Design as agent of sustainable changes
By Prof. Ezio Manzini

Social innovation. Over the last decade a multiplicity of social actors throughout the world (institutions, enterprises, non-profit organisations and, most of all, networks of collaborative people) have moved outside mainstream models of thinking and doing, generating a variety of promising initiatives (community-supported agriculture, co-housing, car pooling, community gardens, neighborhood care, time banks,…). They are working prototypes of sustainable ways of living and, at the same time, they are viable solutions to complex problems of the present (such as social cohesion, urban regeneration, healthy food accessibility, water and sustainable energy management). Together they form a promising wave of social innovation recognizable in all the regions of the world, from mature industrial countries, to emerging and developing ones.

PERL, The Partnership for Education and Research about Responsible Living  has set sails for its coming conference: Enabling Responsible Living, March 14 – 15, 2011 to be held in Istanbul, Turkey. The venue: Maltepe University.

To be highlighted at the conference, there is the role of video in the sustainability’s discourse, this by means of a “Student Film Competition 2011”.
Winning films will be shown during PERL’s International Conference and selected films will be posted on UNEP’s Creative Gallery on Sustainability Communications (United Nations Environment Programme).
For more information visit PERL’s website.

Now, in the Framework of the conference, a preliminar meeting of interested members, partners or friends of Desis will have place to discuss the possibilities to start up an official Desis Turkey. It will be an unique opportunity to share ideas and initiatives from this enchanting lattitudes.

To know more please visit: http://www.perlprojects.org/
The call for papers and projects for the conference is now OPEN.

The meeting will be held at the evening of 30th November 2010 
during the coming DesignEd Asia Conference in Hong Kong.
It will involve all the DESIS-China members and DESIS-Hong Kong 
Polytechnic University members.

Rio de Janeiro week on Social Innovation and Design
22nd-26th Nov. 2010