Memphis Design Lab

Co-Founder, Facilitator

 

Diminished budgets have led to the reduction, sometimes removal, of the arts from many public schools, leaving creatively inclined youth hungry for ways to develop and express their talent. Consequently this leads to a diminished and less diverse emerging workforce for creative professions. Many community educational support organizations strive to fill the gap with programming, but struggle to hold the attention of high school students. In this landscape we created Memphis Design Lab to empower youth through design education and real world experience, expanding opportunity for teens, creating a pipeline to higher education and the creative economy, and providing quality problem solving service to the community.  

 

The Memphis Design Lab (MDL) is a community-hosted design education initiative offering high school students engaging real world experience and career development in locations where few creative educational resources exist. The ‘design doing’ model of MDL merges technical and aesthetic skill building with practicing the strategic methods of human centered design, resulting in students who can discover and solve for human need, but can also implement with clarity and precision. Designed as a self-feeding system MDL symbiotically addresses the needs of high school students, community host organizations, college interns, and professional partners. MDL is a collaborative project developed by me and designer/educator Andrew Lebowitz. MDL now operates as The DZN Lab. Learn more at thedznlab.com