Thursday, March 20  3:30pm - 5:00pm
location TBA
Objects serve myriad and complex needs of individuals and societies–from solving utilitarian problems to providing emotional and spiritual fulfillment. For designers, objects hold particular creative, ethical, commercial, and pedagogical significances. This panel will explore a range of meanings, focusing especially on the effect of materiality on meaning. How does the physical nature of the object and its materials shape the ways that designers and users understand objects? What roles do influence and history play in the design and experience of objects?

Friday, March 21  9:00am - 10:30am
Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center, RISD Museum
The term Practice implies that we have to do something to understand it and that we get better the more we do it. What are the qualities of creative practice and how are they directed towards social design? How does creative practice work and how does it encourage innovation?

Friday, March 21  10:30m - 12:00pm
Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center, RISD Museum
Design Thinking takes us across big changes of scale, from the smallest object to the infrastructures of human experience. Relationships between experimental and applied design skills, together with knowledge building and participatory planning, all feature in the social connectivity that we care about.

Friday, March 21  1:30pm - 3:00pm
Metcalf Auditorium, Chace Center, RISD Museum
What are effective methods, practices, experiences and strategies necessary for building knowledge in design? What are the relevant links among ideas, skills, research and critical making? After brief presentations related to pedagogy from each panelist, Professor John Dunnigan will moderate a discussion in search of ways to build creative practice and social connectivity through education in art and design.