Craft and Affective Domains of Meaning Making: Engaging Hand, Head and Heart for Transformative Sustainability Learning

Abstract

Teaching theories and conceptual frameworks of sustainability in studio based design courses often remain at the level of abstraction. Place based education however, offers a way to expand students’ understanding of sustainable community development by immersing them directly in the cultural, socio-economic and environmental conditions of a given, local setting. Direct interactions with a particular community, immersed in particular physical and socio-cultural contexts enhance learning experiences and deepen understandings of complex interrelations between economic prosperity, social equity and environmental stewardship.

Craft is positioned at the forefront of a pedagogical model for place-based learning. As a vehicle for teaching and fostering sustainable community development, craft is the catalyst for transformative change at three affective domains of meaning making: hand, head and heart. As an embodied experience, craft is an affective phenomenological approach to heighten sensory awareness and deepen haptic sensibilities of our material world through our senses. As an intellectual and creative problem-solving pursuit, craft supports development of our cognitive skills. In community design build settings, craft facilitates cultural exchange and knowledge transfer. As a collaborative activity, craft cultivates emotional connectivity and fosters development of empathy for “other”. And finally, as a physical manifestation, craft expresses collective creativity, cultural identity and shared values. Each of these conditions is highlighted in this presentation as a way to explore ideas regarding craft, it’s meaning, and the potential it holds for transformative action and change.

This paper describes a design-build course offered at a major university in the United States that brings together university students with urban teens from a disadvantaged neighboring community. This approach – teaching through craft – is rooted in the local and situated to be mutually beneficial to the community and university students. The course provides design students experiential learning opportunities in a local setting, engages urban youth in the educational process of design-build, and serves the needs of a community through education extension and building revitalization efforts. During a fifteen week-long semester, teams of design students and urban youth work side-by-side to visualize, conceptualize, design and build furniture scale pieces as part of a major renovation project for a new community center. The adaptive reuse of an abandoned building serves as the site for the renovation project. While students immerse in the socio-economic-environmental conditions of the local, their collaborative design-build efforts with the teens reflect and represent collective creativity and a body of shared values.

Over a four year period, a substantial number of culturally unique and ecologically sound furniture pieces have been built; these include: shelving systems, storage units, benches, doors, lighting fixtures and a coffee bar. Each of these objects – hand crafted by students and urban teens – demonstrate how craft fuels imagination, ignites passion, communicates meaning and creates community. During the design-build process, they learn new craft skills, are sensitized to diverse cultures, and develop kinship through craft and meaning making. This real world immersion helps students understand the complex interrelationships between economics, equity and environment, and ground the issues that affect sustainability in the knowable and known.