Liz Ogbu—Design Acts: Creating Impact, by Design

We had the honor of spending a week w/ Liz Ogbu, a designer, social innovator, and academic. Liz is an expert on sustainability and spatial innovation in challenged urban environments. She runs her own multidisciplinary consulting practice and is serving as the first-ever Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Art & Public Life at California College of the Arts. Previously, she held senior leadership positions at IDEO.org and Public Architecture. Liz is also a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.

Liz helped the MASD students transition from their individual thesis work into thinking about a unified approach to their thesis show. She also spent 6 hours during studio meeting one on one with each student to review their progress. On Tuesday evening, she gave a public lecture at MICA’s Studio Center Auditorium to a packed house of students, educators from various disciplines and, of course, a bunch of architects.

See description of her talk below:

“Design Acts: Creating impact, by design”

Everyone deserves good design. Yet, those in our society who lack the most resources also most often lack access to good design. This talk will explore creative opportunities to not only address this gap but also to enable lasting social and sustainable impact.

Andréa Pellegrino—Implementing Social Change

This week we were fortunate enough to host Andréa Pellegrino fromPellegrino Collaborative as our first visiting scholar of the Spring semester. 

Andréa works at the intersection of strategy, communications and business development for forward-thinking organizations dedicated to driving positive social change. She launched Pellegrino Collaborative out of a belief that working with a network of multidisciplinary collaborators is the straightest path to helping her client’s impact society while building brand equity.

She worked with the students one on one analyzing and discussing their thesis questions and process and gave a public lecture on: Implementing Social Change. 

In Andréa’s words: The current model for social innovation is highly dependent on contributions of time, resources and skills. Although honorable, this model is not economically sustainable, with less than 5 percent of social change concepts reaching fruition. Implementing Social Change examines the critical processes of actualizing solutions to social challenges with a sense of entrepreneurial spirit. Andréa Pellegrino works at the intersection of strategy, communications and business development for forward-thinking organizations dedicated to driving positive social change. She launched Pellegrino Collaborative out of a belief that working with a network of multidisciplinary collaborators is the straightest path to helping her client’s impact society while building brand equity.

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson—Designer as Storyteller

Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson joined the MASD team this week to to talk about designer as storyteller and the role storytelling should play in the MASD thesis proposals.

Elizabeth is a journalist, author, and editor whose articles, essays, and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in publications and Web sites including The New York Times Magazine,Slate, Next American City, The Baltimore Sun, Urbanite, Grist, Design Observer, The Atlantic Cities, Johns Hopkins Magazine, Baltimoremagazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Print, and Little Patuxent Review, among others. She is a contributing editor at Architect and Architectural Lighting magazines and the Home and Design Editor for Style magazine in Baltimore. Dickinson was also the editor-in-chief of Urbanite magazine in Baltimore for three years. Her writing has earned awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the 2011 Roger D. Redden Award from the Baltimore Architecture Foundation for achievement in the field of architecture. She is an adjunct faculty member at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) where she teaches graduate level writing. Prior to November of 2007 she published under her maiden name, Elizabeth A. Evitts.

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Elaine Asal, architect from Gensler spent the whole day w/ us working on our Deconstruction pitch to Humanim. 

Lee Davis—Social Design + Social Enterprise

Dr. MA Greenstein—Neuroscience & Design Thinking

Dr. M.A. Greenstein (a.k.a. Dr. G) delivers the power and wisdom of truly applied neuroscience into the hands of leaders and learners to inspire and transform education, health and media across the globe.

For thirty years, Dr. G. has been on the front lines of the arts and sciences to help decode the complex data of neuroscience into relevant insights and whole-system strategies. Her work, and the emergent field of applied science translation is currently enriching thousands of children, adults and organizations alike.    

Dr. M.A. Greenstein is a futurist and recognized pioneer in translating emerging neuroscience into meaningful insights, strategy and applications into education, allied health and media arts.  Early in her career she made the connection between neuroscience, Asian thought and somatic systems training, and has brought that to bear in her work.  As a creative catalyst and systems thinker, she pulls together seemingly disparate patterns and relations, framing how holistic insights help people grow, learn, invent and change.  She is a recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship to Asia, as well as an internationally recognized researcher, author, and dynamic keynote speaker, working across the AsiaPacific region during the heady early days of AsiaPacific triennales.  As a social entrepreneur, she was amongst the first to develop a human-centered systems model of problem solving that integrates neuroscience, psychology, design thinking and contemplative and sensory integration techniques. Dr. Greenstein has applied this methodology to enhance cognitive, creative and emotional development from universities to lower school students, as well as for corporate talent.  She was first to bring meditation practice to TEDActive, neuro-design to SXSW and has helped to evolve “brain-smart” coaching methodologies for learning and leadership within multiple communities, and industries throughout the globe.

In 2006 she founded and became the CEO of The George Greenstein Institute (GGI), a 501c3 think tank that delivers neuro-tech tools and holistic principles into education and allied health services for military veterans.  She is also the publisher of Bodiespace.com, and a member of the BLUEMiND community that is exploring neuroscience, decision science and the biosphere.

Dr. Greenstein holds a doctoral degree in interdisciplinary arts education, with core academic studies in neurosomatic and cognitive science education) and offers nearly twenty years of experience teaching graduate students on how brain function impacts individual and social perception, attention, memory and creative decision making. Dr. Greenstein is in a unique position to translate complex brain science for those who are motivated to apply its findings to improve the lives of existing and future generations.

Myra Margolin—Community Psychology

This week we reconnected with the amazing Myra Margolin (actually the virtual version of Myra) as she left Baltimore last year to work with youth in India. Myra received an MA in Community Psychology from the University of Illinois and a BFA in Film and Video Production from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She has been involved in the field of youth media for a decade, having taught media production to young people in Chicago and Brazil. In addition, she has written about and given numerous presentations on participatory and youth media practices. Before leaving for India, she was the Program Manager at Wide Angle Youth Media in Baltimore.

Her insight and connection between community psychology and social design was so useful to last year’s class, we had to have her back. Surprisingly, the technology worked well and the session was informative, intense, and extremely valuable. 

Myra focused on many structural tools to help the MASD students with their research and challenged them with the importance of understanding a phenomenon and clearly articulating the definition of a problem. She covered Problem Definition, Critical Praxis, Levels of Analysis, and Theory of Change and the students conducted a deep and critical evaluation of their Blitz experience from week 03.

Paul Rucker—Interdisciplinary Artist

Thanks to Neil Didriksen from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation for introducing us to Paul Rucker. Paul is an interdisciplinary artist, who combines mediums. He finds inventive ways to integrate live performance, sound, original compositions, and visual art. The music he creates on cello involves extended technique, prepared cello and electronics. His compositional style ranges from improvised to strictly notated. His visual artwork incorporates infrared beams, lasers, touch pads, glass instruments, sound, video, photography, animation, and large-format printing.

He spoke to MASD about his current work, Recapitulation, an installation demonstrating the parallels between slavery and the contemporary prison industrial complex through animation, digital stills, sculpture, original music compositions, interactive sound and video.

John Bielenberg & Greg Galle—Future Blitz

It was a pleasure to welcome our good friends John Bielenberg and Greg Galle of Future to the East Baltimore studio this week.

Future is an innovation firm that creates positive change by uniting the powers of design, enterprise, and humanity. They recognize that human ingenuity has been responsible for the many crises that we face in our world—but believe that human ingenuity can and will solve them.

Future rallies an ecosystem of the world’s most innovative, passionate leaders from all walks of human endeavor. Their allies include leaders in business, government, education, culture, technology, and design. They tackle some of the world’s toughest challenges, using an approach that quickly converts ideas into small steps that enable immediate learning and action. They believe design, ingenuity, and ventures can change the world.

And, they lived and worked with the MASD students this week and led an intense Blitz project. They took the students through ideation and team building exercises and focused on getting out and doing things. Students were then given 48 hours and the prompt: What iconic thing could we do to better engage our partners in positive change?

The goal was not to have students “solve problems” or engage in a specific issue, but rather look at ways to begin to develop trust and relationships within the community and with other partners.

David Sachs—Teams & Teaming

"The only way to have a friend is to be one."

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Mark Stern, PHD

MICA welcomed Mark Stern for a lecture and roundtable discussion involving MASD, MFACA, and MFA Curatorial Practice students. Dr. Stern is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Social Policy & Practice. His research focuses on US social history and the social impact of the arts.

• Stern’s work has documented the role of community cultural providers in improving the quality of life in urban neighborhoods.
• In addition to teaching in the social work program, Stern co-directs Penn’s Urban Studies program.
• Stern co-authored the article “The New African American Inequality” that appeared in theJournal of American History in 2005.

Keetra Dean Dixon

Keetra Dean Dixon came to the studio to lead a workshop for the MASD students on How to give an effective presentation. It was an effective presentation, and the students were very happy to have Keetra before she (sadly) heads out of Baltimore.

Keetra is a designer and artist working under the handle FromKeetra. Her often frazzled workshop pushes its focus towards non-commissioned work, but occasionally finds the lure of a shiny client job too seductive to resist. Voted most likely to meander, FromKeetra straddles a wide set of mediums in the design of 2D, 3D & experiential projects. Keetra Dean developed many of her core objectives during her masters studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her ceaseless pursuit of wonder and irreverent whimsy previously landed her the role of Art Director with motion graphics studio Brand New School and a position as New Media Lead for the LAB at Rockwell Group. Her work continues to attract media giants such as Nike, The New York Times Magazine, Sony & MTV.

Dixon’s work has been recognized on several fronts including a place in the permanent design collection at the SFMOMA, the choice for STEP magazine’s Emerging Talent ‘09, and the honorable ranking of ADC Young Gun ‘08. She has been featured in numerous publications, speaking engagements, and exhibits, including feature articles in Etapes Magazine, works exhibited for the ‘09 U.S. Presidential Inauguration, and highlight pieces in several publications by Die-Gestalten. Dixon’s first solo exhibit opened it’s doors in November 2009 in London’s Kessel Kramer Gallery: KKOutlet.

Edward Boatman

We had the privilege of hosting Edward Boatman of the Noun Project at MICA PLACE this week. In addition to working directly w/ undergraduate students from Kyla’s Design for Change course in the graphic design department, he participated in MASD’s thesis review and led an Iconathon w/ MASD, MFAGD and the Baltimore City Health Department. We focused on community health, specifically food and physical activity. We very much look forward to a continued relationship and friendship w/ Edward.

See his story below:

A fascination with the ordinary……

To introduce myself, my name is Edward and I think a good starting point for this story is my sketchbook. Back when I was studying design in college I started drawing very simple sketches of seemingly ordinary objects like cranes, trains, trees, etc.  I was fascinated with their complexity and mechanics.  After a while I had a nice collection of these sketches, and I began to think - what if I had a sketch for every single object in the world?  Now that would be great!  I also started referring to these sketches as “nouns”, after all the drawings were representing a person, place or thing, and I loved the simplicity behind the concept of a “noun”.  I even went as far as to design and draw a space where other artists could come and contribute to the project.  But like for so many other people, life got in the way of my idea and nothing came of it.

After graduating from college I started working at an architecture firm.  While there I began to notice a lack of good resources to quickly and effortlessly find free high quality symbols/icons for my presentations.  I started to think again about my old noun idea and thought what if instead of sketches we collected every single noun-symbol and placed it on one easy to use website. I thought people could really find that valuable.  Just like the first time though life got in the way of the idea and nothing materialized.  However, during the recession, I suddenly found myself laid off with a new-found surplus of time on my hands.  I convinced my wife Sofya (the business brains behind the scenes) to help me turn this noun-idea into an actual project.

We knew we needed a great website so we partnered with my old friend Scott Thomas and his design studio, Simple Honest Work.  Scott and his team helped shape the idea and before long we were talking about sharing an international visual language, which led us to the beautiful simple site you see today.

We’re excited about all the support we’ve received and look forward to what lies ahead!

Rosten Woo