Celebrating 20 Years of the Design Studio for Social Innovation

This October, I had the joy of returning to Boston to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Design Studio for Social Innovation (DS4SI)—an organization that has profoundly influenced the landscape of socially engaged art and design. The event, 20 Questions for 20 Years, marked two decades of creative resistance and community imagination, led by founders Kenny Bailey and Lori Lobenstine.

The celebration took place in a spacious venue that truly embodied DS4SI’s spirit—open, adaptive, and alive. The layout featured a long visual timeline of the organization’s history, a 20-foot-tall wall of maps and processes to showcase how 998 questions became 20, alongside multiple workshop and reflection areas. This allowed participants to experience the twenty years of visionary work through experience.

I was honored to be invited as an active witness to their process for a couple of days by Judith Leeman, a member of Moving Rasa’s first facilitator training cohort in 2018. During my time there, I observed Kenny and Lori as they revisited DS4SI’s archives, sharing stories, laughter, and the deep resonance of their impact. I also had the privilege of participating in their SERC (Social Emergency Response Center)—a model for community care that includes four quadrants: platform, nourishment, healing, and craft. I was part of the healing quadrant, where art, conversation, and presence became medicine. I shared Movement Tarot! 

I was also deeply moved by Chloë Bass’s keynote on her NYC Subway Abolitionist Reading Project, which transforms subway rides into spaces of listening and civic intimacy through recordings of abolitionist texts. Her work reframed public space as a site for care and imagination. There was also a man who featured an Indigenous Land Back movement sharing films that call for the return of land to Tribal stewardship—stories that carried both humor and urgency. Together, these presentations offered a powerful reminder that belonging is not ownership but shared responsibility.

How Can I Become a Partner Like This?