Practitioner Podcast #3 - Grace Turtle

In the third design practitioner podcast Mieke talks to Grace Turtle, a well-travelled Colombian strategic designer and futures research manager. Grace is based in Amsterdam, dividing her time between Deloitte and her own design practice, Becoming Studio. Grace originally studied Interior Design in Australia, before focusing on sustainable design at the Pratt Institute in the US. From the US she returned to Colombia to work on social and community projects, before then going to Australia to do a Masters, establish a makerspace and a new design studio called ‘Mash Up’ where she first did a project for Deloitte. Her next move was to The Netherlands, where we catch up with her. Grace talks about her unique path of working and learning in different places in the world. She talks about the way she uses design and other practices such as, futuring, play, and embodiment in her work and the many different people, books and other resources that have inspired her work and continue to influence her today. She reflects on the role of designers in the world, particularly in what she calls ‘designerly engagement’. She describes design being about doing things with beauty, not creating beautiful things. Grace is a unique person, who is critically engaged with many different practices of design and how they can be used to bring about change and transformation – whether that is an organization, a community, or herself.