Social-business. Social-entreprise. MFA in Design for Social Innovation | Can Schools Teach Designers How to Solve the World's Problems? - Design. When the first students arrive next year for the School of Visual Arts’ new MFA program in Design for Social Innovation, they won’t find themselves in any old classroom. As befits a program that encourages students to deploy design to improve society and the environment, SVA is investing in retrofitting one of its existing buildings in Manhattan into a LEED-certified learning space that features a playroom “where action, play and creativity reign” and an auditorium “wired to hear from and be heard by the world,” says Cheryl Heller, chairperson of the new department. "We want it to be a window into the world instead of a place in academia," she adds. Academia is the place, however, where a new generation of socially engaged designers is being trained at a time when the vaguely defined field is still in its infancy.
That is, expanding design beyond the craft of creating beautiful and highly marketable artifacts to being directly involved in the process of change. Credits: The Kickstarter Blog - Liyana Returns, Surprises Us With Dance Party. Approximately six months ago, filmmaker Aaron Kopp raised nearly $28,000 for Liyana, a documentary film following a group of orphans in Swaziland as they created their own personal, highly imaginative folklore. These stories, brought to life through an interwoven, animated narrative, are beautiful, fantastical fictions in their own right, but they are also tangible evidence of a brand new mythology being born from a region of the world undergoing drastic, and frequently difficult, change. Last week, the crew announced their return from an exuberant and successful trip to Swaziland, where they had completed filming on the documentary portion of the project: It was great to see the kids being challenged and inspired by their own creative process.
And it was fascinating to see them incorporate elements from their own life experience into our fictional character’s story. And as a treat for backers, they included a brief, behind-the-scenes clip of their work. Save the Dates: Festival of Ideas for the New City. These questions are at the heart of the , a brand new initiative focusing on culture, community, education, and participation. The festival will transform downtown Manhattan into a dynamic laboratory for creative thinking and action, bringing together scores of participants and public events, working together to affect change. The Festival will harness the power of the creative community to imagine the future and explore the ideas destined to shape it. It will take place from May 4-8, 2011, in locations around Downtown Manhattan in an area spanning East to West including the Lower East Side, the East Village, Soho, Nolita, and Chinatown — and will serve as a platform for artists, writers, architects, engineers, designers, urban farmers, planners, and thought leaders in various disciplines to exchange ideas, propose solutions, and invite the public to participate.
The Festival of Ideas for the New City is organized around three central programs: Salvadori Center | Education and the Built Environment. Local Projects. Local Projects. Yoxi.tv. Postópolis: Urban Portraiture. I recently spent the better part of five days sitting on a cinderblock in the courtyard of Museo Experimental el Eco , listening to various creative people, mostly from Mexico, talk about their work. I am not entirely certain why I did this, but I am glad that I did. The event, Postópolis , is described as “a public five-day session of near-continuous conversation curated by some of the world’s most prominent bloggers from the fields of architecture, art, urbanism, landscape, music and design.”
I applaud the premise: to celebrate and take stock of the extent to which sophisticated discourse and debate about design and urban culture (and the creative forces which influence them) have migrated to online formats. But I am not clear on the outcome. Certainly, as an audience member, I am today more informed of about the dizzying amount of creativity and innovation at the heart of Mexico City’s cultural life than I was pre-Postópolis. Eduardo Terrazas | Photo by Cassim Shepard. Design You Like You Give a Damn 2 Nomination Process. Nomination Brief Architecture for Humanity is looking for nominations that highlight breakthrough design solutions with the power and potential to improve our lives and the world.
These designs may improve the human spirit, increase awareness of the environment, or respond to areas of need in the world, whether to provide shelter and clean water or address climate change and humanitarian crises. We'd love to hear from you -- for questions or suggestions, email dlygad at architectureforhumanity dot org Nomination deadline: October 1, 2010 Video by: Chris Gray Austin Design means: – encompassing architecture, urban planning, product, landscape, graphic, interior, and industrial design – although we invite new definitions that defy this traditional definition. Here are the criteria: Some Questions to Resolve Anyone can enter a project. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Architecture for Humanity. Curry Stone Design Prize Announces 2010 Finalists for Emerging Humanitarian Innovation. Curry Stone Design Prize Announces 2010 Finalists for Emerging Humanitarian Innovation Feminine hygiene products made from locally sourced banana leaf fiber in Rwanda; bicycle-powered agricultural machines in Guatemala; and “diagonal” inner city public housing in Chile are the three finalists for the 2010 Curry Stone Design Prize.
The winner will be announced Oct. 13, 2010 at Google’s headquarters in New York City during National Design Week. The Curry Stone Design Prize is awarded every year to breakthrough design solutions with the power and potential to improve our lives and the world we live in. Click above image to view slideshowFinalist: ELEMENTAL ELEMENTAL, a Chilean design firm and self described “Do Tank” has raised the bar for public housing in the developing world with its transformative design for Santiago’s Quinta Monroy shantytown. Click above image to view slideshowFinalist: Maya Pedal Click above image to view slideshowFinalist: Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE)
Interviewing an Innovative Inventor, Thnking about Resilient Communities, and the Keys to Surviving Urban Density. Urbaninform Competition 2010: Architecture of Social Investment. The urbaninform Competition 2010 is calling for architecture and urban design projects, which engage in and cooperate with social entrepreneurship and green business.
The projects should be realized or developed to the level of being implemented. Are you an architect, an urban designer, a social entrepreneur, a government official, a foundation or simply an individual or group engaging in the sustainable future of our cities? Does your project empower individuals and communities to become economically independent? Does your project understand architecture as business opportunity? Does your project allow the community to generate or maintain services, infrastructure or education facilities? If your project is a social investment, submit and win! SUPERFRONT. Social Enterprise. Front Page | Ashoka.org. Stanford Social Innovation Review: Ideas for Socially Responsible Businesses.
New Canadian Social Enterprise Guide is now available. Enterprising Nonprofits Program has just released the new Canadian Social Enterprise Guide. This fabulous resource gives you everything that you ever wanted to know about starting and operating your social enterprise. Download your free copy here. The Canadian Social Enterprise Guide was originally published in 2006 and was the first extensive and comprehensive published resource, tool kit, and collection of social enterprise stories in Canada.
The revised 2nd Edition of the Guide reflects the learning of Enterprising Non-Profits program and its 10 years of supporting the development and success of social enterprise through technical assistance and resource development. The Guide includes chapters written by enp staff, social enterprise practitioners, professional trainers, funders and organizational development professionals. If you would like to purchase printed copies for a classroom or library, please click here.
Ric Young - "Innovators in Action" Speaker Series | Social Innovation Generation. The SiG@Waterloo "Innovators in Action" Speaker Series, applied the ideas of social innovation to a number of specific sectors and issues - education, youth mentorship, inclusion, collaboration and cultural change.
Each of the keynote speakers shared their experiences of operating at the national level to identify and address the root causes of intractable social challenges. Each keynote lecture was followed by a local panel discussion who shared their reflections on the presentation and offered insight into their own experiences. We apologize for the low sound quality. Jump to: Frances Westley introduces Ric YoungRic Young's Main PresentationThe PanelBiographies On May 5th, 2010 SiG@Waterloo invited Ric Young to speak to an audience at the Waterloo Regional Children's Museum in downtown Kitchener.
Ric has an extensive background in social marketing and is considered a pioneer in the field. . - Eric Young, From the forward of Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed Ric's Biography Dr. About the EVOKE game. Posted by Alchemy on 27 Jan under Behind the scenes EVOKE is a ten-week crash course in changing the world. It is free to play and open to anyone, anywhere. The goal of the social network game is to help empower people all over the world to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems. The game’s first season began on March 3, 2010 and ended on May 12th, 2010. However, that doesn’t mean that the game has stopped!
About Season One On May 12th, 2010 the first season of the game ended, and successful participants formed the first graduating class of the EVOKE network. Some top players also earned online mentorships with experienced social innovators and business leaders from around the world, seed funding for new ventures, and travel scholarships to share their vision for the future at the EVOKE Summit in Washington DC. EVOKE is for all ages; recommended age 13 and up.
LEARN HOW TO PLAY: Learn the five secrets of the EVOKE Network. Group inquiries: Use this sign-up form. An Imaginary Platform: 2010 Municipal Elections in Windsor. Posted by Justin on Monday, August 2, 2010 · 3 Comments We’ve updated our imaginary campaign post to reflect some recent (positive) changes: Our projects try to work around the realities that we encounter in Windsor on a daily basis. We address these realities creatively, and so the ways in which we address them don’t always translate to solutions. We usually try to suggest the change we’d like to see, albeit on a small scale. So, in continuing with this work, we offer the following: We’re little less than 3 months away from the 2010 municipal elections here in Windsor. It’s essentially a given that we’ll have the same mayor for a third term (or maybe not?) In hopes of imaging a greater city, we’d like to propose the following platform.
If you’re running for council, please steal these ideas. Listen to the City: an Overview. Posted by Justin on Tuesday, August 24, 2010 · 3 Comments Back in January, we asked nearly 40 people two questions: Why did you first come to Windsor? And Why are you still here? We asked those questions at an event called, Listen to the City, which was the first part of the five-month long project, Save the City.
It was an incredible night. The answers we got over the hour and a half we spent together at Phog Lounge in downtown Windsor presented not just answers to those two questions, but sprawling conversations about what it means to live in Windsor, how we’ve shaped this city, and how it’s shaped us. The five-minute edit you can listen to below is just a slice of everything that was talked about that night. There were many voices that we unfortunately couldn’t include in the edit below, but only because of the amazing conversations those folks had, which in turn didn’t offer the kind of brief samples similar to those that we cut together.
How to Briefly Describe Amazing Things: A Recap of 30 Days of SRSI. Posted by Justin on Friday, July 23, 2010 · Leave a Comment We’ve been really lucky. For a couple of years now, we’ve been able to do the work that we’ve wanted to do, make the kinds of changes that we want to see, and create a set of projects that have kept us interested in staying in Windsor. The Storefront Residencies for Social Innovation wrapped up a couple weeks ago. For 30 days, we hosted 25 amazing artists and artist collectives, all of whom worked in downtown Windsor and generated a huge number of new ideas, initiatives, and relationships. For 30 days, we were very, very lucky. From June 11th to July 11th, we saw projects that redefined the idea of what BIAs could do, generated new models for micro-economies by exchanging food for stories, unravelled and reassembled long lost sweaters, and introduced an unprecedented level of investigation into the personal histories found in homes (and gardens) across the city.
All of these things happened here in Windsor in just 30 days. Using Facebook to Fight Dangerous Driving in Delhi. Dangerous Delhi drivers are now under the watchful eye of Facebook's "digital informants. " Photo by Mani Babbar. With just 5,000 traffic officers in a city of 12 million people, Delhi Traffic Police are enlisting the help of Facebook to crack down on traffic violations, as reported in The New York Times today. The DTP created a Facebook page a couple of months ago to help manage traffic safety and congestion — especially important for Delhi, which is gearing up for the Commonwealth Games. India is known for its fatal road conditions and needs all the help it can get to improve the situation. “Delhi Traffic Police cannot possibly succeed without the active cooperation, participation and support of all the citizens,” says the DTP’s Facebook page tagline.
With more than 17,800 fans and close to 3,000 photographs (plus nearly 50 videos), the Facebook page is an example of how online tools can be used to help improve transportation in cities around the world. Amplify: Creative and Sustainable Lifestyles on the Lower East Side – on view through 9/15. Are we growing more than plants? This question — blown up in large pink letters on a white wall in a small gallery on the Lower East Side — frames the core of the Amplify exhibition. Like the Lower East Side, the exhibition, which is the product of over one year of planning, research and design, is undergoing a process of evolution and reinvention. The larger initiative, Amplifying Creative Communities , pioneered by the Design for Sustainability and Social Innovation (DESIS) Lab at Parsons The New School for Design, represents the first stage of a multi-year project made possible, in part, by the Cultural Innovation Fund of the Rockefeller Foundation .
As one of the installation’s curators, Lara Penin, an Assistant Professor in the Design and Management department at Parsons, describes it, “The exhibition is a research process, a process of interaction in which the content can change before, during and after the exhibit.” Photo: Eduardo Staszowski. Desis Lab » Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability Research Lab School of Design Strategies. Parsons The New School for Design. Green Map System | Green Maps connect communities with green living resources worldwide. Senatedigitaliq.pdf (application/pdf Object) Design and Social Enterprise: A New Model for Case Studies. Games, New Media and Learning in Argentina: An Interview with Inés Dussel.
2010 Host City - Opening a Dialogue. OpenIDEO: A New Collaboration Platform for Designers. A (Very Informal) Who’s Who of Social Innovation in Canada. CSI Home. Research & Publications | Social Innovation Generation. What is Social Innovation? » The Australian Centre. Social Innovation Generation (SiG)