Summer of Social Innovation
For the first time, MFA Design for Social Innovation and Impact! Design for Social Change are partnering to create the Summer of Social Innovation, a six- week program of day and evening classes for students and professionals. We’ll offer deep dives into specific experience based-projects, as well as core skills and tools.
This will be the most comprehensive summer program in Social Innovation ever, with graduate faculty from MFA DSI. If you’re a professional looking to bring more purposeful creative capacity to your organization, and to yourself, or if you’re a student looking to add the latest skills and knowledge to find a job that matters, find out more. Summer for Social Innovation courses will take place on an individual basis between June 22 – August 15, 2014.
Location for all courses: 136 W. 21st, 5th Floor
Contact dsisummer@sva.edu with questions.
Curriculum
Games for Impact
SIC-5032-A
SCHEDULE
Thursdays, June 26 – August 7
6:00 – 9:00 PM
INSTRUCTOR
Asi Burak, Naomi Clark
Game design is a new innovation tool and a valuable skill for anyone working inside corporations, at non-profit organizations, entrepreneurs and designers of all kinds. The course will provide an overview of thoughtful, responsible and committed citizens through play. In addition, participants will design and present their own game for social impact. The faculty will lead participants through a high-level analysis, utilizing a set of guidelines called “the 8-Step Methodology.” Created and promoted by Games for Change, the 8 steps work to flesh out original ideas in an informed and vetted strategy.
Tuition: $700
6 Sessions: 1.5 CEUs
Disruptive Design for Informal Economies
SIC-5021-A
SCHEDULE
Wednesdays, June 25 – July 30
6:00 – 9:00 PM
INSTRUCTOR
Steve Daniels, Justin Levinson
This course uses the concept of informal economies as a sandbox for urban innovations. The most transformative new ideas often come from the economic fringes. In Uganda, the emergent practice of sente, or using mobile airtime as currency, led to formal mobile money solutions that disrupted telcos and banks. In San Francisco, sharing-economy start-ups like AirBnB and Lyft are disenfranchising the established order to transform service industries. These new models, while in a legal grey zone, have disrupted business and society, and will continue to grow in significance. In this course, students gain a macro perspective in informal economies, learn their properties and principles, study models of urban economic development and innovation accelerators, and experience using ethnographic research methods to identify unique cultural practices in the city of New York.
Tuition: $700
6 Sessions: 1.5 CEUs
Redesigning CSR
SIC-5038-A
SCHEDULE
Mondays, June 23 – July 28
6:00 – 9:00 PM
INSTRUCTOR
The focus on corporate social responsibility is in its infancy state. Without much existing precedent to draw on, many corporations are in the midst of establishing processes, practices and values in this area. Utilizing business ethnography practices, this workshop will review current corporate culture and visions to assess current CSR efforts. The class will then use this insight to inspire a point of view for opportunity and envision future best practices.
Tuition: $700
6 Sessions: 1.5 CEUs
Designing Digital Communities
SIC-5027-A
SCHEDULE
Tuesdays, June 24 – July 29
6:00 – 9:00 PM
INSTRUCTOR
This class is an introduction to crafting the platforms and experiences that enable communities to collaborate, create, and innovate. We will explore social networks, memes, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, online petitions, and other models of digital community participation. Students will design concepts and prototypes for their own digital communities. No coding experience required.
Tuition: $700
6 Sessions: 1.5 CEUs
Designing Life 2.0 – Your Next Act(s)
SIC-5046-A
SCHEDULE
Tuesdays, June 24 – July 29
6:00 – 9:00 PM
INSTRUCTOR
There are 77 million Baby Boomers hitting, or about to hit, what our parents called “retirement” age. After almost 40 years of working our parents believed they only had 10 or 15 years left, at best. Given the impact of modern medicine many of us know we could easily be here for another 20 years and in some cases 30, even 40 years. Thatʼs a lot more time. What do you want to do with that extra time? This course is for those that donʼt want a classic retirement, who have more to give. The world still desperately needs our talents, networks and collective wisdom.
The Kauffman Foundation has shown that the Baby Boom generation is the adult generation in the US embracing entrepreneurship in numbers greater than even the millennials (ages 18-34). We are working on more startups than our juniors. But if your goal is staying engaged and keeping income flowing but you don't want to take huge financial risks, it is worth understanding the "entrepreneurship spectrum" – not everyone has to be thinking the only choices are "scaleable" startup or freelancing. There is middle ground.
This course will help you understand the choices. We will emphasize the use of "design thinking" and the "lean method" which promote prototyping and rapid iteration to test ideas anywhere on the entrepreneurial spectrum. We will guide you through careful looks at the nature of freelancing, solo micro entrepreneurship or building an entrepreneurial team to create something that scales in the profit or non-profit world. The emphasis will be on providing you knowledge, tools and resources to strike your own balance between "money, interest, pleasure and …. a cause”, the key elements of how celebrated organizational behavior expert, Charles Handy explained the concept of "a portfolio life”.
Tuition: $700
6 Sessions: 1.5 CEUs
