention to practices that will prevent ailments and keep us fit for a long time. At the same time, we want to seek democratic solutions that are available to all (in opposition to current, expensive tools).

Care for our planet and the climate is one of the pillars of Gdynia Design Days. In this context, like each year, we emphasise circular design. This edition is no exception, since our economic models are still in urgent need of healing.

We also want Gdynia-Zdrój to serve as a space for healing our relationship with virtual reality and artificial intelligence – and how we perceive them. Recent months have brought renewed debates about the perils of becoming too immersed in virtual realms and automation. On the other hand, ours is a time marked by strong denial of these phenomena. Yet maybe there is a possibility to heal the relationship between the analogue and digital worlds? We believe that the media operating in these two dimensions are in fact a single world, where artificial intelligence can complement non-digital experience.

Through sentimental allusions to memories of intergenerational holidays, we want to celebrate a return to good old practices and rediscover traditions, creating a place where different generations can meet and exchange skills. We wish to revive forgotten crafts that our parents took for granted, such as darning, sewing and mending. These activities can heal both our psyche and our economy.

Join us for nine days in June and witness Gdynia transform into a spa town 2.0. Throughout the festival, a new place will appear on the map of Poland: Gdynia-Zdrój. A space where we can regenerate as individuals and communities, hoping to heal our planet.

MISSION AND VISION

We believe that design can be an instrument of change. We want to inspire business, designers and our audiences to act, using design as a tool for efficient and sustainable growth. We are convinced that an open mind and a mindful approach may lead us to new solutions, which are so desperately needed today.

Program board

GDD Team

EWA CHUDECKA
Festival Manager
e.chudecka@ppnt.pl
58 880 82 33 

MARTYNA BŁASZCZYK
Media Relations
m.blaszczyk@ppnt.pl
58 880 82 16

ANIA ODRZYGÓŹDŹ
Event coordination
a.odrzygozdz@ppnt.pl
58 880 82 18

TOMASZ KOŚMIDER
Promotion
t.kosmider@ppnt.pl
58 880 82 17

MARTYNA OLSZEWSKA
Production
m.olszewska@ppnt.pl
58 880 82 33 

ANETA LEHMANN
Program, EU projects 
a.lehmann@ppnt.pl
58 880 82 18

KAROLINA CYGERT
Program, EU projects 

KORNELIA HOLEKSA
k.holeksa@ppnt.pl

KAROLINA HONISZ
k.honisz@ppnt.pl

Previous editions