The Power+Place Collaborative collects oral histories from surrounding Alamance County community members to record, preserve, present and celebrate diverse perspectives. For this project, ������Ƶ students interviewed eight different storytellers. These diverse storytellers showcased their stories, focusing on the communal impact of food, addressing the disparities in food justice and discussing the structural aspects of our food systems.

Not only did the storytellers highlighted by Power+Place represent a diverse sample of Alamance County, but the screening participants also provided an opportunity for interracial and intergenerational communities to interact. An audience of approximately 90 people, with over 80 residing within Alamance County, listened to these impactful stories and participated in meaningful conversations surrounding the inequalities, effects, and workings of the local food system.

Screening participants were prompted to enter discussions with their group members after each pairing of video stories. From the session focused on the communal impacts of food and food systems, one sample group said, “Food facilitates community and interaction between individuals both in the creation of meals and enjoyment of them.”

This idea was shared by several participant groups, with others highlighting how social inequalities, such as financial hardships and lack of governmental support to combat hunger, affect how various communities have relationships with food.

Not only do social inequalities affect communal relationships with food at a broader level, but discussion groups were also prompted to analyze the disconnects within the local Alamance County systems.

In one discussion, participants analyzed the disconnect between corporate and small food companies, saying that the “prohibitive costs associated with ethical consumption (buying local, organic, etc.) have also hindered inclusivity and accessibility, making it difficult for people that represent different demographics to participate equally in food.”

While these questions prompted analysis of these disconnects at the local level, participants were also prompted to discuss how food systems could be improved to increase inclusivity and equitable access. Participants provided a variety of powerful answers, including ideas on how to promote ethical food consumption, encouraging collective action and larger community efforts to address these issues and advocating for local government intervention.

While the Power+Place Collaborative, in partnership with the Center for Design Thinking, successfully aimed to bring awareness to these food systems, they also achieved a broader goal of increasing community engagement at a broader level. Participants and storytellers from the food and food pathways screening reportedly left the event feeling like they had a better understanding of the food systems in Alamance County, had engaged with diverse perspectives, and felt a stronger connection with the community.

This storytelling initiative continues this fall with a countywide screening and dinner scheduled for Dec. 1, 2026, from 5:30-7:30 PM. Interested community members can register at the following .

If you would like to view a full analysis of the Spring 2026 screening, a report is available online.

After two stimulating days of idea sharing and collaborative creation at Duke, the attendees took a shuttle bus to ������Ƶ, where the final day’s festivities began with an aerial performance by Michelle Spurlock, local business owner of Upside Aerial Arts & Fitness.

“I think it’s so cool that an educational conference is starting with circus arts,” says Spurlock. “It just feels like a special treat to be able to perform here.”

Spurlock says she wanted to focus her performance on joy, connection, and possibility, which best describes the FDHE Convening. She also hosted a partnered yoga session for the conference attendees, full of “laughter and playful connections.”

“I think Danielle’s done an incredible job organizing a lot of different modalities, a lot of different content, but all connected by this theme of human-centered design as a practice, a process, and mindset, so I’m very excited,” says Vivek Rao, co-organizer of the FDHE Convening, Associate Dean for Master’s and Professional Programs at Duke University.

The morning’s activities continued in ������Ƶ’s Innovation Hall with Danielle Lake, director of the Center for Design Thinking, sharing findings from the Center for Design Thinking’s most recent study exploring how ������Ƶ alumni continue to use design thinking processes in their post-grad careers as well as their civic and personal lives after working for the Center for Design Thinking. Not only does the study serve as a culmination of the Center’s successful work, but it also provides groundbreaking data on the long-term value of design thinking outside the “������Ƶ bubble.”

Instead of sharing the findings as just another “research presentation,” the Center for Design Thinking team created an interactive trivia game testing attendees’ knowledge in the design thinking field that they all study. Additionally, Lake invited five of the alumni interviewed for this study to join in on the dynamic presentation. These alumni included Tyson Glover ’17, Mackenzie Hahn ’20, Kait MacIntyre ’22, Emily Joss ’23, and Chase Soloman ’23.

“Actually getting a chance to go out into the real world and use some of the skills that we learned right here at ������Ƶ is a full-circle moment right now,” says Glover.

Soloman says that he has used his skills from his experience at the Center for Design Thinking in his professional, academic, and personal life, ranging from relationship management to structuring his own research.

Not only did the attendees listen to the experiences of these ������Ƶ alumni, but they playfully engaged in the overall game activity. The room was full of boisterous laughter, surprised gasps and animal noises as the guests took their animal-inspired team names to heart.

Once the prizes for the best three teams were awarded, the attendees were guided on a walk through ������Ƶ’s campus to continue the day’s activities inside the Center for Design Thinking.

Inside the Center, guests could choose to attend one of two workshops. The workshop in the main Center space focused on hands-on crafting to prompt a creative avenue to explore the design thinking process. The goal of this “Creatively Unprompted” exercise, according to the presenter, Sarah Rottenberg, executive director of the Integrated Product Design Master’s Program at the University of Pennsylvania, was to simulate idea generation without using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

One FDHE attendee, Raja Schaar, Associate Program Director and Associate Professor of Product Design at Drexel University, says she chose the “Creatively Unprompted” workshop to expand on her love of creating ideas and prototyping with her hands “to cultivate ideas and turn them into something else.”

In the next-door Maker Hub space, participants could choose to participate in the “Maker AI Challenge,” which focused on framing AI usage through a creative lens. The Director of the Maker Hub and Assistant Director of Creative Learning Technologies at ������Ƶ, Dan Reis, describes this workshop as a way for individuals to bring their ideas to life with AI working as a teammate instead of a generator.

“I’m very curious about broad-based exploration of how AI is being used in education, design, design thinking and teaching design in particular,” says Abbe Don, Interim Director of the Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity (or The Hive)at Pomona College, on why she chose the Hub’s AI workshop.

Once the two-group workshops ended, the convening concluded with a creative four-piece puzzle exercise. On the first day of the convening, participants answered four different prompts assigned to each puzzle piece. These prompts were designed to encourage participants to set intentions on the content they wanted to learn and share, as well as the connections they wanted to make and receive. Instead of keeping these pieces with them, each piece was given to other participants. On the last day, participants received all of their original puzzle pieces to reflect on whether they achieved their intentions and goals.

This activity served as an end to a convening dedicated to encouraging attendees to further their knowledge in the design thinking field through play, exploration, and connection with others. Not only was the activity a meaningful experience, but for the Center’s Danielle Lake, the overall opportunity to host the FDHE Convening was “a dream come true.”

“This year is the start of my eighth year at ������Ƶ, and since the beginning of my time here, one of our goals has been to form a deeper connection with the FDHE community,” said Lake. “I have been able to have such a good support system through this creative and fun group of people.”

“This year’s gathering, hosted by Duke University and ������Ƶ, has been such a wonderful experience, allowing this interdisciplinary group of teacher-scholars to exchange ideas and build meaningful relationships,” says Eugene Korsunskiy, Associate Professor of Engineering at Dartmouth College and Executive Director of the Future of Design in Higher Education. “I couldn’t have asked for a better convening.”

While this year’s FDHE Convening served as “a chance to show the culmination of our work here at ������Ƶ and to collaborate with our co-hosts at Duke University,” according to Lake, the Center for Design Thinking will continue to provide ������Ƶ and the surrounding Alamance County community with opportunities to create, grow and thrive through the design thinking process.

These universities are two of many institutions that collaborate and represent FDHE, an international organization that specializes in human-centered design thinking in higher education. The organizers of the FDHE convention are committed to building a community built on exchanging new ideas about design thinking and interdisciplinary work programs.

The concluding day’s activities will be held at ������Ƶ and hosted by ������Ƶ’s Center for Design Thinking and Maker Hub. These activities will include presentations on the long-term values of design thinking, integrating artificial intelligence into the design thinking process and a closing celebration.

In preparation for this three-day-long conference, the Center has been hosting small virtual sessions every third Friday of the month since January called Forging Fridays. These sessions are hosted by various design thinking leaders who focus on emerging strategies, methods and ideas. Participants leave these workshops with strategies that make a significant impact, but are practical implementations in their professional, personal, and civic lives.

There have been four of these sessions so far, This session will feature , who specializes in integrating mechanical engineering with industrial design processes at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Li’s focus within this Forging Friday session will focus on how to identify when and what mindsets will be the most meaningful and transformative to an individual within their design thinking process.

Previous speakers for the Forging Fridays series include , , �����Ի� .

The lead-up to the FDHE convention with these Forging Fridays sessions is replacing the Center’s typical Design Forge convention. These meetings are the Center’s project on gathering design thinking educators, practitioners, and thought leaders to address a topic of interest in higher education, collaboration within the design thinking community, and establishing new opportunities for enhanced student learning.

For more information on past Design Forge topics, a full archive of the conventions since 2018 can be accessed here.