Messy writing...disorganized

Community happens at many scales. For me, community happens first in the studio and includes those students that I work with directly, discussing problems and working out solutions (or more problems). To a lesser degree, I find some sense of community within RISD at large. At a larger scale, within the city of Providence, I sense the community a little less. I believe the problem for RISD lies in our (in)ability to navigate these different scales of community.

I would like to say first that I will make certain generalizations pertaining to my own experience at RISD. These generalizations may indicate problems within the community that affect me, or problems with me that affect the community (or my perception of community).

I would like to start by talking about the immediate community, the few people that we (I) spend the most time with. For many of us (RISD students) this means our studio. Jacobs offers what she thinks are “the most important habits of thought,” referring to cities. I think they are valuable to the smaller scale community as well. The first important habit of thought is “to think about processes.” It is important to understand that relationships are more complex than we might think. They are likely more complicated that we can comprehend, as they depend on their context for meaning, and context is relevant at infinitely many scales.

The second important habit of thought is “to work inductively.” [more thoughts later]

What creates community at RISD?

Providence? Do I find community in Providence? What is lacking? The larger the scale of reference of a community, I think, the more difficult it is for an individual to approach, or even comprehend. We naturally do this through the creation of smaller communities or groups, which may be constructed solely for the purpose of addressing the greater community, such as political groups.

How does the individual deal with these varying scales of community?

Do these different communities overlap? How? What is lacking?

What do we need to better connect existing communities? More overlap.

I think there are two issues that must be dealt with to solve problems with community. I think we lack overlapping space. Work space, crit space. When we feel disconnected, we make a cafeteria. This is fine, but it’s not enough. A small space in the RISD store to sit and read books is fine as well, but it is a simple solution to a complex problem. I think a place to work with students from other departments is needed.

The second issue that concerns me is the lack of overlap of our theoretical spaces. I think this is the space that will help us build community. Of course, this is a complicated problem. How do you bring students together from various departments to talk about their work in a way that connects them to other students? The problem is in its likelihood to fail. This is the case with all complex problems. That is to say, it may not always work to bring students from varying disciplines together to discuss their work, especially if they don’t have a common background, a common training, and a common jargon. However, I think it would be invaluable for students to better understand our parallels as artists and designers, and probably worth suffering some failed attempts. Our disciplines are becoming ever more specialized in the name of efficiency, and I mean efficiency in terms of economy. Perhaps we could benefit from some redundancy.

“It was early realized by such planning theorists as Stein and Bauer that preplanned shopping centers within cities must also be monopolistic or semimonopolistic, or else the statistics would not predict, and the city would go on behaving with dark and foreboding irrationality.”

Crosspollination / Braiding

“Cities happen to be problems in organized complexity…they present situations in which a half-dozen or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously and in subtly interconnected ways.” Although Jane Jacobs’ quote addresses the idea of the city on a general and macro level, this same concept is applicable to institutions like RISD; institutions that are suffering from lack of unity and community.

Throughout this semester I interviewed students affiliated with RISD and individuals unaffiliated with the school. The same theme (or problem) that continuously reached the surface was the fact that RISD’s campus and academic structure prevent crosspollination. Community members of Providence unaffiliated with the school rarely have the opportunity to interact with RISD and furthermore, RISD students rarely have the opportunity to interact with their peers outside of their chosen discipline.

The lack of crosspollination is a fundamental problem with the academic structure of the school. The structure as it exists now supports interaction between students exclusively within individual departments. Students spend the majority of their time working in studio with the same individuals from their department. Unity and interaction between students across disciplines ceases to exist with this type of structure.

Jacobs’ ideas of simultaneous, interconnected variables, interrelated into an organic whole, influence a proposal for changes to the academic structure of the school; within each chosen major, students should be required to choose a concentration or theme that would travel with them throughout their education at RISD.

Firstly, it is important to discuss how and why I have arrived at this proposal.

Like mentioned previously, I had the opportunity to interview four RISD students who were all in different departments; furniture, jewelry, architecture, and landscape architecture. The group included both undergraduate and graduate students. Each student was asked which communities on campus they felt they belonged to and whether they felt RISD suffered from a lack of community. Themes began to develop regarding overlap in their answers. All four students considered their studios as the main community in which they belonged to.

Additionally, they found that locations like the Wild Colonial or Cable Car to be communal places where interaction could exist between students outside of their department. It was evident from the interview that the students considered these types of non-departmental interactions as something favorable and something that they wanted more of.

It was important to interview individuals unaffiliated with RISD as well. Furthermore it was important to interview people who use art as a tool for creating communities. As art students, learning how other artists create community is incredibly influential and especially pertinent to this proposal. I interviewed Tyler Denmead, co-founder of New Urban Arts in Providence. Tyler discussed powerful ideas of nest building; the idea that relationships are situated and need a place. Additionally, he discussed notions of New Urban Arts’ open shell concept. This meant that there were no classrooms, no studios, and no offices. There was a desire to blur boundaries of all the disciplines within the space. This created an ambiguity and uncertainty of people’s practices – all different practices were visible inside the space simultaneously. Tyler described certain aspects of a successful space that have to exist: an organic, changing space within a specific site, and shared values of the people. With these initial aspects, the practice within the space could manifest itself in many different ways.

Specific ideas of community emerged from the interviews. Firstly, it was evident that RISD lacked a define community. But more importantly, it was clear that RISD students were thirsty for unity and for more interaction between students across all disciplines and departments. Ideas from Tyler’s interview provided a starting point to addressing these issues on campus. Something needed to be created that blurred the boundaries of individual disciplines within RISD as well as outside of RISD.

One possible answer that emerged from this idea was a student center. A student center would provide a place on campus where students in all departments could travel to and exchange ideas. A student center is problematic for several reasons as well. Firstly, I do not believe the answer to the lack of community on campus can be solved by one particular building on campus that has the specific program of creating unity. There are locations on campus like the Wild Colonial and Cable Car that would seemingly solve issues of unity, yet we still have problems. I think it would be similar with a student center. Secondly, a student center would only be inviting to students and faculty associated with the school. It is vital that the RISD community is inclusive of members outside of the institution.

Another possible answer that ultimately took the form of the proposal of this paper involved changes to the academic structure of the school. Wintersession was an extremely valuable experience that allowed interaction between students in all disciplines. However, Wintersession is temporary and only focuses on one particular chosen class. More opportunities like Wintersession should exist throughout a student’s time at RISD. We have the most talented and creative artists in the world sharing a campus. We should be taking advantage of the infinite possibilities of exchanging knowledge and ideas. RISD is such an attractive option for emerging art students because of the incredible talent of the students. Yet, once students arrive here, they are only exposed to ideas within their department. We have the potential to be an incredibly powerful, unified, creative force exchanging ideas. However, we currently exist as separate, unassociated departments who just happen to exist under the same institution.

I will now discuss the specifics of the proposal. The main idea behind the proposal can be defined by the word crosspollination. The dictionary defines crosspollination as:

1. The transfer of pollen from the flower of one plant to the flower of a plant having a different genetic constitution.
2. A sharing or interchange of knowledge, ideas, etc., as for mutual enrichment.

The proposal involves the implementation of a new academic structure that weaves students from multiple disciplines together. Not only will every student declare a major by their sophomore year, but they will also choose a BRAID (Brown/RISD Academically Integrated Discipline). The idea is that a student not only chooses a department within RISD but also has the opportunity to choose a multi-disciplinary integrated theme. For example, a student entering their sophomore year chooses architecture as the department they will enter next fall. They would also choose from a list containing several BRAIDS. This list would include themes that weave multiple disciplines together. The list could include: sustainability, education, alternative practices, economics, professional practice, business, social studies, internationalism, digitalism, music, and performing arts. The thought is that someone in architecture who is interested in Green Design could take classes outside of the architecture school with students in all the other departments who are also interested in Green Design. Brown may offer a class on social journalism which a photo major in the social studies BRAID could take.

Additionally, BRAID’s would not be exclusive to classes offered at Brown or RISD. For example, a student could fulfill one class of their BRAID by having an internship at a sustainable design firm over Wintersession or summer. Communities outside of RISD could be formed outside of campus by fulfilling requirements in a professional practice setting.

This idea of simultaneous occurrences and blurring boundaries of individual disciplines is vital. Without this crosspollination, departments will increasingly become more polarized and RISD will become more unattractive to perspective students. The incorporation of BRAID’s into the academic structure would be a unique and attractive perk to perspective art students who are thirsty for many types of creative exposure and interaction across all disciplines.

WHITE TENTS Proposal Board

Street art/sculpture

Revised Proposal

STREET SCULPTURE/ART

Street art is a way of expressing/presenting Artists and Designers work and Ideas
to a wider public audience. Used as a medium for communication and interaction across communities.

AIMS

The Projects aims are three fold, firstly to combine the ideas and talents of a number of RISD students from different departments and year groups in one project. Secondly to involve the younger generation, school children into the project. And thirdly to present this collaboration of work across the spectrum to the wider public community through Street art interventions.

LOCATION

There are 3 possible sites for the project

1) RISD Green / Benefit St

2) Market sq / Waterfront RISD Store

3) Downtown Providence sq – corner of Washington/Union St






WHY?

There seems to be two prominent divides here at RISD and in Providence.

The first divide is institutionally based. Student’s predominately work within their departments, they have little interaction between other departments and therefore there is a lack of interaction between students from different years and disciplines as there life evolves solely in their place of work. This could be seen to be due to little cross discipline work opportunities, the spread out nature of campus buildings and departments, and the difference between Grad and Undergrad students.

The Second divide is between the institution and the general public at large. Most of what we do as students at; what one would hope is a creative and Innovative institution, here at RISD is done behind closed doors; a “card swipe away”. The work is produced internally behind building walls, with little opportunities for the wider community at large to view or participate in. On the few opportunities where work is presented such as department shows and gallery exhibits it is not directly geared (marketed) towards public viewing with guests and viewers more friends of friends or affiliates in some way or the other with the school, rather than Jo blogs who sees a poster on the street and pops in to see what’s going on.

PROPOSAL IN DETAIL

My Intervention would involve a number of students from different RISD departments working together to create sculptures, which can be viewed and enjoyed by the wider community, as well as creating a sense of our community being a part of a wider local community.

The project plan would involve as many departments in this project intervention as possible, the idea being at least one student from Architecture/Interior, Industrial Design, Sculpture, Textile, Graphic Design, and Museum Education.

The second involvement would be school children who, depending on the concept and designs decided upon by the project team for the street art sculptures would in my mind be involved in the finishing aspects to the work such as painting designs and images on to the sculptures with completely free rain in what they want to do.
The end product a number a collection of art/sculptures with a collage of images and designs painted onto them.

- FOURTH ELEMENT & MATERIALS

When it comes to the materials used for the street installation I would like to concentrate on the use of recyclable materials, and this is where a fourth element to the project gets involved. The fourth element would involve the wider RISD community who would be involved in supplying and donating odd bits of materials furniture, whatever, to the designers who would then sift through the materials and use these to create designs and sculptures from them.

- OPERATION

The project Is large in scale and in involvement and therefore I see this as a semester project and undertaken by those involved as a Independent Study.

The costs involved would be minimal as the bulk of the materials used will be from a collection of recyclable materials. The finishing aspects such as paints would in theory be where the main expenditure of finances go, and I do not foresee these costs running over $200.

- INVOLVEMENT & PERMISSIONS

Undowtably the involvement of students from each of the key disciplines outlined above is needed but not completely crucial and can come from any discipline here at RISD, specific disciplines outlined above offer varying resources to the project. Museum education has strong links with the younger generation of providence with Grad students from the discipline involved in work with school children and children in local Hospitals, a further discipline Graphic design could offer a useful work skill in publicizing the work through posters, leaflets, internet as well as most importantly through the local media and newspapers.

In terms of the use of street space depending on the location - different officials would need to be consulted to gain approval for the project work depending on who owns the site. If it is on the Providence Green, then those needed to be consulted would be faculty members who govern and decided such installations. If placed on street space at sites 2 & 3 city officials would need to be consulted to gain permission.

OUTCOMES

The outcome is a community project, which brings both RISD departments together, while involving the wider community of providence. The hope is that by presenting what we do behind closed doors, we can start to involve and present to the local community more of what we do. And hopefully at the same time inspire the younger generation towards design and art by participating in the project as well as seeing what goes on within the school.

Examples of street installations: