Learn from a legendary athletic footwear designer and a Michigan college focused on the design industry. These workshops are aimed at high school and college students, or anyone interested in design, particularly shoe design.
Schedule:
4-4:30pm – Check-in opens, view Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks exhibit
4:30-5:30pm – SPARK workshop with Wilson W. Smith III
5:30-5:45pm – Break
5:45-7:15pm – Color and Materials Design workshop with Greg Garcia, Pensole Lewis College
Each workshop is limited to 35 participants; pre-registration is strongly encouraged. You are welcome to attend both workshops, but you must register separately.
4:30-5:30pm
Wilson Smith will lead his SPARK workshop. Using SPARK, which stands for Story, Passion, Art, Reflection, and Knowledge, Smith will help you uplift and ideate your creative idea, voice, and energy, all of which define sneaker culture.
The first Black designer for Nike, Smith has created shoes for Michael Jordan, Andre Agassi, Serena Williams, and many more. After a 41-year career with the company, Smith retired as the Manager of Design Education with Nike’s Blue-Ribbon Studio in 2025. His work has been recognized with a number of prestigious awards, including Nike’s inaugural Design Achievement Award in 2019. In 2024, Detroit’s Pensole Lewis College, the nation’s only design-focused HBCU, dedicated the Wilson W. Smith III Footwear Design Studio.
5:45-7:15pm
In collaboration with Timberland, Greg Garcia from Pensole Lewis College will lead a Color and Materials Design workshop. This design workshop focuses on sustainability, telling your community’s story, how to choose materials and colors for footwear, and simple footwear construction using paper worksheets.
Greg Garcia is the Director of Recruitment at Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design. His career in higher education has spanned nearly 13 years, where he has worked in a variety of institutions. He pursued his education from the University of Texas at Arlington for his bachelor’s degree, and from Tennessee State University (an HBCU) for his master’s. He is excited to bring premier design education to underrepresented and underserved communities!
Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Bata Shoe Museum, and curated by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum.
