Daniel McCafferty (Windsor, ON) is from Winnipeg, where he was involved in independent music, co-founding a small record label and performing in North America and Europe. He graduated from NSCAD-University in 2004 and practiced as a designer in Toronto at small, yet heavily awarded design and typography studios. He has worked on a number of large-scale projects (signage/environmental graphics) and smaller publications (series of stamps for Canada Post, published 2008). He earned his Masters in Design (MDes) from North Carolina State University in 2010.
In April 2011, he co-founded the critical design collective Public Design Unit (PDU) and began working on their first project, Parkdale Versions—a participatory, socially engaged, community-based project. Parkdale Versions was unveiled at Toronto’s Nuit Blanche festival. As an artist, designer and educator, he has taught in the design departments at North Carolina State University, OCAD-U and currently at Wayne State University, in Detroit.
NS Residency: May – June 2014
The Drouillard Road/Ford City community is afflicted with real social concerns, but is also a site of great potential and renewal. Once a thriving, industrial community, it has been affected by a significant reversal of fortune, largely due to changes in the auto sector. The research and work for Neighbourhood Spaces will draw on visual ethnographic methods with a goal of making legible various aspects, behaviors or patterns in the community that otherwise would remain hidden or invisible. Local workshops provided through a mobile and open studio will provide residents with an opportunity to visualize a desirable future scenario for their community. This work/research will build on themes previously considered by Public Design Unit (PDU) such as participatory/community-based design, open-ended and reflective uses of technology, collaboration, and will consider broader notions of community, citizenship and participation.
