Last year, Cedric Johnson embedded himself at ArtCenter for a week-long residency. Included in that visit was a talk about the policing crisis as well as a workshop with students exploring what it means to “do good” in the world through art and design.  These issues have only become more timely in the intervening year. But as any good historian will tell you – and Cedric most definitely fits that description – history has a way of colliding with the present if you wait long enough.  As a...

Welcome to our third episode of Change Lab Presents Throughout this season, on alternating weeks, we’ll feature a handpicked episode from podcasts by, for or about the Black community. This week we’re excited to share an episode from Scene On Radio, produced by host John Biewen, in conversation with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Scene on Radio is a Peabody-nominated podcast that dives deeply into issues central to American society. The show comes from the Center for Documentary...

Like the consummate designer he is -- Kevin Bethune has iterated his own job description.  Kevin’s strikingly diverse career-path includes stints as a nuclear engineer at Westinghouse Electric, a financial manager at Nike and strategic design innovator at Boston Consulting group -- all achievements that would stand alone as a high-point on most resumes.  But Kevin still had goals he’d yet to articulate and accomplish. And, as you’ll hear through his deeply introspective reflections in this...

Welcome to our second episode of Change Lab Presents Throughout this season, on alternating weeks, we’ll feature a series of bonus episodes we’ve handpicked from some of our favorite podcasts by, for or about the Black community. This week, we’re excited to share an episode from The Brown Girl's Guide to Politics from the Wonder Media Network. Host A’shanti Gholar leads conversations with women changing the face of politics. Episodes include interviews with politicians, candidates, and...

Throughout her long and distinguished career as a commercial and fine art photographer, Barbara DuMetz has produced images that feel familiar even if you’re viewing them for the first time. Through her lens, even the most ordinary subject matter has a mythic quality. She has a story to tell that reaches far beyond the frame.  That’s her unique creative gift. And it’s one she began cultivating as an ArtCenter student and ultimately deployed to great effect in editorial spreads for glossy...

Welcome to our first episode of Change Lab Presents Throughout this season, on alternating weeks, we’ll feature a handpicked episode from podcasts by, for or about the Black community. This week we’re excited to share an episode from The Institute of Black Imagination. Hosted by artist, writer, and brand consultant Dario Calmese, the show features conversations from The Pool of Black Genius: a collection of iconoclasts at the leading edge of cultural thought and innovation. Today’s episode...

There is something almost poetic about beginning this season, dedicated to amplifying Black voices, with today’s interview with Bob Davidson, who recently stepped down from his post as Chairman of ArtCenter’s Board of Trustees. Bob was instrumental in my decision to assume my current role as President of ArtCenter. And over the past eleven years, our collaboration has been among the most profoundly transformative of my entire career. Our bond transcended our professional roles (for all...

On September 23rd, Change Lab will kick off its seventh season, which is dedicated to amplifying Black voices in art, design and activism. Much has changed since our last episode – everything really. So in response to these radically shifting times, this next set of interviews will lean into the special relationship between uncertainty and creativity and how it just might hold the key to unlocking ideas and works of art and design that can change the world.

This episode of Change Lab happens to be the last one of this season and we’ll resume again, as usual, in the fall. And though it wasn’t planned this way, it’s hard to think of an interview more timely or better suited to demonstrating the strength of the creative spirit to transcend expectations, assumptions and challenges than this one with Chaz Bojorquez, aka the Godfather of Graffiti. There are few art world honors as coveted as having a piece of work included in the Smithsonian’s...

Diane Luby Lane is the founder and executive director of Get Lit-Words Ignite, a leading arts education nonprofit dedicated to increasing literacy and stemming dropout rates among at-risk youth. Her groundbreaking curriculum, fusing classic literature with spoken word performance techniques, has been adopted by schools around the country. In this inspiring episode of Change Lab, Lorne Buchman sat down with Diane to discuss the redemptive power of poetry her mission to share it with the world.

Storytelling is Dennis Gassner’s mother tongue. It’s the language – and the context -- through which the ArtCenter alum and legendary production designer processes the ideas of a script, and it fundamentally shapes the worlds his characters inhabit on screen. The six-time Oscar nominee is best known for the technically ambitious and artfully realized environments he has created for six Coen Bros films, the last four James Bond movies, Blade Runner 2049 and Bugsy – for which he won an...

It’s not an overstatement to say that Jessica Helfand is a renaissance woman of the design world. She co-founded Design Observer, an authoritative digital publication on the state of visual culture and an oracle of wise and thoughtful discourse on design for many of us. She also co-hosts two podcasts: The Observatory and The Design of Business/ The Business of Design. In all aspects of her work and writing, she asks profound questions about creative practice and challenges our assumptions...

Ini Archibong is a luxury goods designer. He is also a furniture and immersive experience designer and an ArtCenter alum. This is all accurate and incomplete. So we’ll leave it to Ini to describe his creative practice: “Any of the objects I’m making -- all they are is a potential entry point to wonder.” Ini has been accumulating accolades and prestigious commissions from the moment he graduated from ArtCenter’s Environmental Design program in 2012. After earning his MFA in Switzerland from...

Ivy Meeropol is a documentary filmmaker whose emotionally and politically charged films explore social and cultural injustice from the inside out. Her work in TV and film ranges from an exploration of the threat posed by the nuclear power industry to the good, bad and ugly of the American political system, particularly as it relates to her family (more on that in a moment). But what distinguishes her work most is her disarming refusal to judge the characters in her films as heroes or...

Sadie Red Wing and Saki Mafundikwa grew up a world and two generations apart. Sadie was born into the Lakota tribe and also considers herself a citizen of the Spirt Lake Nation of Fort Totten, South Dakota—two longstanding American indigenous communities. Saki, on the other hand, didn’t set foot in the United States until he left his native Zimbabwe at age 24 in 1979, almost twenty years before Sadie was born. Despite their different points of origin, their approach to their chosen...

ArtCenter’s Transportation Design program has a type and, at first glance, Vicente Magaña seems to fit it perfectly. A lifelong obsession with cars? Check. A childhood spent sketching every type of vehicle his imagination could conjure? Check. An insatiable desire to land a job designing supercars and road testing them at top speed? Well…that’s where Vicente, a Summer 2019 ArtCenter alum, separates himself from the pack. Vicente is the rare car guy whose driving passion is not to design...

Though Phil Gilbert’s official job title is General Manager of Design at IBM, he’s more often referred to as IBM’s very own design evangelist. But ask him to describe his earliest creative impulses and he’ll tell you without hesitation that he was an entrepreneur from “day one.” It quickly became clear that Phil is all these things and more after spending the day with him at IBM’s colorful, post-it-strewn design studio in Austin. In other words, to use a tech-speak term of art: Phil is a...

In the lead up to the launch of Change Lab Season 5 on September 25, we’re releasing a series of “Encore” episodes. For this final installment, we caught up with graphic journalist Wendy MacNaughton to discuss her latest creative endeavor: A Honda Element she’s tricked out to function as a mobile studio. The car features a custom-made drafting table, art supply storage, and a double bed to catch some zzz’s on longer road trips. Wendy embarked on the project after realizing that solo time on...

In the lead up to the launch of Change Lab Season 5 on September 25, we’re releasing a series of “Encore” episodes. For this installment, we caught up with designer and entrepreneur Jesse Genet for an update on the big changes she’s undergone in the short time since we last spoke. As the home-shopping revolution continues to redefine the way we shop and live, Lumi, Genet’s packaging business, has become an integral part of the e-commerce pipeline. To accommodate this growth, Lumi has moved...

In the lead up to the launch of Change Lab Season 5 on September 25, we’re releasing a series of “Encore” episodes. For this debut installment, we caught up with artist Jackie Amezquita before she embarked on a three-week journey from Southern California through Mexico, primarily on foot, all the way to her native Guatemala. Amezquita refers to this emotionally and physically arduous journey as a performance titled “De Norte a Sud.” Over the course of her three-week trek, she’ll be retracing...

For thirty years, Father Greg Boyle has made it his mission to heal those afflicted by the epidemic of gang violence. As the founder of Homeboy Industries, Father Greg has been instrumental in turning the tide on violent crime in Los Angeles and beyond. The secret to his success begins with reframing a question. Instead of asking “how can we serve gang members?” Father Greg asks, “how can we stand with them, in awe of the pain they carry, and allow ourselves to be reached by them?”

Rosanne Somerson is an internationally exhibited furniture designer and President of Rhode Island School of Design. Somerson, a RISD alum, sees her parallel roles as a leader and practitioner as complementary parts of her life’s work, which she says began when she was a young girl charged with describing the world to her blind grandfather and “opening doors for people to see things differently.”

Jeff Goodby is an advertising legend, whose humanity and humility have propelled him to the peak of a profession not necessarily known for either. Imagine an ad man as clever and visionary as Don Draper, minus the chain-smoking and cynicism and you start to get a sense of the scope of Jeff’s influence in the advertising industry.

Rebeca Mendez is an artist, designer, educator and ArtCenter alumna whose creative practice defies the bounds of traditional disciplines or descriptions.

Mariana Prieto has made it her mission to use her design skills to improve lives around the globe, human and otherwise.