The historic SCAD Trustee Theatre where panels and lectures took place.
The Design Ethos: Vision Reconsidered 2012 kicked off yesterday morning with Do-ference, the first part of the two-part conference focused on less talking, more doing.
Scott Boylston, a Professor of Design for Sustainability at Savannah College of Art and Design, founded Design Ethos a year and a half ago with the goal of having a conference that simultaneously offered participants the opportunity to take action.
A sign at a preschool on Waters Avenue, thanking the Do-ference participants.
Bringing together speakers, students, designers, and other locals, the Do-ference divided these participants into six 'teams' who, over the course of the next three days, will strategize ways to empower existing assets along Waters Avenue in Savannah, GA. Each group was assigned an area of focus, taken from the City of Savannah's Waters Avenue Revitalization Initiative: Empowering Community, Empowering Business, Empowering Youth, Empowering Culture, Empowering Place, & Empowering Renewal. In each group, roles were assigned for design voices, a regional voice, municipal voice, as well as a community leader.
Meadowlark Studio and Indigo Sky Gallery Community.
Jerome Meadows and some of the planter installations.
Team Empowering Culture, brainstorming in Meadowlark Studio.
I joined the Empowering Culture group, which met in artist (and RISD Alumnus!) Jerome Meadow's Meadowlark Studio, housed in a historic icehouse off of Waters Avenue. The stunning studio has an adjacent gallery, Indigo Sky Gallery Community, also run by Meadows, which serves as a community space for events and exhibitions. Given the task to initiate a unique, yet sustainable system that celebrates the culture of Waters Avenue, our group immediately set to work brainstorming and discussing various approaches to the problem.
Kate Bordine talking about the planters in the community.