May 30 to June 2, 2022
Partners: Anya, Bipasha, Dany, Farah, Faiza, May, Sofia, Ziyuan, This Ain't Rock n Roll
Brief: Design and facilitate a Visual Assembly on the topic of The Curriculum of Care
Vote and Decide on Workshop Ideas
Over the weekend, we all came up with two to three ideas of briefs based around care to present to the group. After pitching our ideas, we all took a vote on our favorite. We selected three of them for our upcoming workshops. Along with the actual workshops, we wanted to improve our facilitation skills by practicing in real life settings.
To develop some of the questions we asked in the workshops, we looked to programs with nontraditional curricula such as the Black Mountain College or eth furka zone, which summarizes itself as "An independent space of mind. A place for care and maintenance. Distant from the usual ways of working, teaching, learning and being in the world. It’s a place where time moves at only 33% of its usual pace—Furka is open merely 4 months per year."
This helped us with question such as "What would you like your curriculum to look like? It can include any activities, periods of rest and contemplation, community service, etc."
Workshop #1: Reimagining Neglected "Things"
Our first workshop idea was around the idea of neglect, which is the opposite of care. The prompt was:
Identify the areas that have been neglected within UAL or your course, this could be the system in UAL the way the course was set up or when you felt neglected. (Free to discuss with your course mates or work in a group)
- List them down, How could they be improved? Why did you feel neglected and how could this been avoided?
- Design these improvements using the materials as representations.
We also had to decide on the minimum and maximum number of participants. We thought we would need a minimum of 3 participants to have a viable workshop and a maximum of 10 as we were just 3 facilitators and wanted some amount of crowd control.
Task: What spaces at LCC are neglected? What are the signs of neglect?
Task Steps
- Identify the spaces that have been neglected within UAL
- Group Discussion
- Create the space using materials, think about why you choose that space and how it could be improved
Discuss: ex: what surprised you?
Rylee and Her Proposal for a New and Improved Bathroom
Bea and her Idea for a Reconfigured Classroom with Access to a Roof Garden
Austin and His Idea for a Place to Collect and Re-use Trash
Analysis
We saw how quickly participants could generate creative and exciting responses to the prompt. Within ten minutes, that had already came up with a design concept, sketched it out, and began building models of their design idea.
However, one thing we noted was the the workshop was again not collaborative. It was more individual based. We wanted to make sure that the next few workshops were more collaborative and involved more discussion amongst participants.
Workshops with Data Visualization MA and Sustainable Design MA Students
The following two workshops allowed us to hone in on the questions that we wanted to ask for the final Visual Assembly and to gauge which level of facilitation would be most effective.
We held two workshops on "reimagining the curriculum," the first with the Data Visualization MA students and the second with Sustainable Design MA students. With lessons that we learned from the Data Visualization workshop, we adjusted and adapted our workshop style for the second one with the Sustainable Design students.
Logistical Planning for Workshops: 30 minutes scenario
Along with designing the workshop questions, we also had to design the logistics to ensure that everything ran smoothly. After much discussion and voting, we decided on the following:
Intro - Total Time 5 minutes
Intro - 2 minutes
Questions -1 minute
Ask permission to film/ clear any doubts - 2 minutes
Explanation of Activity
Write response on post-it - 3 minutes
Voting - 2 minutes
Discussion - 10 minutes
Presenting final ideas - 5 minutes
Feedback and visual inspiration - 5 minutes
Tasks for the Visual Assembly team
Time the activity
Document
Facilitate
Data Visualization MA
Workshop #2: YOU-NIVERSITY
Introduction: We are thinking of care not in terms of being kind or charitable; rather, care is about being and working in ways that are fair, inclusive, and in solidarity with the most vulnerable: humans, non-humans and the environment.
Task: Imagine a university run by students, without professors, technicians or cleaning staff.
- How do we learn?
- What activities would this university teach?
- How would you make decisions in this university?
- How would you make sure that no group is discriminated against in this university?
Task Steps
- Group discussion
- Create a visualized answer with materials or even a performance
Discuss
Prompts and Input from Workshop with Data Visualization Students
Takeaway
From this initial workshop with Data Visualization MA students, we saw that the prompts were very effective and guided the students toward the political understanding of care.
Some feedback from the students was that after some time, it wasn't clear what care is in a university context. So, we decided to add more visual aids that included pictorial elements to post around the classroom as some students forgot the hand signals. Both verbal and visual reminders would be helpful.
The students also said that they wanted to come up with the idea of cleaners / technicians as people that care, rather than being told that fact. How do we create that realization?
Some students did not understand the scenario of no teachers/technicians, so we needed to explain the premise more clearly.
Another note was to use bigger sized posters as people struggle to read the small posters. Some other students suggested that our final output could incorporate origami, chalk on streets / murals, moodboarding and collage. Another also suggested role-playing care to help communicate the system/mindset of the idea.
We also decided that as facilitators, we would sit and work together with the group to gently guide them in case they got lost or had any questions.
With these lessons in hand, we headed toward our second iteration of the workshop with the Sustainable Design MA class.
Sustainable Design MA
Workshop #2: YOU-NIVERSITY
With much of the same prompts as the Data Visualization workshop, we added visual elements and a more active facilitation presence.
Posters with Prompts on Care, Students Discussing Answers
Students Contributing their Answers to Prompts
The second workshop went quite well, and we felt quite ready for the final Visual Assembly.
Feedback
The class thought that the workshops were clever as they expanded the idea of care beyond just a teacher and student relationship. The process and theory make sense. It also related to the Carrier Bag Theory by Ursula Le Guin in terms of giving power back to the people.
Pranjal noted that digital universities are good at decentralizing power, so how could this decentralization of power carry through to the physical?
One question to think about is that if all decisions are made by students, will there be community leaders, which would entail a hierarchy?
Another thing to consider was what would be the outcome after the Visual Assembly? What would go into the package that we would hand off to other groups who wanted to make Visual Assemblies of their own?
References
eth furka zone
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