Design Educators Conference, response_ability: Ethics and Sustainability in Design Education, took place May 14-16, 2010, in Toledo, Ohio. This October 8-10, the next Conference, New Contexts/New Practices, will take place in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Site coming soon.)
Response_ability was exceptionally well-organized with and excellent balance of food, fun, and fulfilling ideas that provided productive and meaningful substance to enhance our understanding of responsibility and response ability. The event included many of the most recognized efforts taking place towards ethics and sustainability in design education today including The Living Principles, the outcome status of Designers Accord Global Summit on Design Education & Sustainability, and included a working session on AIGA Standards of Teaching development. Rick Poynor, Rick Valicenti, and Nathan Shedroff presented varied and substantive perspectives on ways in which sustainability might be understood along with 4 periods of breakout sessions that allowed for varied and thoughtful perspectives and experiences from individual educators. Thankfully the conference organizers, Amy Fidler, Jenn Stucker, and Matt Davis video-taped all conference talks and sessions. These will be available on a site specifically documenting the conference. Papers will also be included. Watch the response_ability site for more information. For anyone interested, I (Louise Sandhaus, DEC steering Committee chair) personally blogged the conference here.