![\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/d388bc4869157a5bcd12bdc0a\/images\/2ae5010a-b240-4f51-b196-545cd52f3bf5.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/mcusercontent.com\/d388bc4869157a5bcd12bdc0a\/images\/2ae5010a-b240-4f51-b196-545cd52f3bf5.jpg\")
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Once again, this board meeting in mid-February 2020 was absolutely well organized, an efficient use of time and resources and a lot of opportunities to encounter the local scenes and communities.<\/p>\n
We kicked-off our 3 days together with a morning visit to the\u00a0Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum<\/a><\/strong>. Kim Robledo-Diga, Deputy Director of Education Cynthia Smith, Curator of Socially Responsible Design, shared insights with us about the exhibitions, dynamic educational programs and immersive experiences that the museum\u2019s team puts together to expose their audiences \u2014 but also many school-age children throughout the US \u00a0who might never visit the museum\u2019s premises in NYC \u2014 to the societal impact of design. Cynthia offered a reflection of the emerging trends she is spotting in how designers continue to practice design at the intersection of social concerns.<\/p>\n With a portfolio of exhibitions such as Design with the 90% (2017) and By the People: Designing a Better America (2016), Cynthia has been extending the work of many of us in the field with shows that bring a new awareness of these critical practices to a broad public of stakeholders. Our conversation with everyone from our board focused on the role of design education today globally and, to quote Cynthia, the ability \u201cdesigners have … to bring vision to what\u2019s already there. They take what might be seen as a problem and transform it as an asset to the community.\u201d (Cynthia Smith, cited in\u00a0We are Museums, 2019<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n Back at The New School, we worked together on a multiplicity of operational decisions that will continue to shape the growth of our association, ranging from our review of new institutional member applications and future conference hosts for 2021 and 2022; meetings with representatives of prospective partner organizations; budget and financial planning; and last not but least, our ongoing work in strategic planning. Since our first board meeting as a team last October in Medell\u00edn, we have organized our board in sub-committees tackling priority areas that will amplify the value our members find in belonging to the Cumulus family.<\/p>\n The NYC board meeting was designed to help us crystallize our goals for the\u00a0Cumulus Strategic Plan 2019\u20132022<\/strong>\u00a0to be presented to all members in our upcoming General Assembly next June in Rome.<\/p>\n Some of us had and took the chance to attend the new exhibition COUNTRYSIDE, THE FUTURE by OMA at the Guggenheim<\/a>, an excellent and outstanding exhibition.<\/p>\n And New York offers, of course, the chance to meet different colleagues not only from Parsons, but also from design studios (e.g. IDEO).<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/spaces.kisd.de\/app\/uploads\/sites\/3518\/2020\/03\/bildschirmfoto20200306um18.54.19-530x398.png\")
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