The first cross-regional and open graduate education workstation featuring industry-education integration for art and design disciplines is founded in Shenzhen, a design forerunner where the design resources are the most concentrated. The workstation is led by Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, which partners with 7 well-known Shenzhen-based institutions and design companies such as C Foundation of Shenzhen, Shenzhen Grandland Decoration Group, Shenzhen Jiang & Associates Creative Design Co., Ltd., Horizontal Design and YANG Hotel Design Group; the workstation also involves renowned schools and universities including the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Academy of Arts & Design of Tsinghua University, Central South University and Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts. With a scientific and systemic education plan and partnership model, the workstation will serve as a new graduate cultivation platform for design disciplines and also a design education platform featuring interaction between multiple universities and enterprises, opening up and sharing, further exploring a successful model for universities, the industry and enterprises to effectively work with each other. Exploration of innovative cultivation approaches aims at facilitating the reform of the high-level design talent education model, seeking a top-notch talent cultivation mechanism befitting China’s design industry, and providing experience worth learning from for the graduate education of design disciplines in China.

The industry-education joint graduate education workstation led by Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, with contribution from C Foundation, well-known Shenzhen-based design enterprises and renowned Chinese universities, has turned out 26 graduate students in three terms. Through exploration, practices and reflections during the three terms, the workstation has obtained valuable experience and developed a relatively systemic and scientific management and operation model, which has been working well and to the great satisfaction of students, tutors, enterprises and universities and is well-received in both the academia and the industry.