Invited Speakers

Julia Cassim studied Fine Art at Manchester College of Art and Design and at Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music on a Japanese Ministry of Education (Mombusho) postgraduate scholarship. She has an MPhil from the International Centre for Heritage Studies, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, is visiting professor at Kyushu University and trustee of the charity Mobility Choice.

From 1971-1998, Julia lived in Japan. As arts columnist of The Japan Times, she founded Access Vision, a non-profit organisation for visually impaired people and curated and designed award-winning exhibitions for audiences with visual impairments and learning disabilities.

Julia joined the Helen Hamlyn Centre in 2000. Since then, her main research focus has been the development of creative partnerships between people with disabilities and designers; ways to involve them in the design process to encourage innovative, inclusive thinking and the design of mainstream products, services, communications and environments that work better for all.

She runs the Challenge Workshops, a knowledge transfer programme in inclusive design which brings together professional designers at all stages of their career with disabled people in a co-design process based on equality and mutual benefit. The DBA Inclusive Design Challenge she has organised annually since 2000 has proved influential. Julia has developed and extended the model in different contexts, in the UK and internationally. To date nine 24 and 48 Hour Inclusive Design Challenges have been held in Norway, Dublin, Seoul, Tokyo, Kyoto, Sarajevo, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, London, and Singapore involving over 700 designers from different countries. The programme is the subject of Trading Places a touring exhibition first shown at the Victoria & Albert Museum that will be travel to Boston and Korea later in the year.