Design Education as a Practice of Freedom? (Brave New Alps, 2014) encourages educators to create spaces within the institution that might transgress the university’s trajectory of becoming ever more neoliberal and exclusive. The essay considers a definition of space beyond the classroom itself (though it should be noted that classrooms are becoming increasingly difficult to access), focusing instead on the less tangible spaces created between the educators, the university staff, the students and the societal boundaries they find themselves in. Using Bell Hook’s theory that education can be a practice of freedom by teaching us to collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries (1994), the collective discusses interventions that would help to ‘navigate’, ‘orient’, and ‘encounter’ within those spaces in a way that might create a more socially just institution. My ARP will exist within the classroom, but by encouraging exchange between students, I’m hoping it will also ‘strengthen [their] capacity to form and function within collective structures’ (Brave New Alps, 2014) therefore fostering a more collaborative approach to developing designed projects. In this way I hope that it could also work towards dismantling the individualised models of practice that act as obstacles to practices of freedom (Brave New Alps, 2014). Though my intervention won’t be focused on creating collaborative projects as such, I aim to nurture a sense of collectivity through encouraging practices of sharing and feedback. This mirrors Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (1986) in which she argues that the basket, rather than the spear, was humanity’s first tool, shifting the hero narrative informing western societal (and therefore design) cultures from hunter to gatherer, from individual to collective, whilst addressing the gendered roles attached to this binary. Tangentially, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville’s use of women’s patchwork as a method to create non-hierarchical, de-centralised structures of participation in design, as evidenced in her work Pink (1974), demonstrates the compilation of different experiences to create or reveal a whole. Similarly, this connects to Anja Kaser & Rebecca Stefany’s use of patchwork as a feminist strategy for design, inspired by Ece Canli’s use of it ‘as a method when writing about design history from a queer-feminist perspective, as an interlinking of history, theory, practice and criticism in a distinctly messy and non-linear temporality’ (Kaser & Stefany, 2021: 9). By empowering students to have a more participatory voice within the physical classroom through the sharing of ideas, thoughts and feedback, I would like my ARP to encourage a patchwork perspective on their design practice. An acknowledgement that all design projects are the result of the coming together of many different entities informed by interactions with each other and the world outside of the designer-self, thus making every piece of work they produce inherently collaborative. ‘It is when students, at all levels and from diverse backgrounds, begin to learn from each other, to trust each other’s thinking and imagination beyond the classroom, that they experiment with the knowledge they are brought in contact with.’ (Brave New Alps, 2014). According to Bell Hooks, encouraging a sense of community within the classroom begins with the acknowledgement that different intersections of the teacher’s identity, such as gender, race, class and sexual orientation affects their understanding of the world (1994). Accepting that knowledge can only ever be partial creates a space that enables a pedagogy of forging with, and not for, the students (Freire, 1972: 22), a space that centres less around teaching and more around learning, a space that might encourage the emergence of more diverse practices.
Bibliography:
Brave New Alps (2014) Design Education as a Practice of Freedom?, in Camuffo, G. Dalla Aura, M. & Mattozzi, A (2014) About Learning and Design, Bolzano: BU press. p. 65.
Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York. Herder and Herder
Hooks. B, (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, New York: Routledge p. 207.
Kaser, A & Stefany, R (2021) Glossary of Undisciplined Design, Leipzig: Spector Books
Le Guin. U. K, (1986) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Holland: Other Futures. Available at: https://otherfutures.nl/uploads/documents/le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction.pdf (accessed 29.09.23)
Visual Refs:
De Bretteville, S (1974) Pink.
