Local Change, Global Impact
Community Space
Ground-breaking innovation happens off-stage. TYTHEdesign has curated a group of fearless organizations and innovators turning their ideas into action. Come explore the intimate, interactive spaces created by social changemakers that document the ups, downs, tools and resources behind turning inspiration into action.
Organizations from across the globe are highlighting the ingenuity mixed with potential that fuels their work engaging and developing community on a daily basis. Join them and get ready to completely rethink our role in creating, sustaining and enabling “community.”
As a consulting firm for non-profits and social ventures, TYTHEdesign is perfectly positioned to curate the Feast Pavilion’s Community section. The firm uses the lens of design to exponentially improve service delivery, community engagement and workplace efficiency with four target areas: communications, workshops, systems, and spaces.
Recently they were awarded the recognition of finalist in the Victor J. Papanek Award for Social Design 2011 and the Core77 Design Award 2012. Founder and Creative Director Kristina Drury will engage her experience as a designer, educator and social entrepreneur to lead TYTHEdesign’s contributions at the Feast.
Curating and organizing collaborators:
- Cameron Houser of Given Goods
- Eleanor Wendell of TYTHEdesign
- Karen Baker
- Mika Braakman of Model Citizens
The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) is a nonprofit organization that uses design and art to improve civic engagement. CUP projects demystify the urban policy and planning issues that impact our communities, so that more individuals can better participate in shaping them. We believe that increasing understanding of how these systems work is the first step to better and more diverse community participation.
CUP projects are collaborations of art and design professionals, community-based advocates and policymakers, and our staff. Together we take on complex issues—from the juvenile justice system to zoning law to food access—and break them down into simple, accessible, visual explanations.
The tools we create are used by organizers and educators all over New York City and beyond to help their constituents better advocate for their own community needs.
Makeshift is a quarterly print and online magazine about creativity in unlikely places, from the favelas of Rio to the alleys of Delhi. These are environments where resources may be scarce, but where ingenuity is used incessantly for survival, enterprise, and a self-expression.
We believe in an industrial future fueled by networks of makers, from roadside engineers to co-working creatives. We are documenting a movement of hackers, sharers, and entrepreneurs innovating under resource constraints. Makeshift is about people, the things they make, and the context they make them in.
MiLES is a multidisciplinary initiative that facilitates the transformation of vacant lots and storefronts in the Lower East Side. The collective group of designers, architects, strategists and more facilitates and curates an open process of temporary transformations of underutilized sites by listening, co-creating, prototyping and operating with a blend of digital and physical platforms.
Social Good Store
Put your money where your mouth is as you wander the stalls of organizations making products for a brighter future, navigating the landscape of socially conscious ecosystems. From buying fair trade to buying compostable, buying products that give back versus ones that give to others, this curated selection of makers provokes a look at the four main aspects of social business today.
Designing with an eye on the environment, be it through materials, manufacturing, or process.
Economic Development
Designing into a skills training or workforce integration program in the local community.
Social Business Models
Designing business models that give a share of profits back to communities.
Life-Changing
Designing for solutions to basic, everyday community needs such as clean water, education, or food.
A special thank you:
Brooklyn Woods is a non-profit job training program that prepares low-income and unemployed men and women for skilled entry-level positions in woodworking, cabinet making, and related fields. Brooklyn Woods trains approximately fifty individuals for free each year at a state-of-the-art woodshop in Gowanus and then provides job placement assistance and support. Brooklyn Woods also runs a social enterprise which fabricates environmentally-friendly cabinets and custom wood projects for developments throughout New York. Some graduates of the program are hired in the Brooklyn Woods shop and gain valuable on-the-job experience manufacturing and installing high quality woodwork. Brooklyn Woods was founded in 1999 and is now part of Brooklyn Workforce Innovations, a non-profit that empowers low- and moderate-income adults by helping them gain access to living-wage employment opportunities and career paths.
