The 2025 Tsinghua International Conference on Art & Design Education (ICADE 2025), hosted by Tsinghua University and organized by the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, the Tsinghua Arts and Design Institute in Milan, and the China-Italy Design Innovation Hub, was recently held in Milan, Italy.
Under the theme Future Context: A New Paradigm for Art and Design Education, the conference brought together over one hundred participants, including deans, professors, scholars, and industry representatives from both domestic and foreign art and design institutions. The conference featured eight keynote speeches, two leaders’ roundtables, four thematic forums, two parallel seminars, and a series of international art and design workshops. Participants engaged in deep cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural dialogue, shared insights spanning from theory to practice, and collectively explored the evolution and transformation of art and design languages in the AI era—reflecting on how to reconstruct educational paradigms within this emerging context.
Participants gather for a group photo during the opening ceremony
At the opening ceremony, remarks were delivered by Qin Chuan, Party Secretary of the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University; Anna Barbara, dean of POLI.design, Politecnico di Milano; Dalia Gallico, executive vice president of the World Olymp’Arts Council; Lorenzo Imbesi, president of CUMULUS; and Wu Jian, head of Haier Innovation Design Center. A letter of congratulation was sent by Wu Qiong, dean of the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University. The ceremony was hosted by Shi Danqing, vice dean of the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University.
The morning keynote sessions featured presentations by Anna Barbara, Rebecca Wright, dean of S School,