“Civic Storytelling, Zines, and PAR&D” combines artist-led community workshops, public exhibition, and research translation. Since 2019, StudioLab courses have paired student design teams with community partners in the US, Africa, and Middle East working in areas of human rights, healthcare, infrastructure, and the environment, translating my performance and transmedia theory via Participatory Action Research and Human-Centered Design (hence PAR&D).
One current project, Civic Storytelling with Digital Equity & Excellence (DE2), builds on previous projects with partner Newfield High School by focusing on analog and digital zines. It connects Cornell student designers with its Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Sunshine (Sunny) Miller;
Newfield High School Sociology and English Language Arts students and teachers; and NYC-based artist Owen Madigan who ran zine workshops for Newfield and Cornell students. The project also includes an April, 2024 exhibition at 14BC Gallery in NYC featuring student zines, StudioLab
instructional videos, and a wall of 30+ QR-coded project sites documenting engaged design work by 130 Cornell students with 15 different community partners over the past five years. We have worked with DE2 for three semesters, helping Newfield students raise awareness about the infrastructural divide between urban and rural communities, while the broader Civic Storytelling project dates back to 2019 when I collaborated with Sunny Miller at Ithaca High and Dryden High School. I will present on recent StudioLab work at a spring Performance Philosophy conference at UT-Austin and a Performance Design symposium this summer in Greece. By connecting Newfield and Cornell students, 14BC Gallery, and advanced research, this work combines research, teaching, and community engagement and connects to long-standing nationwide infrastructural and social inequities.
Collaborators:
- Jon McKenzie (Literatures in English)
- Sunny Miller
- Owen Madigan
- Newfield High School
