Who Cares? was a series of talks, workshops and a one-day symposium, bringing together award-winning industry speakers, alumni and students from Arts University Bournemouth.
Who Cares? was the third symposium held at AUB that explored how designers and creative practitioners can make a positive difference to the lives of others and use their skills as a force for global good. The series of events, held in March 2017 aimed to inspire and challenge our creative community to consider their own obligation towards social, ethical and sustainable creative practice. The focus of the talks was to inspire, offer support and share information that demonstrates the potential for creativity to address the global issues we face today.
Alice Stevens, FRSA, Founder + Event Organiser. Senior Lecturer in BA (Hons) Graphic Design
Speakers
Sevra is Director of the RSA Student Design Awards and Director of Design and Challenges at the RSA. A dedicated champion of design for social good, Sevra spent 10 years working in industry as an architect and urban designer before joining the RSA in 2010. During her time leading the RSA Student Design Awards, Sevra has led the development of the competition to include workshops, mentoring opportunities, and an annual ‘roadshow’ introducing the briefs to universities in the UK and internationally. She has consulted on design education for international government clients, and frequently speaks on a wide range of topics around designing for social impact, design thinking, and open innovation. She is interested in how design can help people, professions, organisations and industries that aren’t traditionally associated with design.
Umesh has been working as a designer for over 16 years and is passionate about helping organisations make inclusive digital products. His current focus is on using the internet of things, to make our cites inclusive to all. He believes that “As we weave computers into the fabric of our environment and being, we should aspire to create inclusive, trustworthy and delightful products that dissolve effortlessly into our everyday life”.
He is Co-Founder, CEO at Wayfindr, a pioneering tech for good, google.org backed, not-for-profit, whose mission it is to empower millions of vision impaired people to navigate the world independently. Wayfindr publishes a free to use, Open Standard, that guides venue owners in using indoor navigation services to improve the wayfinding experience for all their customers.
Ruby recently participated in BBC2 series, The Big Life Fix with Simon Reeve. The series sought to create innovative solutions for people in desperate need.
As Senior Design Strategist at Smart Design, Ruby is committed to making people’s lives better through the power of design. She works across a variety of industries, with an emphasis on healthcare. At 17 Ruby met someone living with HIV and was deeply affected by the lack of empathy they received from others. That day Ruby decided she would help people isolated by circumstance. Ruby later graduated from Kingston University and then went on to gain a Master’s degree in Innovation Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College of London. Today, with more than eight years experience of designing products, services and experiences, she has remained true to her 17-year-old self. Ruby has been awarded two Helen Hamlyn Design Awards for Creativity and Inclusive Design, and received honorable mentions from Core77 and the RSA for design solutions combating issues such as social isolation in older people.
Part detective, part designer, Nathaniel’s passion lies in leading design teams to ask the hard questions and find the right answers. As the head of the Experience Strategy discipline at Smart Design, he ensures that user research and business analysis translate into clear insight and strategic direction for new experiences. His teams thread together emotional values, behavioural needs, cultural trends, and business opportunities to create a clear story for design. In this 10 years of experience, He has worked in a range of categories including Transportation, Healthcare, Finance, Entertainment, and Consumer Products. He has a background in cultural anthropology and social psychology as well as degrees in architecture and industrial design from U of Cincinnati, DAAP and Yale University.
In addition to the symposium, a series of industry speakers, alumni and current students contributed to the events. Chrissy Levett founded the Creative Conscience Awards in 2012. Creative Conscience is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to improve the communities in which we live and work and in turn help transform the wider world. Students from a range of courses at AUB have won Creative Conscience Awards and subsequently had the opportunity of internships, mentoring and networking opportunities. In some cases, the student had the opportunity to work with an NGO to see their project become a reality.
Chrissy’s presentation was followed by AUB Graphic Design alumni, Kieran James. Kieran won a Gold Award at Creative Conscience in 2016 for his project Breathe. As an asthma sufferer himself, Kieran felt it was important to explore why the numbers of people dying from asthma attacks had not decreased that much since the 1980s. Breathe was Kieran’s response to his research and personal insight and aims to be an emergency inhaler that blends into ones’ lifestyle.
Kieran also undertook an internship at the Movember Foundation to develop his second-year student project, The University Pants Run, which went live in universities across the country in November.
As well as the talks, students had the opportunity to undertake multi-disciplinary, collaborative workshops that explored issues such as Sustainability how we can make the environment a happier, healthier place to live and work. Graphic design students also had the opportunity of collaborating with the Movember Foundation. Movember are committed to helping men live happier, healthier and longer lives and they aim to address some of the biggest health issues faced by men such as mental health, prostate and testicular cancer.
