Did you eat your Raisin Brhams today?

Love this commercial parody promoting arts education from Americans for the Arts...



via Osocio

Design Power Defined

Julie Thompson created the Design Power site as part of her graduate thesis project at Ohio University. It gives a working definition of socially responsible design and uses three case studies (including one on ALR!) to discuss the key components of working from an ethical perspective: client choice, environmental practices, and community education. Read her entire report HERE.

Creative for A Cause

Creative for A Cause is an incredible new online resource for socially minded design folks created by Heidi Cies. Made as part of her graduate thesis in advertising/design at Syracuse University, Heidi has put together two dozen detailed case studies of how socially conscious design is being taught in schools across the US. The site also has comprehensive lists of publications, websites, sources of funding, schools, and "role models" all pertaining to working in the fields of marketing, advertising, and design from an ethical stand point. The searchable site is a fantastic work in progress that should prove invaluable to anyone interested in working/teaching differently. Check it out HERE.

Design Rebels 2007: RISE-NOW

Students in my Fall 2007 Design Rebels class on socially conscious design created two terrific community based projects as their final assignments.

The first is RISE-NOW a poster/web campaign to educate on the issues of sexual assault and domestic violence. Read more about it in my article on Osocio HERE.

I'll post about the 2nd project CHOMP, a healthy living program for middle school students, when the finished version is online.

Parsons Opens Socially Conscious Game Lab

Parsons The New School for Design in New York City has just launched a new research lab focused on creating video games centered around educating on social issues. The New School of Design PETlab is a partnership with the non-profit Games for Change. From their press release:

The initiative was made possible by a $450,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as part of the foundation’s digital media and learning initiative established in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.

In its first year, PETLab will work with Microsoft’s Xbox development platform and MTV’s Think.MTV.com youth-focused online activist community on the development of both learning tools and digital games that explore social issues.

Read more in the AP article.

Flying Spaghetti Monster Billboard in Maryland

While I'm generally not a fan of billboards there are a few I admire, including this one on the side of a house in Baltimore, Maryland featuring the infamous response to creationists in Kansas: the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Get the story behind the billboard at the Baltimore Sun.

Thanks Mica!

Service-Learning: Design Rebels

The course I teach on socially conscious design at Virginia Commonwealth University, Design Rebels, is designated as a Service-Learning class, which means the students are required to have a level of direct community engagement as part of their education. Last year the class was featured in a presentation at the annual Service-Learning conference. A short video from that presentation (which includes an interview with me about Design Rebels) can now be seen online HERE.

Read A !#&% Book!

This is the controversial parody PSA rap video "Read A Book" which has been running on BET recently... NOTE: This is really, really not work safe (language-wise).

Stay Free: Baby Vids Make You Dumber

A recent Stay Free article discusses a new study(PDF) that shows that the educational merits of videos like Baby Einstein are dubious at best and possibly bad for mental development at worst. Also interesting is the debate that continues in the comments section between the author and a supporter(representative?) of the chidren's media industry. Read the entire post with comments here.

Urban Art Workshop

The Urban Art Workshop, a 4 month course taught by artist Javier Abarca at the Complutense University of Madrid, gave art students an opportunity to create spontaneous public art. The results (some of which are shown left) are quite lovely. More details and pictures here.

Forget Clown College

With the rise in popularity of the graphic novel and the annual sales quadrupling in the past 6 years, a degree in comics is no joke.

The Center For Cartoon Studies offers a two year intensive program focused entirely on the creation and distribution of illustrated narratives. The roster of faculty and visiting artists and writers is sure to impress any aspiring comic artist. Their mission statement also impressed me with an acknowledgement of their commitment to socially responsible practices:

"CCS, recognizing the central role that socially responsible businesses can play in a community, will initiate and be responsive to innovative ways to improve the local cultural and economic quality of life."

After watching a video clip from a documentary in the works, about the school I was sold on their earnest approach and intent to train students to have their own voice.

"As for CCS students, whose aspirations tend to lean more toward literary comics, they seem pragmatic about their prospects (the day jobs), but also optimistic...'All the editors on the graphic-novel beat, they're aware of the Center for Cartoon Studies and are keeping an eye on it.' " from recent CS Monitor story about the first graduating class at Center for Cartoon Studies, read the rest of the article here.

ALR on tour: Youth Peace Summit, Richmond, VA

One of my former students and I ran a workshop on media awareness this weekend for the Richmond Peace Education Center's annual Youth Peace Summit. We had a terrific group of kids who were not only familiar with what we were talking about (the power of media/corporations to influence their lives and their communities), but eager to work on a project deconstructing magazine ads. Thanks to RPEC for asking us to participate.

ALR on tour: Richmond, VA

OK it's not far from my office to the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University (where I also teach my own Design Rebels class), but it's still an honor to be asked to come speak there periodically about living & working ethically. Thanks to Dr. Mark Wood and his International Social Justice students for having me on the last day of class.

Islamic Superheroes

The 99 is a new comic book which aims to give Islamic children positive cultural role models in the style of American superheroes (even using the talents of former Marvel and DC writers and artists). The 99 was created by Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, whose work as a clinical psychologist has focused on building cross-cultural tolerance and understanding. Find out more about The 99 here.

Abstinence Programs Have Zero Effect

A recent study from the non-partisan Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. concludes that "abstinence only" sex-education classes, which have been a darling of the current administration, have absolutely NO effect on young people. The multi-year study found:

...that youth in the four evaluated programs were no more likely than youth not in the programs to have abstained from sex in the four to six years after they began participating in the study. Youth in both groups who reported having had sex also had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same average age.

Read more from the report here.

Copyrighted Homework

Virginia students have sued an anti-plagiarism software company for copyright infringement. From a recent Christian Science Monitor article:

The saga began last year when McLean High School in Virginia adopted a widely used antiplagiarism service called Turnitin. Under the system, students electronically submit essays to be stored and compared against millions of others in a massive database. Teachers can see if students are lifting work – a valuable tool given that research has found that 40 percent of undergraduate students admit to copying and pasting passages from websites.

But the setup rankled some students, who argued they shouldn't have to surrender their personal writing and persuasive essays – along with their names and e-mail addresses – to a computer bank in California.

"The suit is not about plagiarism; it's about the school forcing the students to turn their work over to a for-profit company," says Kevin Wade Sr., the father of a plaintiff.

Read the entire story here.

ALR on Tour: NYC

I just returned from a business trip in NYC (thus the lack of posts recently) where I also gave a talk at NYU's Tisch School of The Arts to students [shown left] in the Tech Track program (which was the program I was in, 15 odd years ago!).

Thanks so much to Wendy Luedtke for bringing me in to talk about my company and socially conscious design.