In 2010 the spectacularly sinister sounding Hungarian Ministry of Human Capacities launched a programme to help promote products made in workshops employing persons with disabilities; and since 2013 the Segítő Vásárlás label - Design that Helps - has been coordinated by the Salva Vita Foundation.
In June 2014 the Salva Vita Foundation organised a "Design Date" event which brought participating workshops and Hungarian design studios together with the aim of fostering new co-operations and ultimately creating new products for the workshops.
The first Design Date results were presented at an exhibition during Budapest Design Week 2014. There were and are a lot of bags. An awful lot of bags. But not just. As ever we know such isn't a beauty pageant, but we were very taken with the wooden Oscar & Edward lion puzzle by Freshka Design, the family of paper and plywood baskets by Melinda N. Kiszely, the "Angels" tea light holder-cum-serviette holder by Adrienne Körtvély and the stool Stoki by Daniel Szalkai.
We know several, generally smaller, producers who cooperate with disabled persons workshops in context of the production, packaging and/or distribution of their products; but naturally when a workshop produce and sell their own collection then not only is the profit a little higher, but the institution comes even further out of the shadows and gets a chance to have the quality of its work recognised by a wider public. Thus allowing for greater financial stability and an increased reputation which, hopefully, makes programmes such as Segítő Vásárlás superfluous: the workshops ceasing to be a disabled persons workshop and becoming another competitor in an invariably over saturated market and dependent on the quality of their range for their survival.
The prerequisite of course is that they have well designed, well thought through and well contemporary products
The collection of objects realised through the Design Dates programme not only, largely, offer such, but also provides a nice a model of how similar co-operations in other regions could be organised.
Full details, only in Hungarian, can be found at www.segitovasarlas.hu
