Since its inception in early 2009, Design Ignites Change has engaged over 1,000 high school and college students and well over 100 educators and professionals through the program. Support from corporate and institutional partners help ensure that Design Ignites Change can embrace the increasing number of schools and students who want to participate in these growing efforts.

To learn more about how your organization can support Design Ignites Change, please contact Andréa Pellegrino at apellegrino(at)worldstudioinc.com.

A total of 100 artists, designers and students from the Bay area were asked to use the metaphor of a tree to make powerful visual statements about the environment for the project. The artwork will be displayed on light pole banners in high-traffic locations in downtown San Francisco for six months starting in April. At the end of the exhibition, the banners will be recycled into a range of fashionable products designed by Academy of Art University students. The products will then be auctioned off to raise money for Friends of the Urban Forest for tree plantings in the city.

Twenty one of the 100 banners for The Urban Forest Project were created by high school students and professional design mentors through a mentoring program hosted by AIGA SF. Many of the mentors and their students were present at the preview event, as were family members, guardians, teachers, counselors and friends.

A visual presentation of The Urban Forest Project featured images of the banner artwork produced by the mentoring program. Also on display was artwork produced by Academy of Art University students, faculty and alumni. After a series of introductions and remarks by the project partners, certificates were presented to the high school students from the mentoring program that featured their individual banners. They then gathered on stage with their mentors for a group photo.

Throughout the Opera House – workshops led by professional designers from AIGA SF – were held so that children and their families from the Bayview community could create their own Urban Forest Project artwork using the metaphor of a tree. In an effort to promote sustainability and reuse, the kids drew on large “press sheets” which were donated by Blanchette Press.

The Urban Forest Project partners in San Francisco represented at the event included: City and County of San Francisco, AIGA SF, Academy of Art University, Friends of the Urban Forest and Adobe Youth Voices. Also on hand were representatives from the five Bay area youth organizations that participated in the mentoring program: BAVC – Bay Area Video Coalition, San Francisco Youth Commission, San Francisco Cameraworks: First Exposures, Southern Exposure, Young Artists at Work/Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Blanchette Press contributed the press sheets for the workshops.

The Urban Forest Project, conceived and managed by Worldstudio, was first executed in New York City’s Times Square in the fall of 2006. San Francisco is among the first in a series of planned executions worldwide.

The San Francisco project is supported entirely by corporate sponsorship. The sponsorship deadline is February 26th. To learn more about how your organization can sponsor this unique environmental, public arts and educational initiative, please contact Andréa Pellegrino at apellegrino (at) worldstudioinc.com.

Worldstudio, together with the Adobe Foundation’s signature program Adobe Youth Voices, today launched Design Ignites Change, a program that encourages talented high school and college students to use the power of design to address social issues in their local communities through substantive public projects. Supporting and media partners include: AIGA, the professional association for design; Citizen Scholar; Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; Core 77; Design Observer; Frog Design; Graphic Design USA; Williams & House.

To date, Design Ignites Change has engaged 15 colleges and universities who are now hard at work on responses to such pressing global issues as racism, economic inequality and climate change. Students are working to develop actual, visible projects aimed to stimulate thought, dialog, action, and ultimately, change. A major component of the initiative is a mentoring program through which college and university students, educators and creative professionals, work with underserved high school students to develop projects that will benefit their own communities, while giving them a voice around important social issues.

If you represent a school or youth program and would like to find out how to participate, or a corporation or foundation wishing to support the program, please visit: www.designigniteschange.org

Worldstudio is proud to announce a new initiative, Design Ignites Change, a collaboration between Adobe Youth Voices and Worldstudio.

The annual program promotes and encourages talented high school and college students across the country to use design thinking and innovation to create solutions to, and messages, for pressing social problems.

The centerpiece of the program will be a dynamic website that showcases the work of the students and provides information to other educators on how they can incorporate socially-minded design thinking into their curriculums. The site will also aid the business community and the general public in understanding the power of design to ignite change.

A major component of Design Ignites Change is a mentoring program where college students, educators and professionals will work with underserved high school students to develop actual projects that will benefit their own communities while giving them voice around important social issues. The program will also serve to introduce these high school students to the creative professions as a career option.

To learn more about how your company, school or organization can participate in Design Ignites Change, please contact Mark Randall at mrandall@worldstudioinc.com