About us

DESIS is a no-profit and cultural association, with the purpose to promote design for social innovation in higher education institutions with design discipline so as to generate useful design knowledge and to create meaningful social changes in collaboration with other stakeholders.

YOU CAN BECOME A PARTNER

Members can be legally constituted higher education institutions or Universities with design disciplines, private or public. Each Member commits itself to establish and sustain a DESIS lab in its higher education institutions.

WORK WITH US

Design for social innovation can find in the design schools a major driver for its application and diffusion. In fact, design schools (and, more in general, all the design-oriented universities) can orient their didactic and research activities towards social innovation.

Visions & Goals

In the complexity of contemporarysociety, social innovation is spreadingand its potential, as a driver of sustainable change, is increasing. To facilitate this process, the design community, in general, and design schools, in particular, can play a pivotal role.

DESIS Statement

The process of this defining document for the DESIS future started with the DESIS Conversations 2020 – an initiative to discuss the present and the future of social innovation, design and DESIS itself. A DESIS Manifesto started to be written afterwards in a collaborative and open process with all DESIS Labs.

History

Since September 2014, DESIS is a no-profit and cultural association, with the purpose to promote design for social innovation in higher education institutions with design discipline so as to generate useful design knowledge and to create meaningful social changes in collaboration with other stakeholders.

Team

Members can be legally constituted higher education institutions or Universities with design disciplines, private or public, sharing DESIS motivations and visions and supporting DESIS activities (Labs projects, international Initiatives, Platform improvements).

Governance

DESIS Network operates as a constellation of Labs and Lab-Initiatives, supported by a Platform. Each one of these Labs belongs to its own University and has organizational and administrative autonomy with respect to the Association.

Coordination Project

Through conversations with representatives of DESIS Network labs, it is possible to observe how active they are in fostering social innovation at a local level.  Since its foundation, DESIS Network has recognized the value of its labs. Design for social innovation and sustainability is being built (in theory and practice) through all these experiences.

MEMBERSHIP

DESIS Network’s purpose is “to promote design for social innovation in higher education institutions with design discipline so as to generate useful design knowledge and to create meaningful social changes in collaboration with other stakeholders.”

DESIS Network’s purpose is “to promote design for social innovation in higher education institutions with design discipline so as to generate useful design knowledge and to create meaningful social changes in collaboration with other stakeholders.” Applying members who share the same vision and fulfil the following requirements will become DESIS Labs.

Members can be legally constituted higher education institutions or Universities with design disciplines (hereinafter referred to also only as “higher education institutions” or only as “Universities”), private or public, sharing DESIS motivations and visions and supporting DESIS activities (Labs projects, international Initiatives, Platform improvements).

Once the Membership Request Letter and its attachments have been received by the International Coordination Committee, they will be analysed in order to verify if the formal requirements are satisfied. On this basis, feedback will be send to the interested teams.

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