Social Innovation and Design Education: Towards a Socially Responsive Communication Design Pedagogy

Abstract

This paper argues that social innovation in relation to communication design education needs to redirect the very conditions of such education. The current conditions of communication design education are discussed. A socially responsive communication design pedagogy embedded in social movements, working as an institutional critique and practiced by the Memefest collective through strategies of a socially responsive communication/design and art festival, long-term network development, and longer range engagement with communities and interests is outlined.

Keywords:

• social innovation
• socially responsive communication design pedagogy
• Memefest
• extra-disciplinary investigations
• autonomous networks
• social movements
• designers as practical intellectuals
• alternative design institutions

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oliver Vodeb

Dr Oliver Vodeb is a member of the Memefest collective, founder and principal editor and curator of the Memefest Festival of Socially Responsive Communication/Design and Art www.memefest.org), and an academic in the Department of Communication Design, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, where he is focusing on communication design for social futures and working on developing advertising futures. Publications include Socially Responsive Communication (2009, University of Ljubljana) and InDEBTed to Intervene: Critical Lessons in Debt, Communication, Art and Theoretical Practice (with Nikola Janovic, 2013, Octivium Press). He is editor/curator of the Socially Responsive Communication/Design and Art: Memefest Interventions book series, published by Intellect Books UK. He is currently working on a book on food democracy and a number of interventions in support of the Australian Aboriginal struggle against colonization.

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