A farewell letter from the Closing of the Academy Year by Anwyn Howarth, ‘25 DAE graduate.
On 4 July 2025, the Student Council of Design Academy Eindhoven organised the unofficial Closing of the Academy Year. Fourth year in its tradition, the event continued its mandate of “by students for the community”, taking over the institution in self-organising a festive moment. In collaboration with “rewild farming”, a regenerative collective formed by recent graduate Onno Benjamin and Reflection Tutor Bram de Vos, "Into the Garden” took place at Fuutlaan, close to the Eindhoven Central Station.
Instead of a formal recap, the editorial team of DAE asked Anwyn Howarth, fresh-off-the-exams BA graduate, and professional photographer who we had the pleasure to work with over the last four years, to write her personal reflections on the DAE educational experience and share a few words to those who are coming after:
In her words:
Last week, the Design Academy community came together to celebrate the end of another Academic Year.
Returning for the fourth time in my memory and different every year, *my final event* welcomed guests with a tablescape laden with elderflowers, honeydew melon, and vegetables roasted in foil, creating a scene that resembled a kind of botanical spaceship. The feast was accompanied by an assortment of hand-brewed drinks by Michael Strebel. Colourful mosaic creatures designed by Monis Pinto played in the grass, while music from Elevator Radio drew a lively crowd.
Sunglasses provided a necessary defence against the collective hangover felt by all after the highs and lows of finals week, but even through the fatigue, the energy ran high. Through my own pair of shades, you couldn’t wipe the grin off my face.
For me, this closing party marked not only the end of the academic year but also the end of my time at the Academy.
If you’re reading this, it’s likely you have studied, are studying or will study at DAE. To those of you who have yet to arrive, this is a letter to say hello and goodbye to the Design Academy, to the Witte Dame, to the Microsoft authenticator app, to lines for the workshops and leftover Fridays from Zbar and good days and bad days and days so short and dark in January that when the days get long and bright in June it’s hard to resist the urge to take off all your clothes and lie out on the hot bricks of the Lichtplein like a lizard (resist this urge, if you can. The handhaving won’t have it).
Soon, you’re riding your new bike to your first day of classes. It’s the prerogative of the student to critique the educational body and you must, but try to stay open. Institutions move slowly and change is made long after change is asked for. Before you came, 80 years of people just like you asking for things to be different — try to listen, try to feel the shoulders you’re standing on.
You will see the work of people who know more than you. You will learn about the skills of your peers — visible and invisible. You might visit the graduation show at Dutch Design Week and wonder about your own. You will finish your first semester in the dark of January. You will feel euphoria suddenly and wonder why as the tulip bulbs push their way through the cold ground. You will fall in love. A year will finish and begin again. You will have your heart broken and run out of money and be forced out of the world you have made in this city — probably all at the same time. It’s almost impossible to feel it all at once, but try to anyway. This kind of work is not wasted, and it will carry your weight the next time.
On an evening in March in your final year, you will sit on your windowsill as you do every night before you go to sleep and you will wonder at the changes that have occurred in you. The Design Academy is a switchboard where you will be wired and rewired many times. You will learn to make connections between colours and materials and origins. You will learn a language — the lexicon of a critical design practice — and you will unlearn it as you find your way to the places and people with whom you wish to live and work. You will learn to receive critique and to offer it. You will find the essence of a thing, to hear a form that whispers and doesn’t shout. You will learn clarity, to visualise and to communicate. You will learn to take what you need and give what you can, to borrow and to loan, to love and to leave, and you will wonder how much the Design Academy taught you and how much you taught yourself simply by being older than when you started.
