DESIGNING FOR EMPATHY® SUMMIT & WORKSHOPS - 2023

The Designing for Empathy Student Community is an initiative intended to deeply engage students in the functions and ethos of ONE - Organization of Networks for Empathy and the Annual Designing for Empathy Summit. The Designing for Empathy Student Community is comprised of two main components: a scholarship competition built around the ethos of designing for empathy – below – and acknowledgement at the annual summit scheduled for October 25-27th, 2023 at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology, New York.

Humanity is at a crossroads: it is imperative that we find ways to develop care and concern for one another, and our interconnected existence. Empathy, our ability to imagine what it might feel like to be another, is a perceptive lens through which we may choose to view the world, and our place within. A focus on the many nuances of empathy from multidisciplinary and multicultural perspectives is necessary for our understanding of what empathy can be for our world. A multifaceted approach to empathy can enable us to develop the most relevant, healing, and ethical empathy-

building solutions that would benefit our oneness —all of humanity, our kin that we share our world with, and our planet.

Annual Designing for Empathy® Summits provide all participants with direct engagement in the process of social innovation towards equity, diversity, and social and environmental justice through collaborative work in empathy-building. The 6th Annual Designing for Empathy® Summit & Workshops will be home to a unique multidisciplinary network of dedicated creatives, scholars, and thought-leaders. We believe that empathy permeates all aspects of our lives, and a collective action to intentionally design for empathy should be equally diverse and inclusive. Our 3-day gathering results in long-term innovative collaborations across disciplines and sectors to create a culture of empathy in our world. Annual Designing for Empathy® Summit & Workshops are curated by Elif M. Gokcigdem, PhD, founding president of ONE - Organization of Networks for Empathy, and the editor of Fostering Empathy Through Museums (2016) & Designing for Empathy: Perspectives on the Museum Experience (2019). https://oneempathynetwork.com

The 6th Annual Designing for Empathy® Summit & Workshops will take place at

The Rubin Museum of Art, and the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York (October 25-27, 2023). This year, we are inviting multidisciplinary creatives to collectively explore the invisible stories that are often overlooked, yet are critical to our understanding of what empathy is, its many nuances, and what it means for our collective future.

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

The tension between duality and oneness, is one of those invisible narratives that underlies our existence. As we go through life from the vantage point of the self, which is prone to ego-centric attitudes and choices, how might we expand our circle of care towards the other? How might we use art, artifacts, and museums to learn about ourselves, and the ways we perceive the other, so that we may develop strategies for self-accountability and self-correction? Which invisible filters, through which we view the world, and our place within? What are some of the invisible choices that we make? What can we learn from those experiences where our heart tells us that we are a part of something much greater than ourselves and all is one, yet our embodied reality makes it difficult for us to witness this invisible oneness of being? Can our oneness be the object of empathy? ...What else about empathy is essential for us to know, yet remains invisible to the eye?

The Designing for Empathy® framework suggests that an empathy-building effort should begin with the exploration of three guiding questions concerning the “object” of empathy, the Alchemy of Empathy, and the Scope & the Spectrum of Empathy. 

Within the context of Designing for Empathy® framework, a working definition of Empathy is: a form of perception that enables us to connect with ourselves, and others, while awakening us into our oneness. Inspired by indigenous and wisdom traditions that point out to the oneness of being, Designing for Empathy® approaches the concept of oneness as a mindset that is essential to our collective survival.

Oneness Mindset is considered as a lens, or a master perspective, through which we might choose to see our world and our place in it, inspiring us to design and utilize our resources such as knowledge, technologies and systems, with the intention of helping humans develop harmonious engagements with the whole. Inspired by recent scientific research, which suggests that “a belief in oneness has broad implications for psychological functioning and compassion for those are outside our immediate circle. In general, those who hold a belief in oneness have a more inclusive identity that reflects their sense of connection with other people, nonhuman animals, and aspects of nature that are all thought to be part of the same ‘one thing’” —Designing for Empathy® suggests that approaching “oneness” as a “mindset” could enable us to respectfully explore the collective human wisdom of oneness in its various authentic contexts when it was considered as a lens, through which to view and experience the world.

Within this context, Empathy-building is an intentionally designed, transformative (perspective/paradigm shifting and worldview-expanding) lived perceptual experience that leads to self-knowledge. Through empathy-building we might calibrate and harmonize our engagements with the other, within our inherent oneness. When we witness, notice, observe, and articulate the filters and biases that affect our perception, we can recognize them in our everyday lives at the point of their arising within. This non-judgmental witnessing and capturing of an inner experience, can help us develop a capacity for self-knowledge, self-accountability, and self-correction in our engagements with the other, and the whole. Empathy-building may lead us to develop a recognition of the intrinsic value of each unique element that makes up the whole and encourages us to calibrate and harmonize our attitudes and behavior accordingly.

The scholarship is a competition for recognition of excellence in students’ works demonstrating the evolving definition and intentions of empathy in the creative arts and design, with awards made in the form of monetary compensation and recognition at the annual summit. Participation in the summit provides students with opportunities for engagement and agency in featuring how emerging creatives and future thought leaders embrace empathy in the arts, museums and designed experiences.

- Solicitations for entries of: exhibition/experience design projects; museum exhibition evaluation or program projects; theoretical research projects; fine arts projects

- Four Awards: Victoria Edwards Foundation, Gallagher & Associates, Kubik Maltbie, and Lorem Ipsum scholarships, $500 each

- June 30th Deadline, August 29th announcement

- Three awardees are featured and present their entrees (remotely or in person) during the summit proceedings

- All 4 honors receive an award plaque, are presented at the Summit and are in affiliated web communications

- Adjudicated blindly by the scholarship committee with a written rubric

What can be entered: Undergraduate and Graduate student works (unpaid/non- professional) in the areas of:

• exhibition & experience design (interpretive environments for museums; interpretive public or commercial sites; interactive experiences and interactive media; environmental graphic design)

• museum studies (original theoretical research; educational program planning; evaluation studies)

• creative & fine arts (painting; sculpture; mixed media; digital arts; written works)

Entry Deadline: Midnight, June 30th, 2023, for projects completed within the 2022-

2023 calendar year.

Submissions should be sent to Brenda_cowan@fitnyc.edu

Format for Entries: All entries will be identified with a cover sheet with the applicant’s name, contact information, affiliated college, title of their work and date. (Entries are adjudicated blind and will not have identifying information when being evaluated.) Each entry will include:

• Title and credits for each project
•Digital images must be PDF or JPEG formats with a maximum file size of 20 MB

• A 500-word written summary describing the work and explaining how the applicant sees their submission as meeting the mission of the Organization of Networks of Empathy

• Entry is free to applicants

• Entries will be submitted to the Designing for Empathy Student Scholarship Competition at: Brenda_cowan@fitnyc.edu

Winning Projects: Winning projects will be announced by September 1st, 2023. Scholarship winners will receive instructions for the preparation of their work for presentation at the Designing for Empathy Summit. Winning entries will be featured on the ONE website at the time of the Summit and publicly announced and digitally showcased during the event. The blind adjudication scoring rubrics for applicants can be provided upon request. Please note: costs related to on site participation at the Summit is not covered by this competition.

Rules and Rights: Applicants will agree to the following terms and conditions when submitting their works:

• Applicant’s entry is exclusively and individually their own

• Applicant’s entry does not infringe upon the intellectual property or moral rights of ownership of other works, including the copyright or ownership of images, text or video

• ONE and the Scholarship sponsors will not be held responsible or liable for any claims made by a third party contesting the applicant’s ownership of the submitted entry

• ONE reserves the right to showcase the winning entry on the ONE Designing for Empathy website, publish winning entrees in the Designing for Empathy Scholarship competition web communications, and to present the entries at the annual summit for the year of their award

• Entrees that do not include a signed Rules and Rights letter will be disqualified from the competition

Gallagher & Associates

Kubik Maltbie

Lorem Ipsum

Victoria Edwards Foundation

Project Evaluation: A multidisciplinary committee comprised of ONE representatives, college faculty from arts and design-based graduate and undergraduate programs, and scholarship sponsors. Judges:

- Professor Brenda Cowan, SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology, Graduate Exhibition & Experience Design

- Gretchen Coss, Gallagher & Associates
- Victoria Edwards Foundation representative
- Abigail Honor, Lorem Ipsum
- Kubik Maltbie representative
- Monique Davis, Mississippi Museum of Art
- Pablo Tinio, PhD, Montclair State University
- Sarah Brenkert, Seattle Aquarium
- Zorana Ivcevic, PhD, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

The committee will evaluate submissions using a rubric to identify project success according to their originality; professional presentation; and embodiment of the Designing for Empathy ethos.

Museums harbor several key ingredients that are conducive to fostering empathy: storytelling, experiences of awe and wonder, experiential learning, dialogue, and contemplation can be experienced in the shared spaces and diverse contexts provided by a variety of museums. By positioning museums as incubators of empathy-building, ONE’s Designing for Empathy® framework contributes to the creation of a culture of empathy in our world, by enabling active collaboration across cultures, disciplines, and sectors to deepen our understanding of the nuances of empathy through experiential learning and innovation.

ONE is dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusivity in its mission, core values, and works. Designing for Empathy® is an international, multicultural, and trans-disciplinary community, which gathers around a framework that enables collaboration across sectors to deepen our understanding of empathy, and to develop solutions that address the empathy deficit in our world.

QUESTIONS -- If you have any questions please contact us at: Brenda_cowan@fitnyc.edu