The best 2-second summary of Dott07 is in their own words:
“Dott 07 is a year of community projects, events and exhibitions based in North East England that explore what life in a sustainable region could be like – and how design can help us get there.”
The program has been running now for 18 months and come October this year, the projects come to a close rounding up with a Dott07 Festival in Newcastle, to share the experiences of how design has helped improve the lives of people in this region.
The projects have been undertaken with some of the UK’s most innovative design firms such as Engine, Zest and live | work, who aren't involved in the design of tangible products, but the design of intangible services. My research will be looking at the context and methods of service design and Dott07 will be used as a major case study to underpin the research (and that’s as much as I know about my PhD so far! I have 3 months to play in a pre-research research stage).
I set out on Tuesday to visit the Dott07 office, a 15 minute walk from my flat, for a meeting with the Executive Producer, Robert. I am still very much in the stage of discovering and finding my way around Newcastle, so like any foreign person to a place, everything was new and I was on high alert soaking up the streets and architecture. At the end of this piece (as to not take away from the Dott07 visit) I have dropped in photos I took along my journey to and from the Dott07 office.
The Dott07 offices are located behind Newcastle’s Central train station, a light industrial part of town which is a funny mix of pubs, commercial offices, warehouses and remanent of the old Town Walls. I arrived on time at the heritage-listed Robert Stephenson Centre which houses the Dott07 office and two other companies.
The Robert Stephenson Centre was the first purpose-built locomotive factory and is named after one of the founding fathers of the railway, Robert Stephenson.
The space is large and cool, with beautiful original wooden beams and glass ceilings that let the sunlight stream. As the building is heritage listed and its original structure could not be modified, the Dott07 offices are contained in a handful of pods around the perimeter.
I had already met Robert in London at the Design Council, but we hardly got a chance to get to know each other then, so Tuesday morning was about sitting down and doing just that.
Robert gave me a good understanding of the Dott07 operation and its 17 (!!) projects. He also introduced me to the rest of the Dott07 office whom I will be spending the next couple of weeks getting to know, and next couple of months joining on trips to the live projects. After absorbing it all, I had a wonder around the space before heading back to my flat, just as the rain began to fall.
