In addition to other events, the Design Studies Forum hosts two panels at the College Art Association Annual Meeting each year. For the 2011, meeting in New York City the following two panels will be presented.
Locating the Design Commons
To successfully tackle today’s social and economic issues, individuals from diverse disciplines must bring together their expertise in a collaborative effort. This creates many challenges, including effective leadership, productive engagement, and coherent process. If an interdisciplinary model means working together to explore a challenge using different perspectives in a coordinated way, design is positioned to prove itself as a problem-solving methodology unparalleled at solving complex problems. Design fosters a collaborative intellectual community by using the campus as laboratory, seeking out opportunities to engage with all disciplines.
This panel will examine how the design commons serves as a catalyst to contribute to the educational, cultural, and economic life of the academy and beyond. Papers can address the following: do art and design expression produce social capital, build trust, increase tolerance, and produce a sense of community? How do the arts help all students develop a sense of identity as well as their own unique worldview? What are the links between the creative life of campuses and the larger cultural and economic milieu? Do creative skills learned in college educate future knowledge workers for the creative economy?
Dawn Hachenski McCusker, James Madison University, hachendm@jmu.edu; and Andi Witczak, University of Kansas, awitczak@ku.edu. Mail to: Dawn Hachenski McCusker, James Madison University, MSC 7101, Harrisonburg, VA 22807