Abstract
The question of how to prepare design students to effectively create and produce in a world of ever-shifting matrix of new technologies, rapid environmental change and economic instability is the most significant challenge facing design educators today. There is a need for new communicational structures and reaching outside of one’s field of expertise to bridge gaps and work in unexpected ways. The NeighborGapBridge course creates an environment in which collaborative thinking amongst students from different departments, industry and community is taken outside of existing structures and allowed to flow, based on natural affinities, needs, imagination and available resources. This is a radical break from traditional, rigid teaching and collaborative techniques, in which we collapse fixed, vertical structures. Think: Facilitators (not teachers) listening to and witnessing the process. Free-associative conversations (not lectures). Enthusiasts (not experts). Classes with no fixed beginning or end. This environment is achieved by non-tools, non-actions and un-teaching. We use de-familiarization to undo expectations and fixed identities. We place participants in a liminal space where crystallized cognitive structures are loosened and dissolved. This process is reportedly uncomfortable, confusing, freeing, stimulating and explorative, leading to discovery and new synthesis. In order to bridge the gap, one becomes the gap, the liminal space, the space in-between. This allowing to fall apart and simply “be” is a feminine technology, leading to true thinking and acting “outside of the box.” In a world that is running out of answers and time, we cannot afford to ignore this radically creative approach.
Presenters
Patricia KovicProfessor, Interdisciplinary: Product Design, Creative Action, Artist Community Teaching, Entrepreneurial Studies, Otis College of Art and Design, California, United States Blanka Domagalska
Adjunct Professor, Otis College of Art and Design
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Radical Pedagogy, Future Teaching, Liminality, Inclusion, Interdisciplinary, Diversity, Sustainability
Digital Media
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