Student Projects
Community Service Fellowship Program
All GSD students with appropriate work experience, who will be returning to the GSD in the fall following the Fellowship are eligible to apply for funding. Past awards have ranged from $250 to $7000.
The Community Service Fellowship Porgram (CSFP) provides opportunities for GSD students to extend their design education beyond the studio walls of the Graduate School of Design through direct involvement with projects that address public needs and community concerns at the local level.
Summer Internship CSFP Fellowships are 10 week paid summer internships with local community organizations, state and federal agencies and non-profit organizations. GSD students may develop their own projects and fellowship sites.
International Travel CSFP Fellowships provide funding to help GSD students travel to overseas destinations to perform community service throughout the year, in projects of varying durations. Funding is focused upon helping students with travel expenses.
Additional details about the Community Service Fellowship Program (CSFP)
RECENT FELLOWS
THE DESIGNERY AT YOUTH BUILD BOSTON
Lindsay Chandler-Alexander, MArch 2012 spent her 2009 summer fellowship at Youth Build Boston, a nonprofit organization dedicated to opening academic and professional doors to the underserved youth in Boston.
Lindsay worked in The Designery, one of three programs offered. It specifically targets design education, using real world based projects to educate participants in all aspects of architectural design. Lindsay utilized her undergraduate training in fine arts and photography, along with her architectural training, to work with youth in design education.
INSERT! CHINATOWN STOREFRONT LIBRARY, BOSTON
Julian Bushmann-Copp, MArch 2012 and Matthew Swaidan, MArch 2012 spent the summer working on a project initiated by the Department of Micro-Urbanism, an art and design initiative founded by Marrikka Trotter, a MDesS 2009 graduate. They designed, fabricated and constructed INSERT! for the Chinatown Storefront Library, an innovative, compact and flexible program space. The design is modular, portable, and reconfigurable; it can be adapted to multiple locations and changes in use as the Storefront Library project continues and changes over time. At the end of the Storefront Library project, the INSERT! components will be reused for other purposes within the community.
The Chinatown Storefront Library will transform an empty storefront in Boston's Chinatown into a temporary public library. Operating for approximately three months, the project will provide urgently-needed services for a community that has been without a library since 1956, while creating a new advocacy tool for Chinatown's efforts for a permanent library.
For Chinatown, A New Chapter, Boston Globe, Sept. 21, 2009
Building A Happy Ending, Harvard Gazette, Sept. 2, 2009
INSERT! Chinatown Storefront Library project blog
PROJECT KHAYELITSHA
Laura Shipman, MAUD 08, Ashley Heeren, MArch I 09 and Patrick Stowe Jones, MArch I received International Travel CSFP Fellowships to fund their travel to South Africa in the summer of 2007.
project_KHAYELITSHA is an effort to design and assist in construction of a new multipurpose community center in Khayelitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. The recently acquired site provides an opportunity to create a center which fosters a sense of community ownership, and a space serving an entire neighborhood with education and development projects. Khayelitsha is the second largest township in South Africa, home to over 500,000 people. This project is affiliated with Art Aids Art and MonkeyBiz, nonprofit organizations working with a South African collective of women artists to create employment and empowerment for disadvantaged women through beadwork in the township.
DESIGN CORPS, MISSISSIPPI
Christoph Ibele, Aron Chang, and Sabeen Hasan, all MArch I class of 2009, attended the 2007 Design Corps Summer Studio in Waveland, Mississippi. Students received funding from the CSFP - Domestic U.S. for community service projects of varying lengths of time anywhere in the United States.* Design Corps fellows participate in all aspects of projects. GSD students were involved in the design and construction of a single family home and all its components. The work entailed modular construction and local material sourcing and salvaging, part of a broader effort to provide disaster relief in the Gulf Coast.
In 2008, the GSD hosted Design Corps' annual conference that addresses design for the underserved. The eighth annual Structures for Inclusion conference, ttitled "Systems for Inclusion," examined the relationship between design, politics and community.
*CSFP - Domestic U.S. fellowship is not currently being offered as of Fall 2009.
