Goldsmith Talks: Design Futures Detroit: Applications of Social Justice
In May 2018, five SOA students were selected to attend the Design Futures Forum in Detroit, MI. during Design Futures, students frame the conversation broadly, but try to engender leadership and skill-building for future leaders hoping to use design as a tool for social equity and positive change in underserved communities. The guiding principles include striving to build the next generation of leadership in the field; continuing to diversify the ecosystem of public interest design in terms of discipline, background, race, gender, and scale; elevating the rigor and critical capacity of PID curricula; and curating a national network of thought leadership drawn from contributing universities and practitioner-faculty committed to the advancement of the field.
This year’s Design Futures Public Interest Design Student Leadership Forum brought together students, faculty, and design practitioners in Detroit, Michigan. May 21-25 marked the sixth annual social justice forum and was attended by five SOA students accompanied by Charlton Lewis (SOA Lecturer) and Sarah Wu (CSD). Student representatives included Awais Azhar (CRP PhD), Georges Fares (MID), Carol Fraser (MSCRP/MSSD), Rosa Fry (MSHP), and Molly Spetalnick (MArch).
At the conference, students and educators participated in a vast scope of workshops with topics such as Power and Privilege and Design as Protest . Additionally, a day of interacting with the local community allowed students to connect with the complicated history and current resurgence in Detroit. Even more broadly, the conference spoke of the application of social justice initiatives within the fields of planning and design.
Awais Azhar (CRP PhD ‘22), Georges Fares (MID ‘19), Carol Fraser (MSCRP/MSSD ‘18) and Rosa Fry (MSHP ‘19) will be giving an informative, interactive talk in order to share and adress the strategies and thought processess utilized during the Detroit forum in May.
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Goldsmith Talks is an open-format series of presentations organized by UTSOA faculty, staff, and students. the series aims to encourage and promote presentations that are outside of the scope of the main lecture series. Examples are: invited seminar presentations, book talks, lectures by designers and scholars who may be in Austin for another engagement, round-table discussions, film screenings, product demonstrations, or any other activity related to research, scholarship, and teaching activities and at the school. The format provides a platform for encouraging the dissemination of work by visitors and members of our community. The goal is to raise awareness, increase access, and better integrate such events within the public life of the school.