RISD Center for Community Partnerships

Areas of impact

In connecting RISD students, faculty, curators and leaders with people and organizations locally and worldwide, the Center for Community Partnerships (CCP) helps advance RISD’s mission to serve the greater good through art and design education and practice, and extends and amplifies the impact of our strategic vision.

high school students sit at a long table inside the Project Open Door studio

K-12 support

An internationally recognized champion of art and design’s importance to 21st-century education, RISD has also been a fixture in local education for decades, engaging with K-12 students through a variety of programs and services. As the only comprehensive arts museum in southeastern New England, the RISD Museum attracts more than 10,000 K-12 students each year, with many others turning to the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab to discover connections between art, design and the natural world.

RISD also helps connect local teens with opportunities to explore creative practice via Project Open Door, an arts enrichment program for under-resourced high school students in and around Providence, and through various young artist programs offered by RISD Continuing Education.

Social justice and equity

Established in 2019, the Center for Social Equity and Inclusion leads and supports several initiatives focused on issues of justice, equity and inclusion on campus, including faculty support for related research and pedagogy, workshops and lectures, and the SEI Faculty Fellows Program. The Center for Complexity—RISD’s project-based innovation hub—is also deeply engaged in justice-oriented research and practice, including healthcare and public policy reform.

RISD students also discover numerous opportunities to turn creative practice toward the greater good, including studios involving area nonprofits and civic leaders, RISD Museum programs that aim to increase representation and inclusion in museum spaces, and scholarship, grant and internship programs like the Maharam Steam Fellows, through which select students pursue socially engaged projects with a wide range of government and community-based organizations.

Students constructing concrete polygons and submerging them into a river.

Sustainability

Achieving a more sustainable future is central to RISD’s approach to art and design education, all supported by a campus community invested in the pursuit of environmental justice. Among several academic pathways specifically focused on environmental issues, RISD offers a Nature–Culture–Sustainability Studies (NCSS) master’s program and undergraduate concentration, and a coastal sustainability master’s program established by the Landscape Architecture department and the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Marine Affairs.

NCSS also sponsors Climate Futures, a symposium that offers climate scholars, activists and others a public forum for sharing research on sustainability and design. and RISD’s Nature Lab provides several avenues for exploring the intersection of art, design and living systems, including a state-of-the-art, National Science Foundation grant-funded biodesign makerspace.

The CCP and Center for Student Involvement work together to provide students with robust community service opportunities and programs that support them in becoming socially responsible and engaged artists and designers and that make a community-informed impact in Providence and across the region.

Alternative Spring Break (ASB)

The ASB program is an intensive six-day interaction focused on political activism and social impact, offering participants and partners alike an enriching cultural and service experience.

Design for America

Run by RISD and Brown students, this group uses design to tackle local problems related to education, healthcare, climate change and more.

Internships

Through these experiential learning opportunities, students learn to apply knowledge, theory and skills acquired in the classroom in a variety of professional settings.

Leadership and Community Engagement (LACE) Fellowship

The LACE program connects students with local nonprofits and provides them with a means to contribute the design thinking they develop in RISD studios to causes that are impactful and meaningful to them.

Museum Guild

The Museum Guild is a service learning program at the RISD Museum that helps prepare selected undergrad and grad students to facilitate public tours, discussions and other programs related to museum collections.

Pre-Orientation Service Experience (POSE)

POSE is a three-day intensive for incoming first-year students to engage with the local community upon arrival to campus and to discover long-term volunteer opportunities.

RISD Leads

This certificate program and workshop series connects students with community-oriented organizations throughout the region and creates a framework for each student’s personal leadership journey and overall development.

In coordination with the Research Office and the Teaching and Learning Lab, the CCP supports faculty who want to develop studios with local organizations, conduct socially engaged research or practice, or receive training and support in developing community-engaged curricula.

Faculty training and curriculum development

The CCP and the Teaching and Learning Lab organize and deliver interactive faculty workshops and development opportunities that support the cultivation of inclusive curricula and pedagogies.

Support for community-engaged research and projects

The CCP collaborates with the Research Office to support and advocate for faculty and students to pursue projects that generate new knowledge and innovations across various disciplines, fields and practices.

Next steps

The CCP connects organizations with potential partners across RISD, including faculty, students, career advisors, fundraising officers and the RISD Research office.

Each year RISD collaborates with numerous community groups and organizations on projects that span topic and scope, from studios focused on public engagement and social responsibility to PVDFest, an annual arts and culture event in downtown Providence, the Design Catalyst grant program, and Designing for the Future of Mobility, a partnership between RISD and the Hyundai Motor Group aimed at improving how people move through—and live in—the world.

Engage with RISD

Economic Impact Report

RISD enjoys a mutually beneficial relationship with the city of Providence—also known as the Creative Capital—based on shared goals to enrich the local culture and bolster quality of life in Rhode Island’s urban center. Each year RISD publishes an economic impact report to highlight the variety of ways we contribute to the city.

a mural in downtown Providence of a young Indigenous woman surrounded by birds and flowers and holding an older picture of an Indigenous man

2019 Economic Impact Report

Learn more about how RISD directly supports the local economy, creates quality of place in Providence, and engages with the community through a wide range of initiatives and programming.

Center leadership

Supported by the Community Engagement Advisory Committee and with input from across the institution, the CCP is led by Bethany Costello, RISD’s director of community relations. In this role, Costello develops near- and longterm strategies to increase awareness of RISD’s mission, goals and agendas, and works with internal and external stakeholders to attract new community partners and steward existing partnerships in support of RISD’s civic engagement efforts.

Babette Allina, Executive Director of Government Relations
Patricia Barbeito, Dean of Faculty
Siobhan Boehm, Trustee and Community Relations Coordinator (Advisory Group staff support)
Sarah Caggiano, Executive Director of Continuing and Expanded Education
Shana Cinquemani, Department Head of Teaching + Learning in Art + Design
Deborah Clemons, Assistant Director of Academic and Public Programs
Bethany Costello (chair), Director of Community Relations
Sarah Cunningham, Associate Provost for Research and Strategic Partnerships
Kelsey Elder, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
Gwen Farrelly, Executive Director of RISD Global
Karen Harris, Internship Manager, Career Center
Lili Hermann, Professor of Landscape Architecture
Alicia Luzon, Talent Acquisition Partner
Erika Paradis, Director of the Center for Student Involvement
Suzanne Scanlan, Senior Lecturer in Theory and History of Art of Design
Matthew Shenoda, Associate Provost for Social Equity and Inclusion

STUDENT ADVISORS
Kaanchi Chopra
Kristina Hyunseo Kim
Jackie Oh
Erin Roman
Junpeng Shi
Andrew Storck
John Wayne

Engaging locally and worldwide

04/20/2021

Echoes of Jim Crow

An interactive on-campus exhibition brings to life the civil rights movement and ongoing struggle against racism and segregation in the US.

01/22/2021

Dorner Prize Revived

Winning 2020 proposals for RISD Museum installations on hold since last March are finally coming to fruition.

09/09/2020

Teens Connect through RISD

Continuing Education partners with Rhode Island Department of Education to offer free online art and design classes to underserved youth.

05/28/2020

Saving Superman

Grad students in Interior Architecture propose new uses for a long-vacated former bank building in downtown Providence.

05/04/2020

Techs Help with PPE Needs

RISD staff technicians are helping to produce protective gear for frontline workers in Rhode Island and beyond.

04/22/2020

Planning for the New Public Realm

Remote learning has inspired a dynamic revamp of a core Landscape Architecture studio—and a heightened sense of mission.

04/06/2020

Generating Relief—from Home

Interior architect Colin Stief brings the local design community together to support those on the frontlines of COVID-19 in NYC.

12/19/2019

Reconnecting an Urban Community

Students in a fall Landscape Architecture studio collaborate with residents of Fall River, MA on interventions for revitalizing the city’s downtown.

11/04/2019

RISD Architects Think Small

Five affordable, net-zero homes designed in a RISD studio are being built in Providence’s Olneyville neighborhood.

Community Partnerships