I’m starting a one-year certification program with the Austin Center for Design in “interaction design and social entrepreneurship.” In other words, using design thinking to tackle social issues. People still want to know what that means and what we’ll be doing. It’s a hard concept to explain since in many ways it’s not been done before. People ask for examples, and one of the best ones I can think of is Project H.
Emily Pilloton is a big name in design for social impact. Her background is in architecture and industrial design, and she could have easily followed the corporate track of her colleagues making useful and beautiful things; she started Project H Design because she felt design can have an impact and change the world…if the design industry changed as well.
Pilloton’s 15-minute talk at Cusp Conference 2009 does an excellent job explaining why she created Project H and highlighting some of their projects (Hippo Roller in South Africa, Abject Object in LA, Empowerment through Food in NY, Learning Landscape in Uganda/North Carolina/Dominican Republic).
Project H’s core tenets:
- There is no design without (critical) action.
- We work WITH, not FOR.
- We start locally, and scale globally.
- We create systems, not stuff.
- We measure, document, and share.
This year, she and architect Matthew Miller are also starting Studio H:
“a public high school ‘design/build’ curriculum that sparks rural community development through real-world, creative projects. By learning through a design sensibility, applied core subjects, and ‘dirt-under-your-fingernails’ construction skills, students develop the creative capital, critical thinking, and citizenship necessary for their own success and for the future of their communities.”
I myself got involved in the education field last year and started the process of becoming a classroom teacher because I was frustrated with the lack of impact I could have on social issues as a graphic designer. I know education is at the core of change and ensuring our children get good educations starts a ripple effect of positive change throughout the future. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I wanted to make my impact on the world through the change my students would eventually make in their lifetimes. I wanted them to gain the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed in whatever endeavors they wished to pursue in the future.
I stopped pursuing traditional teacher certification partly because I could see the frustrations I would face working within the current bureaucratic, political system…that would probably negate any good I might do in a single classroom. Besides my teacher-ed program not “walking their talk” (you cannot have us read Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and then expect us to sit quietly and mindlessly through bulleted Powerpoints for the rest of the semester), I realized that there were larger issues about the structures of the education system that needed to change, or re-thought and re-designed.
It’s powerful to imagine teaching design in K-12 schools as a means to empower students with critical thinking skills—and to entrust them with real projects that have immediate impact on their immediate communities. The kind of education model Studio H is putting into practice pushes the idea of what schools can be and what learning can be—an evolution (revolution?) that is sorely needed in the education world. More info can be found at Studio H’s site, or in this New York Times article about the project.
(Other examples are Stanford Institute of Design’s K-12 Lab and UpLift Austin and a Designers Accord initiative called School: by Design that asks high schoolers to work with local designers to “redesign your school”.)
Last year, when I “quit” design to move into the field of education, I had no no no clue that it might come full circle, and that there might be opportunity to merge the two passions. They are still virtually two different worlds with their own languages, rules, and customs. I don’t know where this will all lead in my future, but the groundwork is certainly being laid.
Emily Pilloton is inspiring because she is one person who made this work and shares many of the same passions for design and social change as me and my Austin Center for Design teachers & classmates. She mobilized a network of committed designers who were willing to volunteer their time and energy to their communities and the aforementioned design projects.
I think one of the big things that Austin Center for Design adds into the mix is a parallel focus on entrepreneurship and economic sustainability for the projects we’ll be working on. Those of us at AC4D don’t believe that “do good” and “make money” have to be separate paths.
Much of what we’ll be doing this next year through AC4D will be transparent and public, so it’ll be easy to follow along. I’m jazzed!
Christina Tran's Blog 