Workshops and Master Classes

Alone and in partnership with other universities, we have conducted master classes around the world. These have included customized programs on city revitalization, communication design, storytelling, entrepreneurial thinking, prototyping, collaborative creativity, culture change and social design. Two examples are below, please contact us for more information.

Entrepreneurial Leadership and Social Design.
Integrating the best of two methodologies for solving problems and creating opportunities, a new partnership between the Social Design Master’s Program at the School of Visual Arts and the Lewis Institute at Babson College has produced, under the leadership of Cheryl Heller and Cheryl Kiser, a groundbreaking new program.


Learning outcomes:
  • Use language that breaks through jargon to express new ideas and shift paradigms
  • See and map systems that lead to a shared understanding of reality and priorities
  • Situate themselves and their organizations in context with nature
  • Think critically
  • Know how to unlearn and reframe problems
  • Recognize patterns and develop insights
  • Lead a collaborative creative process
  • Design for productive relationships
  • Use design methodologies
  • Create prototypes and integrate feedback
  • Act their way into new thinking, rather than thinking their way into a new way of acting.
  • Critique skills that push ideas from inception to practical reality

“I found the course to be incredibly eye-opening, and the iterative design meth- od to be far more efficient and effective than what I was taught a design process should be. I have already been able to put it into practice for my job. Thank you so much for changing how I think about solving social issues!”