WHERE WE ARE
Cheryl A. Beckett
University of Houston

Teaching Social and Cultural Values through Service Learning At San Diego City College we fuse graphic Frequently our assignment sheets attach this phrase "Place within an historical, social, cultural, political context," seeking to move the students beyond formal design issues and place their ideas and research within a broadened framework Many methods exist for assisting the student in this process, but one powerful method is through site specific studies - to travel, to journey into territory removed from daily routine. Travel takes us away from the familiar into the new and unusual. Our senses are heightened as our daily routine is altered. We become clearly attuned to our surrounding in all its details. As Don George of Wanderlust states "Travel guides us toward a better balance of wisdom and compassion. Ð of seeing the world clearly, and yet feeling it trulyÉ one of the great joys of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything we know in a different light. Travel allows us to better understand who we are in the context of the world around us. Observing differ-ences and similarities encourages self-awareness, and better understanding of cultural, social and political distinctions. For the student, this is sometimes their first travel experience. More importantly, it is a travel experience with their design peers, causing a more critical analysis of the meaning of place and people, society and culture. Through site specific assignments, the students engage in careful examination, questioning, and analysis. They observe the environment not only through their eyes, but the eyes of their peers, instructors, guides and relevant authors. It is these many voices that contribute to expanding perspectives. Our bi-annual travel plans include attending the national AIGA conference. The theme of the conference offers fuel for rel-evant study in the classroom. Conference topics provide a reading list which is supplemented with material specifically rel-evant to the assignments. Attending the conference is travel of a very different sort. Dialogues move outside their typical framework and become shared with thousands of other designers. Views expressed by classmates and faculty expand to include the opinions and ideas of a roster of national and international experts. The student experiences a more global design dialogue. Two recent conferences, Voice and Las Vegas: Cult and Culture were adapted to related studies for the students. Las Vegas: Cult and Culture The extremity of the built landscape of Las Vegas and the natural landscape of Bryce and Zion National Parks, begged for investigation. Our students attended the conference and then headed for the hills. The pre-trip reading examined the duali-ties between real/artificial, high/low, nature/other, kitsch/culture. The designer becomes a social critic, investigating notions of duality and analyzing design from within culture. In places such as Las Vegas, culture is at its popular best. Nature is irrigated into a tropical paradise and architecture supplants the desert strip with the supreme creation of faux. New York, Venice, Paris, and Oz compete to indulge our desire for fantasy and escape. Zion and Bryce are landscapes on steroids, almost too bizarre to be real. Readings from Robert Venturi's "Learning from Las Vegas," Gillo Dorfles' "Kitsch,"and books on popular culture, encourages students to observe and question culture and their surroundings. Transpositions: Assignment Design a poster, titled "Transpositions," which investigates issues of duality. Establish a dialogue between two view-points. Transpositions investigates when "a word, sign or image is used outside its usual context," a transformation from real to artificial, a misrepresentation of the original. Support your ideas through additional text, quotes, poems, narratives, facts. Derive conceptual possibilities using imagery and ideas from the assigned reading, our Vegas/Utah trip, and the Cult and Culture Conference. Voice Conference It now seems hard to believe, but as the Fall 2001 semester began, my students seemed extremely apolitical. The Voice Conference encouraged a refocusing toward the social and political potential of media messages. Mouthpiece: Assignment 1 While most graphic work promotes products and corporations, designers have used their power as message-makers to shape public consciousness. From social/political statements through information/data display, the designer arouses the public conscience and promotes effective action. By traditional and subversive means, designers get the message out. In an effort to promote community involvement, political awareness and a sense of service among college-level stu-dents, our students were asked to design an integrated identity system for an umbrella organization that provides a plat-form for a multitude of groups to communicate their social/political agendas within the campus environment. Members of the organization provide information explaining their cause and methods for volunteering. The campus environment is altered through the development of a visually arresting poster series and platform graphics (stage, soapbox). Each student extended the system by researching a cause to include in the newsletters, included in the press packets. The extensive reading list and research helped the students question their role within the design community.

 

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