Grow your community here.

Apply for our Fall 2025 cohort before the January 15, 2025 Priority Deadline for earliest consideration.

MFA 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

Register Now

MFA DSI Open House

Join us for an exciting Open House 2024 info session in our NYC Studio with DSI chair Miya Osaki. Enjoy a panel discussion with our DSI Alums who will talk about their practices and careers in social design. Meet students, faculty, and others interested in design and social impact for light snacks, refreshments, and inspiring conversation!

When: Friday, November 1, 2024, 5 – 8 pm EST
Where: MFA DSI, 136 W. 21st Street, 5th Floor

Alum Panelists: Grace Kwon (MFA DSI ’20; Spotify; DSI Faculty), Ryana Burrell (MFA DSI ’20; Grow Progress), Evan Ressegger (MFA DSI ’21; consultant) Mickey Ferrara (MFA DSI ’22; DSI Faculty), Effy Tan (MFA DSI ’23; AAAAH!), Janvi Ghatalia (MFA DSI ’21; DC Design)

RSVP NOW

EVENTS

AfterThought Zine Workshop: Unlawful, Unauthorized, Unsanctioned, Unlicensed

AfterThought presents Andrew Diemer (he/him), who will lead a workshop on Oct 17 exploring the vast potential of zine making, delving into its social, political, and artistic significance.

EVENTS

Graduate Portfolio Day 2024: San Francisco, CA with Miya Osaki

Meet Miya Osaki, designer, educator, and chair of SVA – MFA Design for Social Innovation on Saturday, October 26, 2024, from 10am – 2 pm EST at the National Portfolio Day event in San Francisco, CA (@ CCA).

EVENT

MFA DSI Open House 2024

Join SVA-MFA Design for Social Innovation for an exciting Open House info session for our 2025-26 cohort at our MFA DSI studio in NYC. Meet, Miya Osaki, DSI chair, will share about our cross-disciplinary, collaborative, and hands-on graduate program.

Thesis 2021

Thesis 2021

Rooted Restaurants

Evan Ressegger, Qingyi (Bridget) Qian, & Darya (Dasha) Zlochevsky (MFA DSI ’21)

“Rooted Restaurants” is reimagining restaurant resilience. The project focuses on local solutions and tools to co-create community restaurant resilience. The goal is to increase communications between restaurants on Avenue B in the East Village and their respective communities.