Design 21: Social Design Network

The Active Citizen Project (ACP) is a national organization that provides a catalyst, support, and network for people to use art and new media to initiate and sustain actions that improve their well-being. ACP’s vision is a world of mutual well-being where one person’s well-being is not tied to another’s despair.

Since 2004, ACP has run Open Caucus (OC), a national civic engagement activity for students in working class and low-income communities. In total, over 11,000 students in 39 cities have participated in OC. It is currently implementing a new project, Eats, in the Brownsville community of Brooklyn. Eats is a social action food project that uses art and new media as principal tools for creating community-run urban farms and food stores. The goal of Eats is to provide access and incentive for people to eat healthy, nutritious food regardless of their income.

ACP’s activities are designed to engage large, diverse and dispersed groups of people in collaborative, non-hierarchical social actions that take place in their communities and on the Internet. Its goal is to provide tools, opportunities, strategic frameworks, and networks that increase the ability of individuals and groups to be effective change agents.