Our intergenerational gatherings of RDIs and emerging designers,
scientists and engineers to share, inspire and challenge.
The Royal Designers invite applications from early-career designers, scientists and engineers from all backgrounds to join us at our three-day residential Summer Session at Dartington Hall in Devon. If you have between three and fifteen years of professional experience, you are eligible to apply.
Supported by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, we are delighted to offer free places to all successful candidates including accommodation, meals, and transport from London. Up to forty of these places are available.
Successful applicants will join twelve Royal Designers and eight ‘wildcards’ over three days and two nights. The Session’s full complement of sixty provides a chance for cross-inspiration, reflection and activity as we share experience and search for insight.
Entangle
This year's theme is Entangle. Entangle is the implied layering of systems, philosophies, art, science, beliefs.
We are all part of the interconnected processes that govern the function, resilience and adaptability of our world, yet have so effectively disabled. We have the creative capability to restore the equilibrium of the environments we inhabit, anticipate rather than react, think long-term, support interconnected life systems - the inherent and vital flow of energy between life forces.
The summer session brings people together who want to explore design in relation to the living world, to open a flow of thoughts and ideas. A release from our practices for a few days in a deeply beautiful environment. A messy, un-linear, generous tangle of thoughts, actions, needs, messages.
We extend an invitation to join this conversation - to those finding their feet or looking for a catalyst or safe harbour; beyond formal education with its curriculum, classes and friends; to those moving beyond a first job, a teacher, or a mentor; to those who may want to engage with kindred spirits that spark them into the next phase of life and work.
The Session will take its unique shape when we come together as this year’s cohort. It is open-started, open-ended and open-hearted. There is no expectation of a particular outcome (though past participants have remarked on the Session’s profound and lasting effects). The Session gives everyone space for a pause for thought, to enjoy shared experience with like-minded people across generations. Dartington Hall is in a beautiful landscape, with a history of hosting creative people to think, make, show and perform.
If you need time and space for reflection and new exploration, this is for you. It’s challenging, unexpected and rewarding. The only requirement is to bring yourself and be generous with your thoughts, and the rest is free. We look forward to welcoming you.
More information
Entangle: October 2026
Dartington Hall, Devon
What Is It?
A welcome chance to step from the everyday world into an immersive residential retreat for a three-day collaborative experience with other early career designers, scientists and engineers, Royal Designers and "wildcards". It is an opportunity to explore this year's theme of "Entangle" openly, playfully and inventively to bring about change for the better - nourishment, sustenance, energy, vitality, inventiveness, alchemy, floating, release, health …or something else entirely.
When Is It?
Early travel on Friday 2 October to teatime on Sunday 4 October 2026. Participants are expected to stay for the whole event.
Where Is It?
The Session will take place at Dartington Hall, Devon, a site continuously occupied for over a thousand years, set in a beautiful 1,200-acre estate. Dartington has a rich design and arts heritage, a history of progressive learning in the arts, ecology and social justice.
Who will be there?
In total, the Session will have 60 participants:
● 40 early-career designers, scientists and engineers.
● 8 wildcards: people whose life intersects ours in some way. They may come from arts and music; from economics, from health; from think-tanks; they may be carpenters, baristas, soldiers, spies, philosophers, teachers, shopkeepers.
● And 12 Royal Designers.
What happens while we're there?
The Session gives space, enabling everyone to learn and everyone to give something. The only requirement is to bring yourself and be generous with your thoughts. We work across small to large groupings to maximise interaction and conversation. We stay on the Estate and have all our meals there. We use Dartington’s resonant indoor spaces, including the Great Hall which we use as our base. Outside, we have the gardens, fields and woodlands, right down to the River Dart.
No charge for attendees
Supported by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, we are delighted to offer free places to everyone, including accommodation, meals, and transport from London.
Travel
The Royal Designers will provide complimentary transport from the RSA, London to and from Dartington Hall. We are unable to cover other travel costs to the event. If you are travelling independently by rail, Totnes is the nearest train station with a regular taxi service.
Detailed joining instructions will be sent to successful applicants.
Reflections from RDI Session 2025
‘You never really know quite what form it’s going to take, but it’s always really inspiring, and creates connections that reverberate for years afterwards.’
‘The retreat creates interactions that trigger you to think, explore, discuss outside your comfort zone, dip into sources of data that you’d forgotten or that were hidden.’
‘I know it was a pivotal experience, even though I don’t yet know where that pivot will lead.'
Applications for Entangle are open until 9 July 2026.
Applications are invited from early-career designers, scientists and engineers. If you have between 3 and 15 years of professional experience, you are eligible to apply.
To apply please submit the following as a single PDF file: (google account required)
1. Contact details: name, email address, mobile
2. A short statement on why you would like to attend, in no more than 250 words.
3. Three examples of your work, in no more than 3 A4 pages
4. A one page CV
5. Two professional referees. Please include their names and email addresses, and in what connection you know them.
6. Please let us know how you heard about the Summer Session.
Upload your pdf
About the Royal Designers
Royal Designers are a magnificent design eco-system of over 40 design disciplines - a fascinating design entanglement, and a profoundly influential force for good.
Royal Designers range from fashion to ceramics, furniture to cars, surgery to biodiversity. The title ‘Royal Designer for Industry’ (RDI) is awarded annually by the RSA to designers of all disciplines from who have achieved ‘sustained design excellence, work of aesthetic value and significant benefit to society’. Explore the profiles of current and past RDIs to understand their work.
Read about previous RDI Sessions in our Journal