Centering Community
Rural Engagement through Design: Impacting our Communities with Practice and Partnership View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Peg Faimon
We often think of design within a large, urban context, but how can design practice and partnerships impact our small, rural communities and cities throughout the country? Using a case study approach, this paper showcases and describes the process and implementation of design projects that solve rural problems and engage people where they live with respect and authenticity. Problems such as recording rural histories, solving housing shortages, marketing the benefits of small cities, and promoting the growth and revitalization of small downtowns are all issues that can benefit from the analysis of design educators and professionals such as graphic designers, architects, and product designers. Engaging with the “local” is of growing importance. How do we teach our design students the power of their discipline and its social responsibility within this local context? How can we partner with communities to prepare students and professionals for lifelong civic engagement in an increasingly diverse and complex society? How do we start the process and how do we respectfully partner with community leaders? Design has the power to positively impact our rural communities. What is the best way forward?
The Voices and Faces of a Community: Faces of Dallas, a Case Study of Participatory Design to Present Drowned-out Voices
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stephen Zhang
Dallas has been one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Yet, how do average people feel about living in the city? What are untold stories and dreams beyond gleaming office towers? To uncover and present these stories and dreams, I participated in a collaborative project “Faces of Dallas,” a contemporary choir concert featured in the 2019 Dallas Soluna International Music and Arts Festival. It involved 30 collaborators and over 1,000 respondents. The team conducted dialogues with people of the city through an online survey, in-depth interviews, and poetry contribution from local writers and students. Those voices were then woven into a complete creative program, which fused choral music, visual art and design, video, onsite installation, and direct dialogues. In this paper, I discuss lessons learned about participatory design to benefit the community and share how designers can apply their concept, strategy, creative, and design skills in non-commercial projects. The findings provide guidelines to consider by designers engaging in participatory design.
Schools Designs: Solutions to Intractable Equity Issues in Education? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gary Snyder
This mix method study examines U.S. high school teachers' perceptions of new school designs on their implementation of twenty-first century pedagogy. The findings suggest that the new designs support and foster the characteristics of pedagogy, including differentiation of instruction, collaboration, and inclusion of students with special needs. Freire's seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, highlighted the need for dialogue (collaboration) and other attributes of twenty-first century century pedagogy to promote equity. This study suggests that the physical design of the learning spaces is critical in supporting teacher efforts to increase equity and close achievement gaps. That previous high school designs with double-loaded corridors of classrooms (egg-crate design) inhibited the characteristics of pedagogy needed for the twenty-first century century to increase conditions for equity and eliminate oppression.
