Atoll are delighted to report that as of May 2024, Ian Banks has been formally re-appointed for a third consecutive time onto the latest Design Council Experts cohort. Quoting from the Design Council press release:
Our Experts are design pioneers who work with us to advocate for design, share knowledge about best practice and help us deliver advice and programmes.
We are using this process as an opportunity to reduce the number of experts to ensure we can meaningfully engage with the new cohort and to increase the regional and demographic diversity, as well as representing a full spectrum of design disciplines.
To tackle the climate crisis we have to redesign nearly everything about the way we live our lives and that means every designer working towards a regenerative future. We are looking for the best voices from every area of design to push forward the Design for Planet mission.
Ian Banks had been part of Design Council’s network of Experts working nationally since June 2012, to help support the Council’s delivery of high-quality design throughout England. Ian is also linked as a named Associate on their Industrial Design Council database. Re-confirmation as a Design Council Expert continues the expectation for all Experts to abibe by a published Code of Conduct.
His specialism is the complex and collaborative fields of arts + regeneration. This field forever shifts its focus – but is being targetted increasingly to creatively and sustainably engage communities of place, use and interest and help inform a better sense of place and wellbeing. This specialised cultural work also links to Design Council aims to help foster Healthy Placemaking for Healthy Lives.
From 2023 to 2025 Ian acted as lead consultant Expert for Design Council acting for Network Rail in the draft development of a prototype cultural strategy for the railways linked to the (then) forthcoming 200th anniversary of the founding in 1825 of the first passenger railways at Stockton & Darlington and a programme called Railway200.
For more information on Design Council’s 2024 new cohort announcement published from June 2024. This included the hosting information on their Design for Planet Festival that happened in Manchester in November 2024, as well as the 34th World Design Congress held in London in September 2025.
Categories: Affiliations, Public Art