National Community Design Conference
Our colleagues over at the Association for Community Design are holding their annual National Community Design Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah this year! We’ve been invited to be a part of the Emerging Practices Panel. We’re honored to be a part of the conference, and we recommend it to any of our fellow citizen designers.
It’s been twenty years since the last time we visited the “The Crossroads of the West” in 1992 and this year we will gather to discuss where Community Design has been and what we have learned in the process in order to project how community-based design practices may continue to be helpful in improving our built environment and the larger dialogs that shape it.
Our annual conference offers a chance for Community Design professionals and organization’s staff gather in person to share skills, strategies, and stories. Embedded in ACD’s membership is a wealth of experience in addressing social, environmental and economic justice through a design framework. In addition to providing a forum to introduce and support new as well as long-term practitioners, we also want to celebrate the work of the organizations that serve as local hosts. That’s why we’re partnering with ASSIST Utah and Center for the Living City to bring you “WE ARE: Reflections and Projections on the Legacy of Community Design”.
This is both an opportunity and a request to gather and discuss capacity building for participatory designers working with communities. There is a strong need for shared core skills, especially for young designers and others new to the field including the many volunteers being mobilized by pro bono initiatives and professional societies’ disaster relief efforts.
This year’s conference aims to provide an exchange of this shared body of knowledge for designers working with and empowering low-income communities to successfully shape their built and natural environment. Please join us this June 8th, 9th, and 10th and share your experience by responding to our Call for Proposals by April 27th. We will be opening registration in a few weeks and will be updating to announce panels and sessions regularly so stay tuned to communitydesign.org/ACD2012 for further details.
See you in SLC!
James Wheeler
President, Board of Directors
Association for Community Design
