Creative talent filled the room as Parsons hosted an all-day conference Friday called “Design for Change” exploring the connection between design, social responsibility, and nonprofit organizations.

Welcoming attendees, New School president Bob Kerrey placed the conference in an international context. He mentioned challenges that government as well as the nonprofit and private sectors will face in the next quarter century, such as the large migration of people from rural to urban areas.

The dean of Parsons, Paul Goldberger, spoke next. He said that design, which he defined as “a way of coherently solving problems,” had a connection to the larger goal expressed in the Hebrew phrase “tikkun olam” (healing the world). “There could be no better motto for the design profession,” he said, “than to heal the world.” Aesthetics and social responsibility, he said, were not a “zero-sum game.” Paying attention to one doesn’t diminish the other. Rather, they can mutually support each other.

The first panel featured Parsons faculty members discussing courses and initiatives at the school that involve civic engagement. Gwynne Keathley spoke of a class of students who traveled to the Dominican Republic and examined tourism in its third-largest city. The class developed a tourist guide and met with the city’s mayor to discuss it.

In an afternoon panel, designers made presentations and nonprofit professionals posed questions. Patricia Beirne talked about an AIDS memorial grove in San Francisco. Damon Rich, who co-founded a nonprofit called the Center for Urban Pedagogy, spoke about an exhibit that educates people about building codes. George Bliss, of the Center for Alternative Transport, described his interest in “vehicles that integrate with pedestrians.” The audience broke into applause when he said his design problem was, “How do you get cars out of Manhattan?” He founded Pedicabs of New York, which offer bicycle-taxi services in the city.

Later, keynote speaker David Bornstein spoke about three social entrepreneurs who showed determination in solving difficult problems: an economist who pioneered “micro-lending” in Bangladesh as an anti-poverty strategy; a Brazilian engineer and agronomist who brought solar energy to the poor; and a New School graduate who created a telephone hot line for street children in India.

Over the lunch hour, the Knickerbocker spoke with three recent Parsons graduates who were among the design ers to collaborate with nonprofit organizations for their projects. One was Hilary Boyajian, who designed clothing for women who have had mastectomies and are awaiting or do not want reconstructive surgery.

Another was Joel Herron, who graduated in May, and whose mother died of cancer in 2001 in North Carolina. He designed an interactive quilt for the terminally ill. Called Patch, the quilt aims to combat the feeling of isolation by giving a terminally ill person a way to reflect on moments in his or her life. In his research, he found that terminally ill people tend to need to relive moments of their lives. Working with Beth-Israel Medical Center Hospice and a pastoral psychotherapist, he designed a blank canvas quilt that one can “build without having to do any sewing.” With the use of snaps and photo-sleeves on cotton textile, the patient can place photos, objects, and other keepsakes in the quilt as a kind of horizontal scrapbook.

The third student, Romi Hefetz, worked with the organization Doctors Without Borders. She made a water container designed to reduce contamination risk in Sub-Saharan Africa. Called Aqualoop, the container resembles a small translucent inner tube with handles and has a special valve preventing it from being refilled from other water sources that could contaminate its contents.

The conference left one optimistic about the talent and civic involvement of the next generation of designers at Parsons.

***

KENYON KICKOFF The Kenyon Review, the distinguished literary magazine, held a party Thursday as a kickoff for its upcoming gala on November 10 that will honor sportswriter and fiction editor Roger Angell and novelist/philosopher Umberto Eco. In previous years, the magazine has honored E.L. Doctorow, Seamus Heaney, and Joyce Carol Oates.

The quarterly magazine has a distinguished history. It was founded at Kenyon College in 1939 by poet and critic John Crowe Ransom and is currently edited by David Lynn.

At the reception, Paris-born author Lily Tuck read from her novel “The News From Paraguay” (Perennial). In attendance were literary agent Georges Borchardt; Kenyon College’s president, S. Georgia Nugent; and W.W. Norton editor Jill Bialosky talking with one of her authors, David Baker – Denison University professor and poetry editor of the Kenyon Review. He has a forthcoming book titled “Midwest Eclogue: Poems” coming out in October.

gshapiro@nysun.com