ArticlePDF Available

The New School Collaborates: Organization and Communication in Immersive International Field Programs with Artisan Communities

Authors:

Abstract and Figures

Under the umbrella terms of "humanitarian design," "social design" and "social responsibility," educational institutions and specifically design programs are more and more searching for opportunities to engage their students in critical and hands-on learning via collaborations between students, faculty, communities in need and non-profit organizations. Such active learning is rich and meaningful for all parties involved, but the challenges are rarely discussed and yet compromise the collaborations' sustainability and potential for activating local change and development. This article uses the first two years of "The New School Collaborates," (TNSC) an ongoing project between The New School's divisions of Parsons (design), Milano (non-profit management and urban development) and General Studies (international affairs) in New York, several external partners and groups of Mayan artisan women in Guatemala, as the central case study for the abovementioned type of work. Of particular interest is the central role that organization and communication play in immersive international field programs. This article argues that the key to a successful collaborative process includes a clear and transparent partnership upfront, with a clear understanding of the roles and opportunities for each 2lt{) /visible language ltlt.2 organization involved and a communication infrastructure that is sensitive to participants' skills and resources. The article refers to, and includes, documentation from specific experiences from two years of courses on campus as well as in Guatemala and the overall process and evaluation of this particular case. Of particular interest is a reflection on challenges faced and how an active and thoughtful analysis of them can lead to a more appropriate, and in the long-term more sustainable structure for this type of work.
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
... Of particular interest is how students, through interdisciplinary on-campus courses followed by intensive international fieldwork experiences learn skills that would never be possible in a traditional classroom setting, and how interdisciplinary groups of students can holistically approach problem-solving. (Lawson, 2010) Learning in a multidisciplinary classroom of graduate and undergraduate students, poses the challenge of creating an equal field of questions, skills, and knowledge to which all participants (students, faculty, and community collaborators) can contribute and from which all can learn. (Lawson, 2010) It is through essential questions, practical skills, and generative themes that the course and the international program bridge the gap across disciplines, cultures, and levels of education, starting from what students and community collaborators already know, and spiraling out through dialogue to build common understanding and knowledge. ...
... (Lawson, 2010) Learning in a multidisciplinary classroom of graduate and undergraduate students, poses the challenge of creating an equal field of questions, skills, and knowledge to which all participants (students, faculty, and community collaborators) can contribute and from which all can learn. (Lawson, 2010) It is through essential questions, practical skills, and generative themes that the course and the international program bridge the gap across disciplines, cultures, and levels of education, starting from what students and community collaborators already know, and spiraling out through dialogue to build common understanding and knowledge. ...
... The course starts with theory and then moves into practice via the introduction, presentation, and critique of three case studies: Fábrica Social, an organization that works with indigenous artisan women in Mexico (http://fabricasocial.org); Social Entrepreneur Corps' MicroConsignment Model (VanKirk, 2010 andSmith, 2010); and the project that the co-authors co-initiated, DEED: Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design (formerly named The New School Collaborates) (Lawson, 2010). This session, early on in the semester, provides a context via which students are then immersed into the seven specific aspects of small-scale community collaborations: teaching in informal settings, digital media, marketing, social innovation and entrepreneurship, fundraising, needs assessment, and finally, monitoring and evaluation. ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The faculties of international affairs and design of a university in New York have been working together since 2007 on the international program DEED: Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design. The course Designing Collaborative Development prepares students to complete summer fieldwork in collaboration with communities in need. This paper focuses on this course and an international program in Guatemala as a central case study and argues that for a valuable and responsible immersive experience to occur there needs to be a lot of beforehand preparation with each student. Such preparation focuses on particular practitioner skills, but most importantly, students need to prepare for unexpected challenges and to be resourceful and reflective of their practice. The paper includes the history of the class and the program; the course’s pedagogical methodology, and the successes and challenges of a multi-disciplinary classroom (for both students & faculty), where social sciences and design frameworks are explored side by side, resulting in innovative multidisciplinary approaches to project design, needs assessment, program development, project implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. Keywords: design, development, collaboration, sustainability, pedagogy
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The past decade has seen an increase in design curricula focused on social and economic development such as designMatters at Art Center and University of Florida’s Design 4 Development. Since 2007 Parsons The New School for Design has been engaged in DEED: Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design, a multi-disciplinary university-wide program that brings together students and faculty of design, management, and development. In DEED, teams of students are prepared on campus for international fieldwork during which they work with artisans in emerging economies and local professional designers to support the artisans in establishing sustainable income-generating opportunities through craft-based services or products. This paper provides an overview and discussion of the beforementioned programs and focuses on DEED’s successes and failures as a case for social collaborative projects. It specifically looks at the student experience in this kind of work and, through surveys and conversations with DEED students and alumni, discusses the long-term educational value of such collaborative and social projects. This paper argues that institutions must offer these types of experiences to better prepare their students to position design, not with products as the end goal, but as a process for innovation, collaboration, and social change.
Article
Full-text available
The absence of an uninterrupted, lived tradition of critical inquiry into and artistic engagement with technology led to the spread of certain ideologies regarding media or digital media which can be characterised as determinist, instrumentalist and essentialist. Such discourses emerge not only in the myths of cypertopians, but in the practical policies of development projects. Offered as a magic bullet, new technologies have consistently failed the developing world. But the history of social and artistic experiments in new media has also thrown up a number of alternative ways both of conceptualising new media and organising around them. Despite their sixty years of history, ‘new’ media have proved to be adaptable in the hands of innovative and inventive users determined to bend the technology to local requirements. This issue addresses the historical not in an effort to effect a museumisation of new media art, but as a repository of challenges to the naturalised organisation of media, new and old, and the acceptance of them as forces of nature rather than human constructions.
Article
Prior to Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World and E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful, the Amhedabad Declaration on Industrial Design and Development, which resulted from a meeting in January 1979, has discussed the promotion of industrial design in developing countries. In subsequent years neither ICSID nor UNIDO followed through on this vision but a far more restricted view of design for development. The aim of this paper is to rethink the scope of design for development so it can address the needs of developing countries in the most effective ways.
CARE/ The New School Partnership Feasibility Study Summary
  • F Berdiel
  • J Dehejia
Berdiel, F. and J. Dehejia. 2007. CARE/ The New School Partnership Feasibility Study Summary. New York, NY: The New School.
CARE and Parsons The New School for Design
  • L Cadavid
  • M Edwards
  • L Mazzocco
  • S Smith
  • A Wahi
Cadavid, L., M. Edwards, L. Mazzocco, S. Smith and A. Wahi. 2009. Objectives and Next Steps. Antigua, Guatemala. CARE and Parsons The New School for Design. 2008. A Pattern Emerging. (Accessed December 5, 2009) http: I / www.care.org/newsroom/articles/ 2 oo8/ 09/2 o 08093 o _ guatemala _ parsonsstories.asp.
I Wanna 'J'ake Me a Picture
  • W Ewald
Ewald, W. 2001. I Wanna 'J'ake Me a Picture. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
A Search for Sustainable Livelihoods Within Global Marketplaces: Stories of Learning and Change Among Rural Artisans in Thailand
  • C Jongeward
Jongeward, C. 2001. A Search for Sustainable Livelihoods Within Global Marketplaces: Stories of Learning and Change Among Rural Artisans in Thailand. Proceedings from CASAE-ACEEA National Conference 2001.