Shenzhen Design Week and Global UNESCO City of Design Summit Celebrate 15th Anniversary

Shenzhen, China--(Newsfile Corp. - May 2, 2023) - On the morning of April 27, the opening ceremony of 2023 Shenzhen Design Week & Global UNESCO "City of Design" Summit was held at the Bay Opera of Shenzhen, and celebrated the 15th anniversary of Shenzhen as the UNESCO "City of Design."

Figure 1

With the theme of "Global Design, Shenzhen Momentum," 2023 Shenzhen Design Week is hosted by Shenzhen Municipal People's Government and International Council of Design (ICoD), organized by Shenzhen Innovation and Creative Design Development Office, co-organized by Guangdong Bureau and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Headquarters of China Media Group. The event has been widely supported by UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN), international design organizations, and the organizing committees of world-renowned Design Weeks. The event runs through Apr. 27 to May 6. It focuses on four dimensions such as "Empower Industrial Innovation and Development," "Lead Fashion Consumption Trends," "Create Urban Brand Marketing" and "Solve Urban Governance Problems," and plans to build an event system featuring "8+21+N" (8 theme events, 21 key events and N branch venues and exquisite venues). Shenzhen Design Week combined global vision with Shenzhen characteristics, focusing on the frontier of design, highlighting the integration of science and technology, strengthening industrial empowerment and reflecting the city's charisma.

This year coincides with the 15th anniversary of Shenzhen as a "City of Design," the title awarded by the UCCN. 15 years later, "Shenzhen Design" has achieved progress and become an important engine for high-quality development. At present, Shenzhen is home to over 33,000 legal entities on creative design services, 30-plus listed design enterprises, and more than 220,000 designers, and leads the country in such areas as graphic design, industrial design, clothing design, furniture design and jewelry design. At the same time, the local design ecosystem continues to improve, evidenced by more than 70 cultural and creative parks, 19 design industry associations, 13 national-level industrial design centers, and 114 provincial industrial design centers. Various international design events such as Shenzhen Design Week, Global Design Award, Shenzhen Creative Design Award for Young Talent, China Design Fair, Shenzhen International Industrial Design Fair, and Hong Kong - Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism \ Architecture have gained increasing global visibility, representing important global pioneers in the field of design.

Denise Bax, Secretary of the UCCN, gave high recognition to Shenzhen's creative design vitality in a speech, saying that Shenzhen is a successful model for the construction of a "City of Design". It was the first time that Shenzhen Design Week was held jointly with international design organizations. In Johnathon Strebly's speech, the former President of ICoD, said that high-quality design, and booming innovation and technology provide strong momentum for Shenzhen design that contributes its part to globalization.

Figure 2

The opening ceremony premiered the film of Shenzhen as a "City of Design" - "Be Bold and Creative" to show the fearless spirit of Shenzhen, a "spaceship" daring to explore the infinity of the vast unknown universe with the help of sci-fi skills and digital visual technologies. The opening ceremony also presented a short video featuring a natural Shenzhen - a city where mountains meet seas, during which the audience was immersed in the charm of the local natural ecosystem shaped by "one ridge, one belt and twenty corridors". The ecology of Shenzhen creates a recreational network linking the city with mountains and seas, making it an eco-city design model of harmonious coexistence between human and nature.

At the Global UNESCO "City of Design" Summit, David Grossman, Former President of ICoD, Zhong Xiangping, Vice President of Tencent, Wolfgang Josef Egger, BYD Global Design Director, and Zhao Huizhou, Founder and Chief Designer of EACHWAY Fashion Group delivered speeches on the theme of "Global Design, Shenzhen Momentum" and gave wonderful interpretations on the cutting-edge concepts of design, fashion, and industry. They presented the strong development momentum of Shenzhen's "20+8" industrial clusters and the leading advantages of its design in industrial and fashion fields such as automobile, garment, jewelry, watch, glasses and home furnishing.

As an important agenda of the Global UNESCO "City of Design" Summit, the Roundtable gathered representatives from Montreal, Istanbul, Nagoya, Kobe, Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenzhen and other relevant cities to share their experiences and unique features of building "City of Design". That said, Shenzhen joined other important conveners to promote exchanges and cooperation among Global Cities of Design.

On behalf of Shenzhen Design Week and Global Design Awards Organizing Committee, Academician Meng Jianmin of the Chinese Academy of Engineering released the "Shenzhen Initiative for Global Cities of Design," which advocates "grand design" to empower industrial innovation and development, solve urban governance problems, shape city branding and cohesion, lead fashion consumption trends, as well as promote the deep integration of design and digitalization. It adheres to the openness of design and intellectual property protection while strengthening exchanges and cooperation among UNESCO cities of design, and promotes sustainable development.

Company: Shenzhen Innovation and Creative Design Development Office
Contact Person: Feng Xiaolin
Email: 738161@qq.com
Website: www.sz.design
Telephone: 86-0755- 88133817
City: Shenzhen, China

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/164380