Design Students for Change

Unsatisfied with their given curricula, design students around the US are demanding a focus on design for social change — and making it happen. Here are a few recent events:

• In April 2008, students in the Social Change + Activism group at Harvard Graduate School of Design organized FuturePresent (PDF) a symposium on diversity in design professions.
  
  
• In November 2008, students at Brown and RISD organized the multi-disciplinary conference A Better World by Design to look at how designer, engineers, and entrepreneurs are making change.
  
  
• What the *#&! is Social Design? is an exhibition organized by two graduate design students from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. It opens this Thursday, March 12.