Social
Spaces

As Liesbeth already wrote yesterday I gave a presentation at the RCA Method Lab on the ATOM project and more specifically on the participatory design phase we are working on. You can found the presentation at the bottom of the post.

The presentation was followed by some questions of the audience mainly focussing on the reasons why we choose to work with dementia in this project and how the individual needs of persons with dementia can be reflected in this approach. The latter remark is quite relevant: throughout the observations we also noticed that each person goes through in individual traject in their disease and that it is hard to predict how dementia will evolve and whether a certain solution will work for this person. The ATOM project however is exploratory in nature as it tries to experiment with technology (internet of things) that has not been used for these extreme uses. To present several prototypes that show the potential of this technology might proof the potential of the technology.

On July 15th, we (Katrien Dreessen and Selina Schepers) were present at the Design4Health conference in Sheffield, UK. The conference was hosted by Lab4Living, a collaboration between the Art and Design and Health and Social Care Research Centres at Sheffield Hallam University and the users, consumers or customers. According to the organizers, the conference “was a focus for researchers, policy makers and practitioners to discuss, disseminate and test their approach and methods. It challenged the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and engagement with users and stakeholders” (see: http://www.design4health.org.uk/).

Call for papers:

Whose Participation? Spaces of Interaction in Contemporary Art and Architecture
December 16/17, 2011
Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, Switzerland
Organized by the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture
(gta), ETH Zurich

What?
Impact! Design for Social Change is a six-week summer intensive at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (U.S.A.).

To remain competitive, corporations are looking for innovation and impacts in the area of social change as it relates to their business. The non-profit world is seeking new ways to support their constituencies through design strategy. Impact! Design for Social Change introduces participants to the growing field of design for social advocacy.

Impact: Design for Social Change is an advanced program that runs on two parallel tracks: ‘Track One’ will focus on social entrepreneurship and educate students on how to conceive, execute and fund their own projects for social change – projects that are not client-based. Along ‘Track Two’, students will participate in the development and execution of a team project that addresses a pressing need for a New York City-based non-profit organization.

Who?
Professionals, educators and advanced students in the disciplines of advertising, graphic design, product design, information design, interactive design, fashion design, photography and illustration are invited to participate. The program is oriented towards these design disciplines but that doesn’t mean that e.g. architects and social entrepreneurs can’t apply!

And?
The summer intensive will take place from July 11 – August 19, 2011 and the application deadline is May 1, 2011.

Tuition to the six week full-time program is $6,000.

For more information (and for the application form), see: http://impact.sva.edu.

On May 21st, DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability) will host DESIS Forum/Paris – which will be held back-to-back with the Cumulus Conference ‘Crossing Talents: transversality in design’ – in Paris, France. DESIS Forum is about moving beyond mainstream models of thinking and doing and inventing new ways of living and producing. They are viable and sustainable solutions to complex problems such as: social cohesion, urban regeneration, accessibility to healthy food, water and sustainable energy management. DESIS Forum is a format conceived to give design teachers and students the opportunity to showcase their projects, to present them and to exchange their experiences in the field of design for social innovation and sustainability.

And to do so, DESIS has launched a call to submit projects in the format of “4-slides exhibit – 4-minutes presentations”. The collected projects will be presented in a light exhibition in the DESIS Forum and uploaded in the DESIS website. If you will be present at the DESIS Forum the May 21st in Paris, you may also be invited to make a short 4 minutes oral presentation of the project.

The deadline for the submission is 25th of April 2011 and you can find the call here.

DESIS) is “a network of schools of design and other schools, institutions, companies and non-profit organizations interested in promoting and supporting design for social innovation and sustainability. It is a light, no-profit organization, conceived as a network of partners collaborating in a peer-to-peer spirit.It is articulated in several DESIS-Local (that are sub-networks within a specified local area). DESIS-International is therefore the framework where the different DESIS-Local coordinate themselves and where some global initiatives are taken”. See: http://www.desis-network.org/.