Date: March 24, 2026
Time: 7:00 – 7:45 PM EST
Location:  Online – Zoom 
*Registration required for Zoom link*

Curious about “embodied design” and how it can shape creative approaches to social change?

This is a virtual information session to learn more about our summer Embodied Design Lab, an upcoming MFA DSI design and social impact course (Tuesdays and Thursdays evenings – May 19 – June 25, 2026) through the School of Visual Arts Continuing Education.

During this interactive session, architect, designer, and eco-social practitioner Kimberly Tate will introduce the core ideas behind embodied design—exploring how body-based awareness, somatic practices, and relational thinking can expand the design process and support more empathetic, resilient approaches to complex challenges.

Participants will experience a short guided grounding exercise, learn about the course’s intentions and structure, hear about project ideas and guest contributors, and gain insight into the broader work of social innovation.

Registration begins for this very special Continuing Education course in mid-April.

About Kimberly Tate
Kimberly Tate (she/they) was born in Tacloban City, Leyte, Philippines, and migrated with her family to the American Midwest in the mid-1980s. Now bridging Leyte and Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, New York), Kimberly’s work focuses on cultural restoration, community building, and ecological care. As a trained architect, movement artist, and interdisciplinary embodied designer, they create, teach, mother, and perform with a vision to honor, reimagine, and uplift the cultural inheritances of the diaspora and the global south.

Kimberly is the founder and director of BAMBULAWAN, a bamboo architecture and design-build social impact startup in Burauen, Leyte, Philippines. The project promotes indigenous culture and heritage through bamboo craft, aiming to nurture resilient livelihoods by growing the local bamboo industry. Bambulawan’s goals include establishing a bamboo carpentry training center and forming an association of women bamboo growers and producers.

Choreographed by architectural tape labyrinths, the facilitated movement ceremonies of her project DANCITECTURE make space to hold both heartache and beauty, fostering kinship in the diaspora. Her own movement practice is grounded in capoeira, Filipino martial arts, somatic movement, and traditional Filipino and Western dance forms. Central to her design process and pedagogy are trauma-informed embodiment practices.  Kimberly has collaborated with artists and organizations, including Little Manila Queens Bayanihan Arts, Akim Funk Buddha, Walang Hiya NYC, and Moving Rasa. She has presented at venues and festivals including The Highline, Insitu Site Specific Dance Festival, Downtown Brooklyn Arts Festival, BAM Cafe Live, and Women to the Front. She was a Laundromat Project Create Change Fellow and a Designer in Residence with SVA Design for Social Innovation. She is also a faculty member at Parsons School of Design, at SVA, and a K–12 design educator with the AIANY Center for Architecture.