Drea Howenstein

October 1, 2014

Lecture: Mobilizing Participatory Practice and Emergent Design Pedagogies

Mobilizing Participatory Practice and Emergent Design Pedagogies
Emergence is a concept describing a certain threshold of complexity, when new properties begin to appear in physical, biological, ecological, socio-economic, linguistic and dynamic systems.

Mobilizing Participatory Practice and Emergent Design Pedagogies looks at emergent pedagogical inquiry as a means to enhance the capacity of artists and designers to more effectively collaborate on art and design projects with/for/by local communities. Howenstein presents a variety of case studies that utilize collective and co-design processes from university studio classes involving communities from Chicago and Brazil, to propose design-based inquiry and project based learning as pedagogical events with transformative potential to enable new social and cultural futures
Art and design informed by situational and relational ethics requires pedagogies honoring uncertainty as well as collective human capacity building, if the status quo of a specific situation is to be creatively challenged and the conditions for new possibilities to be cultivated. Precedents include collectively designing and constructing sustainable solutions for public housing and shared community spaces, affirmatively inventing alternative social situations and relations, and co-designing processes, systems, products, and public art. Crowd sourcing, social networking, skype conferencing, and video channels are considered as additional qualitative research tools to aid in conducting long distance participatory design processes and socially engaged class projects.

Bio: Drea Howenstein is an artist interested in cities, social justice, post-sustainability and the cultural commons. She has spent much of her career focusing upon socially engaged and collective public projects within the context of urban environments, teaching art and design, and working with cultural institutions. She holds multiple degrees, including an Interdisciplinary MFA from Bard College. A tenured professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she teaches across disciplines focusing on critical spatial practice, public pedagogy, participatory design, art and design studio, and museum education. She has been taking students to Brazil, since 2008, to research informal human settlements, emergent social innovation, social resiliency, and to co-work with residents of Igarai, on 1.99 Real Housing, a social housing and cultural development project. Howenstein also works with communities to develop creative projects that address local needs, such as Inferno Studio, a mobile hip-hop recording studio, now in use by the Chicago Park District.