AMSTERDAM.- It is a tradition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam to stage a major bi-annual survey spotlighting the latest innovations within a particular art discipline. This edition of the Proposals for Municipal Acquisitions focuses on contemporary design. The museum issued an ‘open call’ for submissions, inviting artists and designers living and working in the Netherlands to submit proposals.

Around 400 designers responded, submitting a total of 750 projects. A jury selected 26 participants, whose work will be featured in the large-scale group exhibition Dream Out Loud that opens on 26 August. Director of the Stedelijk Museum, Beatrix Ruf will announce which works be purchased for the permanent collection later this autumn.

The artists and designers taking part are truly dreaming out loud, striving to create a better world as a way of retaliating against cynicism and apathy. They embrace the demands we’re facing today with a playful inventiveness.

Want to be less dependent on meat? Then devise your own meat substitute. Seek out non-oil based materials and return with a clean universe. Fight the plastic debris polluting our oceans by vacuuming it up yourself, or design a smog free zone where you can breathe fresh air. Other designers take upcycling so much to heart that they amass hordes of objects, re-envisioning them as hip fashion, crafting pieces of jewelry from old safety helmets or melting down discarded CD’s to print a chair.

Almost effortlessly, a new language of form is beginning to emerge. It’s possible, it’s happening, and it’s breeding a new generation of Dutch designers who are passionate about improving upon what already exists, rather than adding to the abundance of luxury items. Although this ‘social design’ may not always generate instantly usable applications, it fuels the desire and curiosity to explore new ways of thinking, and the freedom to imagine ways of pairing the makeable and the viable. As these designers clearly show – design can make a difference!