Video: Alabama Design Summit
On July 21, 2011, a group of more than 50 dedicated creative
professionals gathered in Birmingham at the AIGA Alabama Design Summit to learn, solve and model how creativity
can be harnessed to defeat the limitations facing social and economic
development in rural Alabama. A main theme of the event: Designers should leave
the studio and hit the streets. This video gives a glimpse into how that works.
“Us showing a slide show and telling a story up on a stage,
behind a podium, wasn’t going to work. They had to go out there, they had to
meet these leaders in their communities and have them talk about what they’d
done—see that passion that these local leaders have,” says Sam Shelton,
principal of KINETIK and an organizer of the event.
Using the Alabama Design Summit framework as a template, AIGA is in the process of developing a guidebook for designers and AIGA chapters who want to organize similar problem-solving workshops in their own communities. This book will provide the steps necessary for groups everywhere to host similar events and drive social change by reaching across disciplines. Keep an eye out for that resource next summer!
This video was created by The Perennial Project.