Part 1
What issues, topics, concerns, anxieties, or news might be on your mind lately? These issues might be connected to events at the national, regional or local levels, or they might concern your immediate communities. Create a blog post to brainstorm a few topics. List each topic and briefly describe why you might be passionate / concerned about it. List at least 3 topic ideas. We will be looking at this reflection next week as potential seeds for class projects.
Work Culture: I feel like I am always talking about work, and working, and what I am working on. Work consumes all my time in exchange for next to nothing.
Work Culture: My family and community derives value from work, rather than recognizing inherit values not tied to labor
Work Culture: I wish working was a choice rather than a means of survival
Part 2
Below you will find a list with various "community engagement "tool kits" created by activists and artists with the goal of sharing wisdom and challenging/informing the ethics of our work. Select and review one of the toolkits. What strategies or findings most resonate with you? What information might have been entirely new and worth digging further into? What might be missing? Answer these questions on a blog post.
I reviewed the Liberatory Design Toolkit, and one of the points made in the toolkit that struck me as odd was, "How can we insure we are reaching a point of view that is authentic and not distorted by biases?" This stood out to me because it is assuming that we can work within an idealogical vacuum. We all will start to define our ideas from a perspective that will have some spectrum of bias attached to it, and the act of removing that bias means that the end conclusion is still distorted by biases, albeit the absence of one. There is still a mark, or a creative decision that can be seen to actively remove the bias, and on top of that I think it is impossible to come to a conclusion within this vacuum of 'authenticity.' This is not to say that we shouldn't strive to take these actions, but it just struck me that it is assumed that art can be made completely neutral.
I can't really point to one singular quote or idea, but overall the whole toolkit made me slightly uncomfortable. While I understand the overarching goal of the methodology in the toolkit, the framework of this method seems like it would create a collaborative group that is fraught with millions of ideas and no actual action. Being open to all ideas is great on paper, but not all ideas will push the group in the right direction. Embracing and navigating the complexity of the group will lead to new ideas, but it does not lead to powerful design. Powerful design comes from thorough but succinct research applied to a question or a statement. Innovation and new ideas can be seen in-between the research and the question, but a messy process leads to a messy result.
Maybe there is merit to the methodology of this toolkit, and maybe I have to fully immerse myself in it to see if it actually has this merit, but reading through it leaves me skeptical.
What issues, topics, concerns, anxieties, or news might be on your mind lately? These issues might be connected to events at the national, regional or local levels, or they might concern your immediate communities. Create a blog post to brainstorm a few topics. List each topic and briefly describe why you might be passionate / concerned about it. List at least 3 topic ideas. We will be looking at this reflection next week as potential seeds for class projects.
Work Culture: I feel like I am always talking about work, and working, and what I am working on. Work consumes all my time in exchange for next to nothing.
Work Culture: My family and community derives value from work, rather than recognizing inherit values not tied to labor
Work Culture: I wish working was a choice rather than a means of survival
Part 2
Below you will find a list with various "community engagement "tool kits" created by activists and artists with the goal of sharing wisdom and challenging/informing the ethics of our work. Select and review one of the toolkits. What strategies or findings most resonate with you? What information might have been entirely new and worth digging further into? What might be missing? Answer these questions on a blog post.
I reviewed the Liberatory Design Toolkit, and one of the points made in the toolkit that struck me as odd was, "How can we insure we are reaching a point of view that is authentic and not distorted by biases?" This stood out to me because it is assuming that we can work within an idealogical vacuum. We all will start to define our ideas from a perspective that will have some spectrum of bias attached to it, and the act of removing that bias means that the end conclusion is still distorted by biases, albeit the absence of one. There is still a mark, or a creative decision that can be seen to actively remove the bias, and on top of that I think it is impossible to come to a conclusion within this vacuum of 'authenticity.' This is not to say that we shouldn't strive to take these actions, but it just struck me that it is assumed that art can be made completely neutral.
I can't really point to one singular quote or idea, but overall the whole toolkit made me slightly uncomfortable. While I understand the overarching goal of the methodology in the toolkit, the framework of this method seems like it would create a collaborative group that is fraught with millions of ideas and no actual action. Being open to all ideas is great on paper, but not all ideas will push the group in the right direction. Embracing and navigating the complexity of the group will lead to new ideas, but it does not lead to powerful design. Powerful design comes from thorough but succinct research applied to a question or a statement. Innovation and new ideas can be seen in-between the research and the question, but a messy process leads to a messy result.
Maybe there is merit to the methodology of this toolkit, and maybe I have to fully immerse myself in it to see if it actually has this merit, but reading through it leaves me skeptical.
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