4,425 research outputs found
Community Repair Project: Strategic Social Skill Mobilization For Sustainable Fashion
As an effort towards sustainability, fashion needs to embrace repair as a designed feature for everyday clothes. Normally we think of repair as merely fixing a broken object, making it functional again. But repair can be so much more. It can be an update of function, an improvement of style, a sign of compassion, or even rebuilding of community. If sustainable fashion takes repair seriously, designers might be able to reengage communities in strategic collaborations for repair; using the broken object to mend the social fabric scattered by the status anxiety of fashion
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Creativity and liberation : a study of women writers and artists.
The dissertation proposes a new model of the artist in society--the artist-educator. This model is explored by investigating the lives and work of ten women artists and writers, who are accomplished and innovative creators as well as facilitators of the creativity of others, especially individuals and groups considered marginal by our society. These artists represent a new model of the artist-educator because of (1) how they view the creative process, (2) their social/political vision, (3) their approaches to teaching, and (4) the force of their impact on others. First, they view the creative process as one which calls for boundary breaking; i.e., taking down distinctions between one\u27s art and one\u27s life, between the uses and functions of various art media, between themselves and other artists, between artists and their audiences. These artists have a social vision: they see themselves as part of a larger whole, a diverse society, and at the same time, they see themselves as artists somewhere near the edge of their particular artistic or literary worlds, not in the mainstream. They also see themselves as change agents who use their art as a means of transformation. In their teaching and facilitating work they are committed to cultural diversity and intend to call forth the voices of those not previously heard from. They tend to believe that everyone is creative, and to assume that one\u27s creativity is linked to one\u27s wholeness and development as a person. They facilitate creativity in women in prison, people in nursing homes, persons with AIDS, the old, the homeless, drug and alcohol abusing teenagers, mentally retarded adults, and others. As artists and educators equally, they represent a new paradigm for who the artist in society might be, and they require that we broaden out the definition of creativity beyond a mysterious process which only a few genuises and artists possess. The artist is to be among us, because we are all capable of creating, all able to speak in the voices of our diverse cultural groups
Digital Arts Based Research Methods for Teenage and Young Adult (TYA) Cancer Patients
In recent years there have been a number of reviews of art therapy and arts in health research which have mainly targeted interventions that make use of traditional visual art media such as drawing, painting, clay sculpting and the performing arts with little acknowledgement of digital visual arts exploration. This research helps to address this evidence gap, and to build a more rigorously evidenced argument, by examining the therapeutic and wellbeing outcomes of engaging with digital visual art media.
This undertaking is realised through using digital art-based research methods. This project is unique in that it was given NHS R&D approval to work with Teenage and Young Adult (TYA) cancer patients in the ambulatory day care unit at Macmillan Cancer Centre University College Hospital London. This took place shortly after its opening in 2012, therefore, it is the first study of its kind in this hospital.
Mixed methods digital and traditional art co-design workshops were held weekly for two years and nine months, with a total of 120 TYA participants. The visual art data produced in the workshops and observational journals are examined for wellbeing indicators.
The data from the initial iteration of activities suggests that indicators such as achievement, increased optimism and being active are produced through activities in which the participant works individually. The closing activity, in which up to six TYAs participated in a collaborative body map, generated additional outcomes, resulting in the appearance of indicators such as respect, feeling safe, and inclusion.
In conclusion, the practice of mixed methods research can yield differing yet complementary evidence. TYA participation in the design process was key in identifying features that point out wellbeing benefits that could lead to a research-based prototype
Moving Home: The Art and Embodiment of Transience Among Youth Emerging from Canadas Child Welfare System
Youth who have exited the child welfare system are among the most vulnerable in Canada. Ample research in social sciences disciplines outside of Geography have illustrated the significant likelihood of poorer life outcomes for former youth in care across a variety of indicators. Combining geographies of mobilities, childrens geographies, and emotional geographies, this research seeks to understand the embodied experiences of former youth in care as they relate the transience experienced in care in the past and lived on in the present. Using arts-based, participatory and Indigenous methods this comparative study collaborated with 15 co-researchers from Toronto and Whitehorse ages 18-30 with lived-experience in care. Representations of bodies were complex, partial, and most often created by female-identified co-researchers. An interesting finding was positive representation of and identification with nature and natural elements, while homes and depictions of them hardly present in comparison. Hope for the future and other youth in care emerged as strong theme, and this hope connects to resilience as practiced by co-researchers as a conscious form of resistance. Methodological findings include the compelling nature of the data created by opening up artistic medium to be self-selected. Lastly, policy suggestions for housing and transition supports to be more understanding of the mobility of these young people are discussed
Photographing other selves: collecting, collections and collaborative visual identity
This study is situated in a social documentary photography context, and is concerned to explore whether the collaborative interaction between photographer, subject (as collector) and material object (as collection) might enable a practice that presents a more mutual and subject-centred visual identity emerge. In particular, photographers Jim Goldberg and Gideon Mendel have focused more on the subject themselves, using collaborative processes such as photo-voice and photo elicitation, as well as the use of peoples’ handwritten captions on photographic prints themselves. Claudia Mitchell’s overview of visual methodologies is drawn on, together with Ken Plummer’s Documents of Life 2 (2001) and Gillian Rose’s Visual Methodologies (2001) to extend on these possibilities of conducting collaborative visual research.The practical component of this study focuses on personal collections and follows a number of theorists, including Susan Pearce, and John Elsner and Roger Cardinal. It follows Pearce’s identification of three major modes of collecting, and suggests that collections are essentially narratives of the self, and reveal experiences and expressions of personal desire. By drawing on these approaches and the various ways the twelve collectors were photographed, as well as implementing collaborative research processes (handwritten text, archival photographs and the re-staging of the collections), the study confirms Pearce’s three primary modes of collecting, and acknowledges that they are often interlinked or overlap one another. The study further found that a more subject voiced visual identity did indeed become apparent through the collaborative methods applied and discussed. The collaborative research equally demonstrated that these narratives of identity are not singular, but rather narratives of multiple, personal identities of the self
Curating ‘Difficult' Knowledge: Examining how museums and galleries should operate concerning the display and recognition of work post #MeToo
This thesis explores the implications of the #MeToo movement for museum curators and exhibition organisers, and considers how museum and gallery professionals should deal with the ‘difficult histories’ that cultural objects present. It argues that instead of adhering to outdated practices and power structures which negate equality and diversity, museums, galleries and cultural institutions must employ a revised ethical model when presenting such works to the public. In so doing, this thesis reflects upon every aspect of the curator’s role: deciding what to show, the use of appropriate textual material, the placement of works within the exhibition space and questions of community involvement and guardianship of heritage. It concludes that in order for museums and galleries to retain their cultural currency, a reconceptualised notion of curation, grounded on a new museum ethics, must be adopted. This model of curation has to be flexible and adaptive in its nature so that museums and galleries reflect the changing context and needs of contemporary society, not only by acknowledging and responding to the past, but also by challenging it
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