DSI Students at LES Girls Club with Al Nguyen

Design eco-social change.

MFA Design for Social Innovation asks:

How can design shift us towards more healthy, caring systems?
What conditions and collaborations enable communities, systems, and ecosystems to thrive?
How can eco-social design increase innovation and our capacities for change?

Social design
works with communities, organizations, governments, businesses, and the planet through:

Strengthening Relationships + Care

Advocating for health, access, ecologies, restoration, joy, and healing. Supporting shared values and interdependence while honoring nature’s wisdom.
Social Design asks good questions and deepens connections, with care.

Co-Creating Intentionally.

Collaborating with communities, advocating for mutual benefit, accountability, and abundance. Centering lived experience and responsibility, while reducing harm.
Social Design can shift power while building leadership and creatively responding.

Embracing Complexities

Breaking from things that no longer serve us. Recognizing the continuum and pluralities, and making the invisible visible.
Social Design supports new thinking over more things, to imagine possibilities and lead with vision.

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NOVEMBER 2

Legacy Leadership Journey to Alabama

Virtual Info Session - 7 PM EST

Join us on November 2 for a virtual Info Session to learn more about this one-week social change leadership experience. Feb 28 – March 1. This memorable SVA Destinations journey will take a group to Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma, Alabama – the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. We will experience firsthand how art, design, and creativity shape, inspire, and galvanize change worldwide.

RSVP

EVENTS

Day of the Bats: October 27

Day of the Bats: Welcoming Bat Conservation International to DSI, A Celebration of Bats, Blooms, and Día de los Muertos. Dr. Kristen Lear, bat scientist and Director of Bat Conservation International’s Agave Restoration Initiative, will share her bi-national work across the U.S. Southwest and Mexico to restore habitats for threatened pollinating bats while strengthening the rural livelihoods that depend on the same land.

BLOG

Candice Walker (MFA DSI '26) talks about Accountable Tech

Read an interview with Candice Walker (MFA DSI ‘26) and Riley Ladner, DSI Communications Director. Candice talks about her co-creation workshop for The Jersey City Equity Nexus, presented at Makeshift: Accountable Tech by Design conference, what it means to be a social designer, and designing with care.

BLOG

Aging in Play gains Radical Attention and new audiences

Hao Jie Sim and Xiaolan Fu (MFA DSI ’26) chat about presenting Aging in Play (AIP) at the Games for Change Festival and The Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA). As they bring their project into different contexts, they are also considering how to contextualize AIP for new audiences.

Thesis 2025

Thesis 2025

We Are Speaking / Estamos Hablando

Héctor “Chato” Ruiz (MFA DSI ’25)

We Are Speaking / Estamos Hablando creates spaces for community members to identify shared values, goals, and symbols, and to represent them as a group.

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