Schedule

Start Here: RISD Students Make It Better

• Andy Chen, graduate student in Graphic Design
• Soaib Grewal, undergraduate student in Industrial Design
• Jessica Fanning, graduate student in Interior Architecture
• Emily Sara Wilson, graduate student in Graphic Design
• Andreas Nicholas, undergraduate student in Film/Animation/Video

Keynote Addresses
Donna Garland, Associate Director for Communication, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Dr. Howard Koh, Assistant Secretary for Health, US Department of Health and Human Services

What are the forms of practice that enable artists and designers to engage with health and healthcare beyond conventional disciplinary models and narrow instrumentality? How can artists and designers contribute to a broad public conversation on health as a complex medical, economic, political, cultural, and ethical question? Many of the most fundamental challenges we confront today demand these new approaches to practice and public engagement. Perhaps a new activism is emerging that can re-frame public discourse on
health, wellness, and the body, and contribute to fundamental change in institutions, public policy, and everyday culture.

The panelists have each developed roles and structures (institutional, collective, and community-based) to allow them to pursue work around health and related concerns.
As we at RISD define an institutional model for art and design research, how do we acknowledge and extend these new forms of agency, participation, collaboration, engagement, and service?

• Amale Andraos, Partners, WorkAC
• Damon Rich, Founder, Center for Urban Pedagogy and Urban Designer/Waterfront Planner for the City of Newark, NJ
• Claire Pentecost, artist
• Darell Hammond, CEO, KaBOOM!

• Kelli Auerbach, Lecturer, English Department with Dr. Jay Baruch, Brown University Medical School
• Kelly Dobson, Assistant Professor and Interim Head, Digital Media
• Khipra Nichols, Associate Professor, Industrial Design
• Lindsay Kinkade, Critic, Graphic Design
• Susan Doyle, Professor, Illustration

Artists and designers reframe our understanding of the world, its functions and its forms, and create fresh perspectives and experiences. How do artists and designers – with their specific skills, practices, and peculiarities – interface and interact with traditional models of research to create new forms of knowledge, as well as products, systems, and processes that are humane, responsible, and cultural?

These conversations and collaborations also have the potential to productively disrupt and transform creative practices by asking them to be more engaged, relevant, and accountable. Bringing art and design’s traditional emphasis on the qualitative together with quantitative research models will support innovative thinking about health and a renewed social agency for art and design.

• Sarah Goldhagen, Architecture Critic, The New Republic
• Aidan Petrie, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Ximedica
• Jeremy Nobel, Adjunct Faculty in Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, Founder and President of the Foundation for Art and Healing
• Sara Diamond, President, OCAD University

We live in a consumer culture overwhelmed with marketing and misinformation, and a toxic built environment designed with little regard for health. Despite some victories, conventional health messaging and education campaigns have generally met with very limited success. How can artists and designers help develop stronger, more effective models for sharing health information and promoting healthy living as a normal part of everyday life, and create a supportive built and social environment? How can artists and designers help patients and doctors manage complex protocols and practices, and support patients in their efforts to be informed and active decision-makers and collaborators in their own care? How can we understand health as a shared, collective responsibility and not just as a matter of personal agency and responsibility?

• Alexandra Drane, CEO, Eliza Corp.
• Pam Wescott, Director of Patient Perspectives and Evaluation, Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making
• Benjamin Sawyer, President, Digital Mill; Co-founder, Games for Health; Co-director, Serious Games Initiative
• Natalie Jeremijenko, artist