Michael Wolff accepts role of Patron for DBA Inclusive Design Challenge

The DBA is delighted to announce that Michael Wolff has agreed to take up the role of Patron for the DBA Design Challenge. Michael is a champion of design and innovation and the perfect advocate for the Challenge, which promotes innovation through inclusive design and is a collaboration between the DBA and the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre.

In support of his acceptance Michael Wolff says:

“All my life I've always felt conscious of my good fortune. Despite many ups and downs of every sort, my body and mind have, so far, supported me in what I've chosen to do.

My life has never felt deliberate. I seem to have opened every day like unwrapping a present.

I've always felt conscious that other people have different circumstances to deal with. Different parents, different cultures, different circumstances with their minds and bodies, different situations of all sorts.

When I was younger I felt sorry for people with all kinds of disabilities in life, but now I feel respect. Everyone grapples with some difficulty that frustrates them or tries to limit them in some way.

Our species is both as brilliant and as thick as it's possible to imagine. Many man made things, places and messages around us can be superb, useful, enjoyable and beautiful, but many are crass, insensitive, vain and plain stupid. Many are life enhancing and many are trying to kill us.

The DBA Design Challenge invites the brilliance rather than the crassness, insensitivity, vanity and stupidity of designers to deal with and transform the results of the past work of their colleagues. Some accept the invitation and others continue in the same rut as before. For me it's a question of being in other people's shoes. To do that you have to take off your own shoes. To forget who you think you are, to forget being a designer and become the person for whom you want to make a difference. That's the challenge.

The DBA Design Challenge is not about winning, its about meeting people in very different situations and allowing them to transform how you feel and think and act forever. That's why the Challenge is so challenging.”