Winterhouse Fourth Symposium on Design Education and Social Change: Program Description

Introduction
Winterhouse Institute (a 501c3 non-profit organization founded by William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand) is hosting a symposium at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, August 18-20, 2013. This symposium will be an invitation-only gathering of twenty-five educators and interested parties to explore the teaching and practice of social design in undergraduate and graduate design education. Previous Winterhouse Education Symposia were held in October 2010, August 2011, August 2012 at Winterhouse in Northwest Connecticut and Yale University. Proceedings, participants and case studies are published on Change Observer.

This symposium will bring together leading educators at the intersection of design and social change from institutions throughout the United States. The goal is to discuss strategies for teaching and practicing social design in the classroom and the field. This symposium also aims to foster collaborations among the participants and to build partnerships with the larger design community in effecting school-based solutions to social problems. 

This symposium is a part of a larger Winterhouse initiative around design and social innovation originally funded by the Rockefeller Foundation during 2009-2011. The symposium proceedings will be published on Change Observer, a channel devoted to design and social innovation on Design Observer, the critically acclaimed website focused on design and visual culture. Other symposia have been held in Aspen, Colorado and Bellagio, Italy.

Programming 
Winterhouse Symposium on Design Education and Social Change will foster direct, detailed exchanges on four themes: 
• Case studies of effective design projects for social change based in academic institutions
• Recommendations for transforming design school curricula to better accommodate such models
• Exploring the roles and opportunities for new centers of design research and practice housed within academic institutions
• Exploring the relationship between educators and outside partners and clients in facilitating social design projects

Participants

Charlie Cannon, Associate Professor, Industrial Design, RISD; and Director, Local Architecture Research Design

Phil Hamlett, Graduate Director, School of Graphic Design, Academy of Art University 

Natacha Poggio, Assistant Professor, Visual Communication Design, Hartford Art School, University of Hartford 

Cameron Tonkinwise, Associate Professor, Director of Design Studies and Chair of the Doctoral Program Committee, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University

Background
Winterhouse Institute acts as catalyst, coordinator and champion of an initiative in the public sphere to develop collective action and collaboration for social impact across the design industry; it also creates communication platforms for conferences and gatherings, including an editorial website to monitor and report on developments. William Drenttel directs the Winterhouse Institute and is Publisher and Editorial Director of Design Observer. 

Support for this symposium has been provided by Design Observer Group and Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Center for Engineering Innovation and Design and School of Management. 

Additional support for this symposium has been provided by Sappi Fine Paper and its Ideas That Matter program.