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Who designs your life? That's the question being posed to the people of North East England by a new initiative aimed at getting people to think about how design affects them and the future of the planet's resources.

Dott 07 (Designs of the time 2007) is a year of community projects, events and exhibitions in North East England that explore what life in a sustainable region could be like - and how design can help us get there.

Dott 07 is lead by programme director John Thackara, who said "Dott 07 is about local communities taking the lead in real life situations to change the way they deal with issues that affect their daily lives - from the way they use energy in their home, to the way we get from A to B, or how we can grow food in the most urban or city centre."

Dott 07 is being delivered through a partnership between the UK Design Council and the regional development agency One NorthEast, and Dott 07 is now working with communities and individuals in the region until the end of the year.

Dott 07 has selected six core themes to which each project or activity is aligned. These are inspired by aspects of daily life where things can be improved. The six themes are: Health; Food; School; Energy; Tourism and Travel.

"Sustainability is the word on everybody's lips," says John Thackara. "Dott 07 invites people to quesiton the design status quo and come up with better ideas - and then, with the help of the Dott team, implement the best ones. When the Dott 07 ball has rolled on at the end of the project, our aim is to leave a legacy of brilliant ideas that can be used as blueprints across North East England."

Dott 07's programme of activities consists of:

• Public Design Commissions (responding to the six core themes)


• Education Projects


• Design Showcases delivered between March and October 2007


• The Dott 07 Festival in October 2007 brings together all the design events and projects that have run over the year

PUBLIC DESIGN COMMISSIONS

Urban Farming, which will look for ways to help schools, communities and businesses grow their own fresh food in a variety of spaces in Middlesbrough - from window boxes to fields - and see them made into a "town meal."

Low Carb Lane, where one street in Ashington will look at a range of ways of making homes more energy efficient, cutting carbon emissions and reducing demand of the National Grid by up to 60%.

The DaSH (Design and Sexual Health) project aims to identify ways to help improve screening and treatment provision for sexual health in Gateshead in consultation with service users. The aim is to develop a system where anyone contacting the service will be seen in 48 hours.

The Move Me project in Scremerston, Northumberland will look at improving transport systems within this small rural community. They'll investigate how best to use public and private transport and make it easier and make it easier and more energy efficient for people to get around.

OurNewSchool will see a 'design lab' set up in a school in the region which is part of the UK government's 'Building Schools for the Future" scheme. The ambitious scheme will see every secondary school in the UK rebuilt or remodelled in the next ten years. Ideas will be collected from every aspect of school life with the aim of providing a design pattern for this and other schools to work from.

Alzheimer 100 will look how design can improve the daily life of people with dementia and their carers. The project will look at practical issues and seek to design new products and services that tackle them.

EDUCATION PROJECTS

Year eight pupils across the region have joined the Eco Design Challenge which will see them, along with professional designers, redesigning an aspect of school life to reduce their environmental and ecological impact.

Dott 07 is participating in an RSA Design Direction competition in conjunction with Doors of Perception. Students from all over the world as well as in North East England are working on two projects are part of this exciting initiative. Each project deals with a specific sustainability challenge - food and tourism - and focuses strongly on multidisciplinary team-working. The idea is for designers to work collaboratively, and for non-designer team members to learn about the design process by working with designers.

Disposable culture comes under scrutiny in the D&AD (Design & Art Direction 'Stuff-o-Meter' competition, sponsored by Dott 07. Graphic design students have been asked to visually design the lifetime of a household project from 'cradle to grave', showing the environmental impact of the good we all buy.

DESIGN SHOWCASES

The Welcomes
When you arrive in the region, you can be welcomed by design. Artists and designers have been asked to think about what we see and experience on arrival in the North East.

Vital Signs
Does more stuff make us happy? Does our economy have to grow, for the region to be successful? In Vital Signs, artist and designers will start a thousand conversations about what design should be for. How can the ways we live, or our places, be improved? What would life in sustainable region be like? Dott 07 has commissioned Forma to produce Vital Signs as a series of performances and visualisations. Events and displays will be encountered in public spaces, on public transport, and online.

Mapping the Necklace (Durham, May 5-7, 2007)
Can you roam a park which doesn't, as such, really exist? Can you investigate compelling experiences you think are there but are so 'privately owned' you've always assumed weren't yours to find? Yes, you can... in the city of Durham, where the Durham Necklace Park has 'opened for business' - virtually - and where you will be able to help create and join teams of "other spies, geeks, performers and lone rangers and (un)usual suspects" to track, create, design and compose along 12 miles of the River Wear.

Our Cyborg Futures: Me, or Machine?
Who designs our body? From prosthetic body parts to smart textiles or wearable computing, this exhibition will look at the shrinking divide between us and the technology we use. Me, or Machine? will invite you to discuss "Is this the future we want?". There'll be encounters and conversations at every turn.

Design Event 07 (12-28 October 2007)
Design Event is an annual festival that showcases the North East's vibrant design scene. It is an opportunity to see cutting edge work by regional, national and international design talent including Gareth Pugh, hot new favourite at London fashion week and Vaughn Oliver, who designed album covers for The Pixies. Look forward to events and exhibitions featuring film, fashion, furniture, graphics and illustration.

Design Utopias (Middlesborough, October 2007)
Ninety years ago, the Bauhaus was promoted as a utopian version of everyday life for the modern age. That was then. What has changed since? Dott 07 is organising visits and discussions at the Bauhaus Exhibition in Middlesbrough's spectacular new art museum, MIMA.

DOTT 07 FESTIVAL

'Who designs your life?'
The Dott 07 year culminates in a spectacular Festival in Newcastle Gateshead in October that will bring together all of the projects and their results. The groups will have faced challenges from designing a better school environment, better care systems for people with dementia, ways to grow food in cities, or trying to make a whole street carbon neutral. As well as celebrating Dott 07's successes, the thousands of visitors will be able to take away ideas they can copy themselves.