2/5

11:30am-1pm

Sage 5711

What institutions - financial, educational, and cultural - might be required to produce designers who imagine contributions to social justice as obvious to the field of design? This talk presents a design methodology which considers the dynamic relationship between discrete objects ("products") and long-term collaborative networks ("platforms"). Caroline Woolard will provide an overview of her interdisciplinary work from 2008-2024 which utilizes this methodology and draws from critical design, political organizing, art history, science and technology studies (STS), economic anthropology, and critical university studies. Woolard deploys both products and temporary interventions (such as barter-only clothing designs) and sustained platforms (including international peer-learning networks and a cooperative Fellowship program) to expand the boundaries of contemporary design practice.

Caroline Woolard is a designer who works to create and maintain cooperative institutions that concern our most pressing political economic conditions. She is the Head of Strategy at http://Minima.nyc and a part-time faculty member in the Transdisciplinary Design program at The New School. From 2020-2024, Woolard co-founded and established a national network of art and design cooperatives called http://Art.coop which offers an annual Remember the Future Fellowship.


Woolard asks: How might design contribute to cooperatives and other initiatives that aim to spread power and wealth and root it in hyperlocal community-led efforts? What institutions - financial, educational, and cultural - might be required to produce designers who imagine contributions to social justice as obvious to the field of design? She is the author of two major reports and three books, and her design work has been featured twice on New York Close Up (2014, 2016), a digital film series produced by Art21 and broadcast on PBS. More information is available at: https://carolinewoolard.com/#about