Festival of Ideas for the New City is a major new collaborative initiative in New York involving scores of Downtown organizations working together to harness the power of the creative community to imagine the future city and explore ideas that will shape it. The Festival will include a three-day slate of symposia; an innovative StreetFest [...]
Archive | April, 2011
Games for Change: Play Your Way to Making the World a Better Place
Who knew that fighting global warming could be so fun? Just ask Al Gore, who was announced yesterday as the opening speaker for the 8th Annual Games for Change Festival, a three-day event dedicated to exploring the potential of games for social impact. “Vice President Gore is a significant global advocate who has effectively used [...]
Last Day to Apply! “Weaving Love, Creating Hope”
Design21, the social design network, has a new competition. The objective: “Design a product to Wrap the World with Hope made with a check fabric.” There’s only one more day to apply! The application deadline is April 21 at 5:59 p.m. UTC. Winners will receive $3,000 and be introduced by Grameen Felissimo, a new social [...]
Design Impact Fellows: Empowering the Resource-Poor in India
Calling all designers, organizers, communicators and relationship builders! Design Impact, a U.S.-based nonprofit that partners professional designers with community organizations, is accepting applications for Design Impact Fellows to work full-time for six months in Indian communities affected by poverty. The fellowships begin in November 2011. Possible projects for this upcoming term include “technology-driven job skills curriculum [...]
From TheCityFix: Practical Design for the Urban Poor
Originally posted on TheCityFix.com. The United Nations will be hosting an exhibition on design solutions to improve the quality of life for the urban poor. Titled, “Design for the Other 90%: CITIES,” the exhibition is by Cooper-Hewitt, the Smithsonian National Design Museum, and it is part of an ongoing series originally started in 2007 to [...]
Q&A with Bart Bettencourt, 21st Century Pioneer in Eco-Design and Sustainable Business
Here is a brief glimpse into the work of my friend and mentor Bart Bettencourt. Bart is best known for SCRAPILE, a sustainable furniture line created in collaboration with designer Carlos Salgado. One of his SCRAPILE tables, made of re-purposed scrap wood, was featured in a rotating exhibit, “The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture and Design,” first displayed at the [...]
Design Thinking vs. Creative Intelligence: Who Cares?
To me, design has always felt elitist. As a profession, it seems unattainable. In the arts world, it has to do with having better taste. In business, it’s about making more money. In engineering, it’s about solving bigger problems. And your way of problem-solving is “human-centered,” which means you have more empathy than others. If [...]
