ARIDO's recent inaugural Interior Design Week was an excellent kick off to this new initiative. Held at the Midgley Tecnica showroom in North York, two days of the Educate Stream and Advance Change Stream presented talks and panels about interior design, featured registered members of ARIDO, and offered design consultations. It was a chance for members, industry, and the public to connect and deepen the conversation around interior design and ARIDO's work.
The Educate Stream presented panels about the value of working with an Interior Designer, the panel “How a retail design expert can help bring customers back through your door,” featured Mardi Najafi of Figure3, Suzanne Wilkinson, ARIDO of Figure3 and Tracy Ho, ARIDO of SDI Design, and was moderated by Jane Henderson, Teknion. It focused on the rapidly changing retail design landscape and the trends and strategies these experts have piloted to deliver value for their clients.
The Advance Change Stream focused on four projects by registered Interior Designers and how interior design was able to address the fundamental needs of a client, whether it was BridgeNorth, an organization in York Region which supports women and girls who have been victims of sexual exploitation or human trafficking, or Cedar Centre, which is building a care centre for children who have experienced abuse with a defined “wrap-around care” model. The panel on Cedar Centre was presented by Jill Priestman and Lise Hyatt of Bennet Design Associates with Detective Sgt. Mo Thompson, York Region Police, Ginelle Skerritt, Chief Executive Officer, York Region Children's Aid Society and Alison Peck, Cedar Centre. ARIDO wants to share a big thank you to all our panelists for their time and involvement in these two streams.
For the Community Stream, Bachelor of Interior Design students worked with more than 100 high school students in a design workshops, to share more about interior design projects, the field and potential career options. ARIDO would like to thank the BID students who led these workshops.