Thinking about an MFA in design for social innovation?

We are still accepting applications for Fall 2024
(just a few spots left!)

DSI is a graduate social design program that asks:

How can design offer pathways that shift us towards healthy, equitable systems?
What conditions and collaborations enable communities, systems, and nature to thrive?
How can social design increase care and our capacity
for change?

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

Strengthening Relationships + Care

Advocating for health, equity, anti-discrimination, justice, joy, and healing, Supporting shared values and interdependence, and honoring nature’s wisdom.
Design asks questions over solving problems, with care.

Intentionally
Co-Creating

Collaborating with communities, advocating for mutual benefit and abundance. Centering lived experience, while reducing harm.
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.
Design supports new thinking over new things to imagine possibility and lead with vision.

DSI MFA Program

MAY 2024

Congratulations MFA DSI Class of 2024!

We’re celebrating the achievements of MFA DSI Class of 2024! Our graduates worked so hard in collaboration with communities over the last two years. Check out their exciting Thesis Projects or click the link below watch a video of the Thesis Show 2024.

GO TO VIDEO

EVENTS

Incorrigibles: Bearing Witness to the incarcerated Girls of New York

Incorrigibles is a transmedia art project that focuses on youth justice and social services for girls, using the past to shed light on the present and a better future through art, storytelling, and healing modalities.

EVENTS

Karen + David Proctor, Grabbing the Hammer Lane at the Hamilton Fringe Festival

Grabbing the Hammer Lane: A Trucker Narrative is a searing, one act play about prodigal rebellion and fleeting moments for redemption.

BLOG

+POOL and Kara Meyer featured in fast Company, June 2024

“Why NYC’s floating pool could change beach access for the entire state.”

Thesis 2024

Thesis 2024

The Language of Us

Maggie Wong (MFA DSI ’24)

“The Language of Us” seeks educational equity by providing academic and social-emotional resources responsive to the needs of elementary students from asylum-seeking families and their educators. Activities that encourage reflection, storytelling, and art to bridge cultural and language gaps between teachers and students advocate for school systems that proactively equip teachers to cultivate a learning environment reflective of asylum-seeking students who find New York City home for the time being.