Looking to hone your skills doing design with a social impact? Have you heard about Impact Wrkshp?

Irina Schneid, AIA, Founder & Design Director of the Impact Wrkshp, and the Summer 2019 fellows working on the 2019 Impact Project: Hammock Room. Learn more about the Hammock Room project.

In the Fall 2019/Spring 2020 season so many of you expressed an interest in doing more impactful design work and inquired about what opportunities are available to do this type of work. Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Irina Schneid, AIA, Founder & Design Director of the Impact Wrkshp, a program that is creating those opportunities.

Impact Wrkshp is a social impact organization for women in design. The program connects design students with local communities and helps them bring participatory art projects to life within those communities. Irina, with the help of her all-woman, interdisciplinary team of leadership and advisors, has created a summer program that offers recent graduates mentorship, while giving them the opportunity to sharpen design skills with community based social impact projects.

The Impact Wrkshp mantra is:

We believe that every student, of every age, in every community, is entitled to question and create. When provided with the tools and mentorship to harness design as a catalyst for learning, students are empowered to both imagine a more equitable world and to build one.

Irina also shared a bit about the most recent project completed by the program.

This year our virtual fellowship project, Covid:KIT, addresses the social and emotional toll of prolonged isolation and re-occupation of public space. We propose a series of sidewalk installations which deploy social distancing guidelines as tools for bringing people together (safely) rather than keeping them apart.  Our kit includes the design of outdoor gaming circles, artistic rest spots and sensible spacers which activate the sidewalk as a space of joy and celebration amidst uncertainty and isolation.     

Applications for the Summer 2021 program will go live in February. We will make an announcement once applications are live. For now, we are excited to share the program with all of you so it’s on your radar for next year. We are also happy to shine a light on Irina and the amazing crew of women that make the Impact Wrkshp program possible!

Learn more about the Impact Wrkshp at impactwrkshp.com and follow their work on Instagram @impact_wrkshp.