From Ana Lucia Diaz, MA Student 2011:
Thanks to the Laura Ashley Scholarship I had the honor to attend the Design Activism and Social Change Conference in Barcelona in September. The conference provided a space to debate emergent themes in design activism: politics and design, sustainability and design, the role of agency, reflection vs action, peak oil and the capacity of design to address social and environmental problems within capitalism and current forms of democracy.
Speakers included Jody Boenhert from Eco Labs, Karen Yair on craft and activism, and Noel Douglas, one of the most controversial speakers with a paper called ‘Signs of Revolt – The City, Revolution and the Sign in the 21st Century’.
Check out the official blog here with reflections on the event by design thinker Guy Julier and all the papers are available to download here.
