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Social Design Days – Talks

Nuremberg, October 7 

IHK Nürn­berg für Mittelfranken
Haupt­markt 25/27
90403 Nuremberg

[wheel­chair-acces­si­ble]
7. October 2026
12:30 – 19:00
Related:

Shap­ing a sense of belong­ing in a cos­mopoli­tan soci­ety and economy

On Octo­ber 7, the Social Design Days in Nurem­berg invites you to our Talks, an after­noon packed with insights, inspi­ra­tion, and dis­cus­sions! Talks will focus on grow­ing togeth­er in a diverse soci­ety and econ­o­my, reflect­ing the fact that almost one-third of peo­ple in Ger­many are of immi­grant descent.

The keynotes and case stud­ies in the Talks will demon­strate how good design can mobi­lize and inspire, enabling the oppor­tu­ni­ties and poten­tial offered by this diver­si­ty to be har­nessed and put to effec­tive use in busi­ness­es, local gov­ern­ments, and soci­ety. There is a need for spaces that facil­i­tate encounter and involve­ment; for brands and cul­tures that rein­force a sense of belong­ing; and for process­es that reduce obsta­cles and discrimination.

Par­tic­i­pants can look for­ward to three pan­els fea­tur­ing inter­na­tion­al speak­ers engag­ing in dis­cus­sions from the sec­tors of design and cre­ativ­i­ty, busi­ness, and research.

The talks are aimed at peo­ple from com­pa­nies and agen­cies (includ­ing exec­u­tive man­age­ment, Peo­ple & Cul­ture, mar­ket­ing, and design and cre­ative depart­ments), munic­i­pal­i­ties (includ­ing urban plan­ning and edu­ca­tion), as well as civ­il soci­ety actors and all inter­est­ed citizens.

The pro­gram is com­plete­ly free! Reg­is­tra­tion is required.

Pan­els: 



1) Diver­si­ty and its Poten­tial in Companies 

The first pan­el, held at mid­day, will dis­cuss how com­pa­nies can design diverse com­mu­ni­ties. How to design a cred­i­ble and open com­pa­ny cul­ture that con­nects and empow­ers com­pa­ny mem­bers both with and with­out an immi­grant back­ground? What inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative poten­tial can be gen­er­at­ed by team line-ups that pay atten­tion to diver­si­ty? The speak­ers are inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing expert Simon Usi­fo (for­mer CEO BBDO Ger­many) and Katrin Nis­sel from the Zen­trum für Interkul­turelles Man­age­ment und Diver­si­ty, Hochschule Bremen.

2) Grow­ing Togeth­er in Cities and Towns

Spaces and process­es in cities and towns can also be reimag­ined and redesigned to enhance a sense of belong­ing in the peo­ple that live there. In the sec­ond pan­el, inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned design­er Gabriel Fontana will out­line how he is design­ing sports for greater inclu­siv­i­ty with inno­v­a­tive sports­wear, new approach­es to sports in schools, and projects extend­ing from Paris to Los Ange­les. Ams­ter­dam-based design cura­tor Huda Smit­shui­jzen Abi­Farès will describe the con­nect­ing role of typog­ra­phy and its design in pub­lic spaces.

3) Process­es of Con­nec­tion in Civ­il Society

The third pan­el presents two excep­tion­al cas­es that demon­strate how design can also dri­ve con­nec­tion in civ­il soci­ety.  Zijad Doličanin and Anni­ka Storch describe how the post-migrant non­prof­it asso­ci­a­tion VAIR e.V. is work­ing with Hochschule für Gestal­tung Offen­bach (HfG) Uni­ver­si­ty of Art and Design to cre­ate a city park as a space for encounter, move­ment, and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Fab­rizio Uret­ti­ni from Tre­vi­so design lab Talk­ing Hands traces the institution’s ten-year his­to­ry of work­ing with peo­ple of immi­grant descent to cre­ate a sense of belong­ing through prod­uct and inte­ri­or design.

The timetable nat­u­ral­ly includes plen­ty of time for Q&A ses­sions and net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. We look for­ward to meet­ing you and dis­cussing how we can find solu­tions to social chal­lenges through cre­ative and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry design.

Pro­gram

12:30 Soft opening
1:00 Welcome
1:30 Intro Grow­ing Together

1:40 Pan­el: Diver­si­ty and its Poten­tial in Com­pa­nies, with speak­ers including
– Simon Usi­fo: Growth Through Diver­si­ty. How design­ing an open com­pa­ny cul­ture can be a dri­ver of inno­va­tion and success
– Katrin Nis­sel: Design Thinking—A Route to a Wel­com­ing Cul­ture and Con­flict Res­o­lu­tion in Businesses
– Katha­ri­na Fritsch: More Than 11: Diver­si­ty as a Strength of 1. FC Nürnberg

2:40 Net­work­ing break

3:10 Think­ing the City Post-Migra­to­ry: Mul­ti-Local and Cos­mopoli­tan Per­spec­tives on Coexistence
– Erol Yildiz

3:30 Pan­el: Grow­ing Togeth­er in Cities and Towns, with speak­ers including
– Gabriel Fontana: Design­ing Togeth­er­ness. Sport by Design
– Huda Smit­shui­jzen Abi­Farès: Typo­graph­ic Match­mak­ing. Design for the Pub­lic Sphere

4:25 Cof­fee break

4:55 Pan­el: Process­es of Con­nec­tion in Civ­il Soci­ety, with speak­ers including
– Zijad Doličanin and Anni­ka Storch: From Wast­ed Space to Space for Oppor­tu­ni­ties. VAIR­PLAY as a Social Design Process in the Post-Migrant City
– Fab­rizio Uret­ti­ni: Design­ing Belong­ing Through Tran­scul­tur­al Practice

5:30 Pan­el
5:50 Wrap-up
6:00 Snacks and networking
7:00 End

The event will be held in Ger­man and Eng­lish. A trans­la­tion ser­vice will be pro­vid­ed as a Web app; to use it, please bring your smart­phone and headphones.

Speak­ers

Gabriel Fontana

Gabriel Fontana is a design­er rec­og­nized for his dis­tinc­tive approach to social design, reshap­ing soci­ety through new sports games for today’s world. His game Mul­ti­form has been played in schools through­out Europe, show­cased at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, and recent­ly acquired by MoMA—becoming the first queer sport to enter a muse­um col­lec­tion. 

www.gabrielfontana.com/

Simon Usi­fo

Simon Usi­fo is an inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing expert, speak­er, author and co-edi­tor of the SPIEGEL best­seller “Peo­ple of Deutsch­land.” He most recent­ly served as CEO of BBDO Ger­many. Born in Bonn with Niger­ian and French roots, he spent over 18 years work­ing for inter­na­tion­al cre­ative agen­cies includ­ing Ogilvy and 72andSunny in Lon­don, Shang­hai, Berlin, Today, he is also a mem­ber of the advi­so­ry board of KreativBund and is involved with the inde­pen­dent edu­ca­tion­al ini­tia­tive GermanDream.

simonusifo.contactin.bio

Pho­to: Sam­my Hart

Anni­ka Storch

Anni­ka Storch is a prod­uct design­er and research assis­tant in the Urban Design depart­ment at the Offen­bach Uni­ver­si­ty of Art and Design. Her work focus­es on a holis­tic design approach for sus­tain­able pub­lic spaces that offer social val­ue. In her teach­ing, she men­tors projects in an urban plan­ning con­text that pro­mote social and polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion and spark new dis­cours­es through design visions and inno­v­a­tive concepts.

https://oimd.de/

Huda Smit­shui­jzen AbiFarès

Dr. Huda Smit­shui­jzen Abi­Farès is the Found­ing Direc­tor of the Khatt Foun­da­tion and Khatt Books pub­lish­ers, in Ams­ter­dam. She works as an inde­pen­dent design cura­tor, researcher, writer, design­er, and pub­lish­er. She holds degrees in graph­ic design and design his­to­ry from Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty (PhD, 2017), Yale Uni­ver­si­ty (MFA, 1990), and Rhode Island School of Design (BFA, 1987). Dr Smit­shui­jzen Abi­Farès spe­cialis­es in Ara­bic script and typo­graph­ic design research, and Arab design his­to­ry. She is the author of the first sem­i­nal book enti­tled Ara­bic Typog­ra­phy, A Con­cise  Source­book (2001, 2025), and sev­er­al oth­er books and essays on typog­ra­phy and graph­ic design from the SWANA region. She is edi­tor in chief of Khatt Books’ Ara­bic Design Library series for which she wrote two books.

www.khtt.net

 

Katrin Nis­sel

Regens­burg-born Katrin Nis­sel stud­ied Lusi­tan­ic Stud­ies, Ger­man Stud­ies, and Phi­los­o­phy (Mag­is­ter Artium) in Ham­burg, Lis­bon, Rio de Janeiro, and Belém do Pará, and worked at the DAAD Lan­guage Cen­tre in Belo Hor­i­zonte, Brazil. After sev­er­al years as a free­lancer in cul­tur­al man­age­ment and teach­ing, she has been a research assis­tant at the Zen­trum für Interkul­turelles Man­age­ment & Diver­si­ty (Cen­ter for Inter­cul­tur­al Man­age­ment & Diver­si­ty, ZIM) since 2007, and lec­tures in Inter­cul­tur­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Diver­si­ty, and Brazil­ian Cul­tur­al Stud­ies at Hochschule Bre­men (Bre­men Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences, HSB) Fac­ul­ty of Eco­nom­ics. In 2010, Katrin Nis­sel launched the Bre­men Diver­si­ty Award as part of the Bre­mer­Fo­rum­Di­ver­si­ty project with fund­ing from the Euro­pean Social Fund (ESF). She still joint­ly over­sees the Award, as well as coor­di­nat­ing exchanges with part­ner uni­ver­si­ties in Brazil. 

www.zim-bremen.com
www.diversity-preis-bremen.de

Fab­rizio Urettini

Fab­rizio Uret­ti­ni is the founder and artis­tic direc­tor of Talk­ing Hands, a per­ma­nent applied design and social inno­va­tion lab­o­ra­to­ry based in Tre­vi­so, Italy, where design­ers, crafts­peo­ple, refugees, and asy­lum seek­ers work togeth­er through a tran­scul­tur­al approach to co-design and mate­r­i­al prac­tice. Since its found­ing in 2016, Talk­ing Hands has been rec­og­nized inter­na­tion­al­ly for its con­tri­bu­tion to social design in a post-colo­nial key: cit­ed as a case study in Alice Raw­sthorn’s “Design as an Atti­tude” (2018), fea­tured in the Design Emer­gency pod­cast by Pao­la Antonel­li and Alice Raw­sthorn, and includ­ed in Tania Bruguer­a’s Arte Útil archive.

talking-hands.it/en

 

Zijad Doličanin

Zijad Doličanin is an urban dis­trict devel­op­er, project and social man­ag­er, and founder of non­prof­it VAIR e.V. in Offen­bach am Main. He has spent many years work­ing at the inter­face of urban devel­op­ment, social inno­va­tion, par­tic­i­pa­tion, con­flict res­o­lu­tion, com­mu­ni­ty work, and social trans­for­ma­tion. In VAIR e.V., he devel­ops and sup­ports projects that bring togeth­er diver­si­ty, iden­ti­ty, poten­tial, and the future. Found­ed 2019, the asso­ci­a­tion serves as a plat­form for social inno­va­tion, inter­na­tion­al under­stand­ing, demo­c­ra­t­ic cul­ture, and prac­ti­cal urban design.

vairein.de

Katha­ri­na Fritsch

Katha­ri­na has been work­ing for 1. FC Nürn­berg for almost 20 years, hold­ing var­i­ous lead­er­ship posi­tions with­in the club. Cur­rent­ly, she is respon­si­ble for the areas of Com­mu­ni­ty & Mem­ber­ship and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, with a strong focus on the club’s role and respon­si­bil­i­ties with­in soci­ety. In 2017, togeth­er with Maren Zim­mer­mann, she pub­lished the book Ganz Nürn­berg war in einem Rausch with star­fruit pub­li­ca­tions, chron­i­cling 1. FC Nürnberg’s 2007 Ger­man Cup vic­to­ry. The book was nom­i­nat­ed for Foot­ball Book of the Year. Since 2021, Katha­ri­na Fritsch has served on a vol­un­tary basis as a board mem­ber of the Alliance Against Right-Wing Extrem­ism in the Nurem­berg Met­ro­pol­i­tan Region. She is also active­ly involved with Hart­platzhelden, a vol­un­teer-dri­ven ini­tia­tive sup­port­ing ama­teur foot­ball. Before foot­ball became her pro­fes­sion­al home, Katha­ri­na was an elite ath­lete. In 1996, she com­pet­ed as a rhyth­mic gym­nast at the Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Pho­to cred­it: 1. FC Nürnberg.

Erol Yildiz

Erol stud­ied Edu­ca­tion, Soci­ol­o­gy, and Psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne, where he also earned his doc­tor­ate and com­plet­ed his habil­i­ta­tion in Soci­ol­o­gy. Through­out his aca­d­e­m­ic career, he has held vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor­ships in Munich, Graz, Vien­na, and Istan­bul, as well as sub­sti­tute pro­fes­sor­ships in Ham­burg and Cologne. From 2008 to 2014, Erol Yildiz was Pro­fes­sor of Inter­cul­tur­al Edu­ca­tion at the Alpen-Adria Uni­ver­si­ty Kla­gen­furt. Since March 2014, he has been Pro­fes­sor and Head of the Migra­tion, Edu­ca­tion, and Diver­si­ty teach­ing and research area at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Inns­bruck. His cur­rent research focus­es on post-migrant stud­ies, migra­tion, urban­i­ty, and plurality/diversity.

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