DesignTalks 2022 - Ragna Sara Jónsdóttir, founder and creative director of FÓLK, and Tor Inge Hjemdal, managing director of DOGA

Ragna Sara Jónsdóttir, founder and creative director of FÓLK, and Tor Inge Hjemdal, managing director of DOGA, will each hold a talk at DesignTalks 2022, the international conference and signature event of DesignMarch, exploring how design and architecture can help imagine and propose alternative futures and promote change.

Ragna Sara Jónsdóttir is the founder and creative director of FÓLK Reykjavik. She founded FÓLK with the aim to create a brand that would be a platform for Icelandic designers and develop a platform for the creation of products contributing to a more sustainable lifestyle. After graduating with a MSc degree in international business from Copenhagen Business School, she founded a consultancy with a focus on corporate social responsibility where her clients included the United Nations Development Program, Icelandic Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Islandsbanki. She was the director of communications and later of responsibility at Iceland’s state-owned energy company, Landsvirkjun, before starting the brand FÓLK. Ragna has engaged in environmental and human rights issues, she has been the president of UN Women National Committee in Iceland and a board member at Festa´s Center for corporate social responsibility.

Tor Inge Hjemdal is the managing director of DOGA - Design and Architecture in Norway. Hjemdal is a trained architect, with continuing education in urbanism as well as innovation and management from Haas Business School at Berkeley. For the past fifteen years, Hjemdal has held various management positions in private business, the public sector and in industry organizations, as well as being the head of a start-up company.

designmarch

DesignTalks 2022 will take place in Harpa on the 4th of May and is curated by Hlin Helga Guðlaugsdóttir. This year the event will be moderated by Marcus Fairs, editor-in-chief and founder of Dezeen, connecting the conversations to a wider context, highlighting its relevance to an audience across professional fields.

The programme will be an exploration of resilient approaches, regeneration and reconnection with traditional crafts and indigenious wisdom, experiments rewiring and rethinking current systems, the design of data and information, extended realities and speculation into the future as a form of creative and critical reflection of the now.

“It will be a celebration of imagination - and a moment for deep thinking.” - curator Hlin Helga