Mission Statement
To leverage my experience as a designer to open doors to different worlds including culture, sports and education by making environments accessible to everybody.
Biography
I am a designer, curator, educator, and founder of the International Design Summer School MAD. I have been running a design studio that focuses on design, art, craft, science, and social responsibility since 2008. The studio has worked with exhibitions, environmental, industrial and graphic design.
Since 2020, I have fully lost my sight. Being a principal tool for the work of a designer, this has challenged me to reinvent my practice. With the support of friends and some determination, I am now able to work again.
I am very interested in environmental accessibility for people with impairments and I am getting involved in projects that deal with design and disability, such as DESIG*ness. Design and Diversity in Higher Education, together with the Art Academy of Latvia and NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. I recently started to collaborate with Design Studio H2E and continue to work as a teacher and tutor in various art and design-related projects. I am also pursuing my PHD in Practice at the Art Academy of Latvia.
Questionnaire
Where do you want to foster change and why?
I would like to facilitate change in educational, learning and cultural environments to make them fully accessible in countries throughout Europe.
What or who influenced you during your professional career?
Major influences include the principles of the Bauhaus and the educational insights of Black Mountain College, and my design teachers at the Art Academy of Latvia, Barbara Abele and Holgers Elers.
We all have those significant moments or situations (success or failure); which one was yours, and what did you learn from it?
My first pivotal moment was deciding to quit my full-time job and launch my own design studio. The second was losing my sight, which taught me that I had to become blind in order to begin to see.