West Virginia University will host Designing Across Divides: Co-creating Tools for Community Change March 28 - 30.
The conference aims to move people past their differences to find common ground using best practices from the design field to improve participants hearing, seeing and community building skills. Five colleges with WVU have teamed up to cohost the project, along with the city of Morgantown.
“This will be a meeting that includes designers and people involved in community engagement from across the United States representing many differences, regular citizens from the local communities and the region, and various disciplines at WVU,” said Eve Faulkes, professor of graphic design. “We will brainstorm ways to bring polarized groups together to accomplish goals in a climate of deepening division.”
Keynote speakers for the conference include:
Antionette Carroll – Founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab and TED Fellow. Her Lab and Equity-Centered Community Design process was named a FastCompany World Changing Idea Finalist in General Excellence and Urban Design. Antionette is also the founding chair of AIGA’s Diversity and Inclusion Initiative.
Andrew Shea - Assistant Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons School of Design and Founder and Principal of MANY Design, a studio that designs strategies and artifacts to support progressive social agendas, sustainable economic endeavors and the environment. Shea wrote the book Designing for Social Change: Strategies for Community-Based Design and was an editor of LEAP Dialogues: Career Pathways in Design for Social Innovation.
Imam Azhar Subedar - Mediator after the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Subedar was also the first American Muslim to give the morning prayer in the United States Senate chambers. He aims to grow and develop 21st-century community bonds between Muslims and non-Muslims on both personal and communal levels.
Mallika Bose – Architect and Urban Planner Faculty at Pennsylvania State University. Bose has a specialization in Environmental Behavior Studies. She co-edited a book on community engaged teaching and scholarship titled, Community Matters: Service-learning in Engaged Design and Planning.
DaD will be held at WVU’s Creative Arts Center on the Evansdale Campus in Morgantown. Registration is required. For a full schedule of events and to register, visit designingacrossdivides.org.