Podcast Episode: Innovation City
via Innovation City:
Created and produced by SLAM! Agency in conjunction with Venture Cafe St. Louis and Venture Cafe Miami, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community.
This episode’s guest is De Nichols, a St. Louis-based social practice designer, entrepreneur and lecturer.
De mobilizes changemakers nationwide to develop creative approaches to the social, civic, and racial justice issues that matter most to them and their communities. She is a creator who uses art to voice dissent and highlight systemic societal issues. She also uses art to bring communities together and build them up.
De received a full ride scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis, where she attended the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Olin Business School, and Brown School of Social Work.
She has delivered two TedX talks: her 1st TedX talk, ‘Unlocking the Creative Capacity of Youth’, was given at TEDxFurmanU; her 2ndTedX Talk, ‘The Art of Protest’, was given at TEDxGatewayArch.
They discuss:
What being a social practice designer means
Communications and Communications Design
The Mirror Casket (which is now exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum for African American History and Culture
Ferguson, MO and Protests
Creating food equity and food access in officially-designated food desserts
The Clinton Global Initiative
Jeff-Vander-Lou 63101, a challenged neighborhood in St. Louis
The Link Market, Storage container grocery stores at Metro stops in St. Louis
Growing up in rural Mississippi
School segregation in Mississippi in the 1990s
De’s Masters Social Work
Social Entrepreneurship
Social challenges in Tuskaloosa, Alabama
Making assumptions while trying to make the world a better place
The importance of listening
Working by invitation in different communities
Co-ownership of art
Faces of the Movement (a photo project that highlights the stories of everyday people who have joined together to fight for justice against police brutality in the United States)
The Nine Network
Crowdfunding
Getting stories and ideas out into the world
The power of common cultural demoninators; eating, storytelling, art, public space, etc.
Finding the data, and the solutions, in the stories that we tell
The journey and the end goal
Futurism
De’s international projects
Design as the intersection of art and life