Skip to main content

Design Transforms Borders

New York Design Festival: 16-19 May 2022

Live studios exploring borders and their meanings: relationships informed by them, the physical, the geographic and emotional significance of borders, identities formed, and journeys made.

The Central Saint Martins Product, Ceramic and Industrial Design Programme invited the extended communities of Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NYC to join live studios of ceramic making, dinners and debates promoting access, learning and social justice.

A regeneration site, the area is notable for multiple deprivations and challenges of inequality. Working with human rights activist organisations Touching Land and Territorial Empathy, the workshops engaged over 600 people over 4 days, with a collectively produced final installation.

The key objective was to bring a broad community into debate through making: highlighting and deepening socially engaged practice and showing leadership in socially engaged design practices.

Close up of a round clay slab with embossed handscript wording 'Borders Are Imagined' and a loveheart symbol.
Design Transforms Borders, New York Design Festival 2022 | Photograph: Kisha Bari
Design Transforms Borders, 2022 | Photograph: Kisha Bari
Design Transforms Borders, 2022 | Photograph: Kisha Bari
Tony Quinn is wearing a green boilersuit and rolling out clay on a table, with other people around him.
Design Transforms Borders, 2022 | Photograph: Kisha Bari

Related content