Opportunity this Fall with The Lean Lab (Kansas City)

The Lean Lab acknowledges that K-12 education could be better. The Lean Lab acts as a creative laboratory where creative professionals, entrepreneurs, educators and community leaders can work together to build the future of education in Kansas City.  More formally, we offer an incubator fellowship program where professionals with early stage ideas join the fellowship to create innovative ventures that provide excellent educational opportunities for Kansas City youth.  As of now, we have six ventures in our lab, each spending the next academic year developing and piloting their initiatives.  These six ventures need design help to create polished materials that will take their venture to the next level and allow them to begin seeking funding/investment and impacting urban students of Kansas City.

Their ventures are as follows:

• Business Allied Scholars connects local businesses to urban youth talent for skill building and mentorship opportunities.
• Resilient Connections is an intrapreneural initiative of Truman Medical Center’s Trauma Sensitive Care Initiative and professional development toolkit equipping urban educators with the skills necessary to support students who have experienced significant instances of trauma. 
• Echo Grade is an app that motivates students through quick, meaningful, paperless feedback.
• ELL Teacher Archive is a local toolkit for teachers to transition ELL (English Language Learner) students into classrooms.
  
• My Sister-Girl, MySelf is a peer-to-peer mentoring program for adolescent girls of color.

What we need:

1.   Creative, mission driven, passionate and meticulous individuals looking to build out their graphic design portfolio. 

2.   logo design, media kits, video, templates, marketing materials, etc. 

3.   4 hours of work/week from October-June

What you get:

1. A portfolio of work that you own all creative rights to.
2. A work environment where creativity is respected and you have full creative license to create original work. 
3. Networking opportunities to our design partners--such as MK12 and VML.
4. An opportunity to work with mission driven organizations.

Application process: submit an electric portfolio by September 30, 11:59PM to katie@theleanlab.org

seniors win national "design ignites change" awards

a huge congratulations to amanda laffoon (graphic design KCAI '11), tom morse-brown (graphic design KCAI '11) and tammy shell (graphic design KCAI '11) for winning a $4,700 implementation award and to bryan jones for winning a $500 idea award.

"i need a sidewalk" is an awareness campaign designed to alert city officials of the need to construct a sidewalk and crosswalk that provides access to rosedale park for its citizens. the park is situated across busy mission road and is currently very dangerous for anyone from the immediate neighborhood wishing to use the park facilities. funding will support the production of a billboard and website which will be supported by a press release, web video and other materials.

bryan jones' (graphic design KCAI '11) project, completed with jessica meurer (graphic design KCAI '11) and kate morr (graphic design KCAI '11), is entitled "enlightening individuals". a web-based test and supporting classroom poster series are designed to help fifth-graders understand how they best learn, either through visual, auditory, or kinesthetic means. the idea awards are given for strong concepts and recipients are not obliged to implement their projects.

see the full "design ignites change" press release here for a full list of winners. a special thanks goes out to jane heide, joshua hoffman, heidi holliday, and wendy wilson, our community partners in the rosedale neighborhood, for making this such a great experience for all of our seniors.

kcai designers win national awards

seniors ramzy masri and logan smith have been awarded grants from Design Ignites Change for their social change projects from "visual advocacy" class last term. ramzy received a second place designation for "A Book by its Cover: Reading Stereotypes" and logan recieved a third place designation for "Freewall: Making Space for Diversity". the grants they received will allow them to actually implement their projects in the kansas city community, moving them beyond the classroom to make a real change for real people.

three kcai graphic design students also received honorable mentions -- morgan allen (view project), laura berglund (view project), and ian tirone (view project). kcai students numbered five out of a total of eight projects recognized for excellence in this national level grant competition.

check out the press release on the DIC website here. 

the Design Ignites Change Implementation Award is granted twice a year to student initiatives that exhibit a powerful and provocative solution to a pressing social problem. Design Ignites Change engages high school and college students in multidisciplinary design and architecture projects that address pressing social issues. participants are encouraged to apply design thinking—the combination of unleashed creativity and executable actions—to problems that exist in their own communities.

a huge congratulations to everyone for making our department shine!