Workshop
DIVERSITY ACTION
Workshop
INTER-SCHOOL WORKSHOP
DIVERSITY ACTIONS
April 1-3, 2021 at La Villette Makerz, Paris and online
A 3-day workshop designed for design students to initiate
direct actions for diversity and inclusion within their
schools and universities.
In February 2020, within the framework of the conference “Towards Sharing Common Futures - Celebrating diversity for a more resilient and convivial society through design”, at École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, we conducted a short format inter-school workshop to collectively reflect on the involvement of design schools in migration issues. Together we asked ourselves: How could design schools better integrate the realities of migration, the welcoming of people from elsewhere and the sharing of their cultures within them? About twenty participants, students and alumni from various schools (ENSAAMA Olivier de Serres, ENSCI, ESAD Valenciennes, Politecnico di Milano and Strate Collège) took part in this short form workshop.
This year, in the context of the ExpoAction “Infinite Creativity for a Finite World” (30 March - 18 April, 2021), and in partnership with the research team in design and social innovation of the University of Nîmes, l’École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris invited design students to continue this research on diversity in design educational settings. We have broaden its context of action and collectively reflected on the theme of diversity as a whole. Design students from different schools were invited to participate to the workshop, to imagine how design schools and universities can be transformed into radically welcoming, convivial, multicultural spaces.
This event sprouts from the need to build highly collaborative and caring cultures within the academic world, to work to actively dismantle all forms of discrimination, support a greater diversity of bodily and cultural expressions, and organise collectively to overcome the systemic violence turned against what is perceived as “other”. The workshop offered convivial spaces for the exchange of ideas and experiences, times of reflection and co-design around 3 angles: cultural diversity, diversity of bodies and biodiversity. Together we have explored ways out of the conscious or unconscious systems of discrimination, repression, exclusion and indifference.
In the era of globalisation, how can we reconcile individual and collective aspirations to have the plurality of cultures and identities recognised, without this resulting in a withdrawal into identity and a rejection of alterities? These paradoxical injunctions can be difficult to balance in a temporal context of learning and personal construction. However, the theoretical and epistemological opening of the disciplines of design and art to these questions constituted a solid and effectively mobilisable basis for the workshop.
Design students from diverse backgrounds were challenged to imagine their schools as a better space of representation, expression, and emancipation for all bodies, all cultures, all identities, in the human and non-human realm. Drawing on their own experience, they imagined together forms of design that can honour a plurality of ways of being and that can easily be activated in a concrete way within their school. After the three-day workshop, the group will be kept active by following up on the projects and sharing of best practices.
This project was initiated by Anna Bernagozzi (École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris), co-created and coordinated by Carmen Bouyer (designer and artist), with the help of Béatrice Gisclard and Michela Deni (University of Nîmes) and Caroline Grellier (designer, professor, associate member of PROJEKT, University of Nîmes).
Programme
With students from the École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, ENSCI Les Ateliers, École Supérieure d’Art et Média de Caen, École d’Art et de Design de Saint Etienne, École d’Art et de Design de Valenciennes, École Européenne Supérieure d’Art de Bretagne, École de Design de Nantes Atlantiques, Free University di Bolzano, Haute École des Arts du Rhin, Institut Supérieure des Arts de Toulouse, IROKO FabLab, Politecnico di Milano, Université de Nîmes, among others.
THURSDAY 1ST APRIL
INTRODUCTION
Presentation of the global project and the workshop, synthesis of the preparatory work: issues, semantics, by Anna Bernagozzi (professor of design theory and coordinator of the DESIS Group at École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris), Carmen Bouyer (designer and artist), Béatrice Gisclard and Michela Deni (Laboratoire PROJEKT, University of Nîmes), Emmanuel Tibloux (Director of the École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris).
Virginia Tassinari
Contextualisation with a philosophical approach with Virginia Tassinari, philosopher and design teacher, Product Design Department at the LUCA School of Arts in Belgium, and Design Department of Politecnico di Milano in Italy. She is the co-author of Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon, a radical reference book that calls designers and students to action.
> Video
CASE STUDY - CULTURE DIVERSITY
Marc Baroud
Dash&Zephir
Caroline Grellier
Conversation between Marc Baroud (designer, former director of the Design Department at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts ALBA in Beirut), Dimitri Zephir and Florian Dach, (designers, founders of dach&zephir studio and teachers at l’École de Condé and l’École Boulle), and Caroline Grellier, (designer, professor at Africa Design School, associate member of PROJEKT), on how to radically imbed multiculturalism within design education.
> Video
Francesca Gattello
Zeno Franchini
Francesca Gattello and Zeno Franchini from Marginal Studio will talk about Counter-Colonial Aesthetics, an Action-Research on the potential of migration to reframe heritage and visions of contemporary Europe through the construction of a common heritage of diasporic identities through participatory practices and object making.
> Video
Elise Amal Connor
Mathilde Avogadro
Elise Amal Connor, graphic designer and artistic director of La Fête du Slip festival with Mathilde Avogadro and co-founder of the collective Good For A Gxrl with Mathilde Avogadro and Iyo Bisseck, a group that was created as a way to question design practices and design education using an intersectional perspective. During her studies at ECAL, Elise co-organised a student feminist movement. Her practice is focused on community and multiculturalism as a way to observe and rethink society.
> Video
CO-CREATION BETWEEN STUDENTS - CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Collectively imagining designs (objects or processes) that can support the diversity of cultures within their school. Inter-school group of 4 to 6 people.
CASE STUDY - DIVERSITY OF BODIES
Manon Ménard, doctoral student in the PROJEKT laboratory (Unîmes), is conducting research on educational inclusion through design as part of the project Aspie-friendly, building an inclusive university. A national academic inclusion program for people with autism without intellectual
Iyo Bisseck, interaction designer, researcher and creator of the interactive installation Wuta and of the Main Clé platform, which offers tools for questioning and learning to communicate with deaf or hard of hearing people. Iyo works at the crossroads of different fields such as art, social sciences, cognitive sciences and computer science.
Mayar El Bakry
Mayar El Bakry, designer and researcher. Mayar is currently focusing her work on food and cooking as a means to create spaces of discourses, exchange and dialogue in and out of academia. Within her research, she emphasises cross-cultural exchange, social relevance and collaboration.
> Video
CO-CREATION BETWEEN STUDENTS - DIVERSITY OF BODIES
Collectively imagine designs (objects or processes) that can support the diversity of bodies within their school. Inter-school group of 4 to 6 people.
CLOSING / INFORMAL MEETING BETWEEN STUDENTS
FRIDAY 2nd APRIL
CASE STUDY - BIODIVERSITY
Tanya Ruka, independent designer, artist and researcher, founder of the Region Net Positive network and artistic director of Fog & Moon Studio. Tanya is active in environmental issues from an indigenous perspective in Aotearoa, New Zealand and globally, working with the Waitaha Executive Grandmothers Council.
> Video
Alexia Venot, designer, independent researcher and guest lecturer at École des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, founder of the collective and studio Vivant.es in the framework of the ExpoAction “Infinite Creativity for a Finite World”. She explores the issues of care through design and values interspecific modes of relationship from an ecofeminist point of view.
Andrea Trimarchi
Simone Farresin
Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin from Formafantasma, duo of designers, founders of the GEO-DESIGN department at the Design Academy in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The GEO-DESIGN master’s degree offers access to diverse knowledge – from material history to cultural worldviews, from humanism to ecology, from plant and animal rights to artificial intelligence, from the earth’s core to outer space.
> Video
STUDENT CO-CREATION - BIODIVERSITY
Collectively imagine designs (objects or processes) that can support biodiversity within their school. Inter-school group of 4 to 6 people.
GROUP WORK PER SCHOOL ON A CHOSEN DIVERSITY ISSUE.
Choice of one or more concrete actions to be implemented in the school.
GROUP WORK PER SCHOOL ON A TOPIC A TOPIC CHOSEN FOR DIVERSITY.
Development and co-creation among students.
GROUP WORK PER SCHOOL ON A TOPIC A TOPIC CHOSEN FOR DIVERSITY.
Development, co-creation and preparation of a short presentation.
CLOSING / INFORMAL MEETING BETWEEN STUDENTS
SATURDAY 3rd APRIL
FINAL REPORT
All students who participated in the workshop present their proposals imagined during the workshop to improve diversity in their schools through design.
> Video
FINAL DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Thank you for the help of the Virtual Care Lab and Anjali Lynn Nath Upadhyay of Liberation Spring.
