Creative Rotterdam for Graphic Designers and Illustrators

Second and third year Graphic Design and Graphic Design Illustration students are eligible to participate on this opportunity. There is a maximum of 45 places available, with a minimum of 15 participants required for this opportunity to take place. Students are recommended to check the eligibility criteria before applying.

Trip description

Central to the trip to Rotterdam will be the students’ interaction with a breadth of important creative and innovative venues and organisations, allowing them to experience a wide range of disciplines and practise. Students will experience how a mixed creative economy with strong sustainability goals can  have an impact on the social, cultural and economic development of a city and its people. A range of visits and guided talks to key venues will offer the opportunity to provide a breadth of experience that embraces the history and context through which contemporary design and illustration practise can be viewed.

The students will visit venues, such as, the renowned Studio Dumbar and Varia Design Collective, TTHQ Contemporary Design, and Nai010, the architecture, urbanism, art and design publisher, and Studio Roosegaarde, a social design studio.

In addition, students will get the opportunity to visit major art galleries  and design institutions, including for example, Depot Boijmans, the world’s first publicly accessible art storage facility, and the Sonneveld House museum, one of the best-preserved homes in the functionalist Nieuwe Bouwen style, Kunsthal a major contemporary art venue, and the Nieuwe Institute, a museum for architecture, design and digital culture, and the national collection at the Dutch Photography Museum.

Students will be required to pay an additional £100 to cover the costs of museum visits and tours in addition to the £150 that will be requested by DMU Global to cover the cost of the Eurostar and accommodation in Rotterdam. The £200 DMU Global bursary will be deducted from the total cost of travel and accommodation.

Why take part?

Participating in this trip to Rotterdam offers students an invaluable opportunity to engage with a vibrant creative hub renowned for its design and architectural sustainable environmental innovations. The experience will allow them to explore world class design studios and participate in a diverse range of cultural and academic activities that enhance their understanding of the global creative industries.

This trip aims to inspire students by immersing them in Rotterdam’s rich cultural landscape, broadening their perspectives and connecting them with leading professionals and institutions in their field. The students will have the chance to make new friends and connections within a supportive environment.

Learning objectives

An important objective for the trip is to immerse and engage students in an experience which enhances and gives context and relevance to their university-based studies in their respective cognate areas, and help them to position themselves and their practise within a diverse context that is the creative industries. 

As a practise-based industry skills facing programmes, the students need this kind of exposure to broader integrated creative design industries. Visiting practitioners, industry briefs and competition briefs all contribute to the student experience on the course, but this trip allows students to understand more clearly how their academic programme incorporates embedded employability, sustainability, entrepreneurial opportunities, and supports them in developing useful life skills. 

Cultural activities

In order to provide a contrast to the hustle and bustle of Rotterdam, the students will have a half-day group trip by waterbus to visit Dordrecht, one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands. Here they can tour the ‘Rondje Dordt‘, along waterways snaking through Dordrecht’s centre, taking in the historic harbours, and beautiful old facades of warehouses, and old steamships and novel canal boats.

Rotterdam itself provides many additional opportunities and things of interest for students to do in their own free time. They can take a Street Art tour, attend screenings of films at the International Film Festival, or walk in the Trompenburg Gardens & Arboretum, ‘The Greenest Museum of Rotterdam’.  

Rotterdam’s architectural sustainability and green credentials are evident everywhere, including the rooftops which have a special status in Rotterdam. Visits are recommended to Het Dakpark, the largest public rooftop park in Europe, DakAkker, is a 1000 m2 rooftop farm, Hofbogenpark a two-kilometre-long park on top of an old railway viaduct in Rotterdam Noord and, of course, Rotterdam’s very own floating farm.