Conference Proceedings 2010 [pdf] - Art & Design Symposium ...

Keller, G. D., Erickson, M., & Villeneuve, P. (2004). Chicano art for our millennium. Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual
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Keller, G. D., & Phillips, A. (2005). Triumph of our communities: Four decades of Mexican American art.
Tempe, Arizona: Bilingual Press.
Villeneuve, P. (2007, January). Inquiry and the constructivist gallery learning experience. Paper presented at
the Gallery Praxis conference, Sarasota, FL.
Villeneuve, P., & Erickson, M. (2004). Ode to Mexican artists. Art Education, 57(3), 25-
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Williams, B. L. (2007). A summary of U.S. museum policy from 1960 to the present. In P. Villeneuve (Ed.),
From periphery to center: Art museum education in the 21 st century. (pp. 58-65). Reston, VA: National
Art Education Association.
Building Social Capital Among Designers
fostering conversation + connectivity about community-based social justice projects
Suzanne Cabrera + Patrick Lee Lucas, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Social capital refers to connections among individuals… A society of many virtuous but isolated
individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital.
--Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone, 2000
In this conceptual presentation, we see a lively conversation about organizing community-based design
research and activity to address issues of social justice. To open the presentation and to tell something about
our current work, we define the current landscape of a number of our design projects that fit within the rubric of
social justice-related issues: retail spaces for non-profit organizations, a bus shelter to address a wide gap in
our community’s transportation infrastructure, a journal writing/drawing exercise for teen-age mothers to give
them voice in their care, an exhibition on a local designer who was a champion for civil rights, improved spaces
in elderly low-income housing developments, and retrofitted circulation spaces in a local high school. We
believe that these various projects collectively demonstrate a range of ways to work with organizations and
individuals in our community around multiple notions of design as a form of advocacy for social justice. These
projects bring the added benefit of providing a forum for our students to test out ideas and learn about
themselves and others in a vibrant student/community laboratory.
We are aware that projects like these have been accomplished throughout the United States by our design
faculty peers and their students…and we certainly acknowledge that commonality among the attendees of the
ADSJ Symposium. What is missing is a way to gather and share stories, issues, ideas, and challenges of this
type of advocacy through design...on both the local and national levels…throughout the year, in between
formal gatherings. With the conversation proposed for this session, we aim to utilize the collective wisdom of
those gathered to overcome this gap in information and idea sharing…and we know that participants can take
the conversations from the symposium back to their own respective work. Thus, we would like to use this
presentation as a forum for conversation on the topic.
For the largest portion of our half-hour session, we will provide a series of prompts, organizing participants for
group discussion around unresolved topics that each faculty member faces: identifying financial support;
getting the word out to others about the importance of design and social justice issues; managing university
relations (in light of restrictions regarding promotion and tenure and additional financial strictures); finding
additional community partners and projects; and mobilizing students.
In the end of the session, there will be time for a quick summary by each group of discussants and then we
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