Rethinking Design Education
Design anthropology tries to understand how design translates values into tangible experiences. At OCAD, we’ve identified a core set of values – diversity, inclusion, “decolonizing” the curriculum – and expressed them through our academic plan, then tried to make them tangible through our curriculum, how we do research, the relationships we establish to build communities. institutional barriers that have slowed the faculty down. Not having enough Indigenous faculty to interweave Indigenous perspectives into our curriculum.
Not having enough black faculty to do the same with black perspectives. People of colour are already well represented here, but we need to do more. Institutionally, we want to promote an ethos of respectful design. That includes making sustainability a key part of everything we do, considering feminist perspectives, interweaving Indigenous content and principles into our curriculum. In Australia, where I did research on respectful design at Swinburne University, Asian and other racialized students who reflected on their place in the Australian context and on their relationships with the Indigenous communities there often reconnected with things in their own cultures that were inhibited. This was especially true in the context of design, where they might have aspired to be great designers in the European tradition, but all of a sudden had permission to approach the process of making from a place of deep cultural knowledge. So focusing on the Indigenous perspective doesn’t erase. It opens up more possibilities. individual identities and on their identities within the Canadian context. I would characterize it more as anxiety. It’s coming from a place of, “I want to be able to do this, but I don’t have the tools.” It’s less about, “No, no, no, don’t do this. The Bauhaus is the best.” It’s daunting for everyone because we’re in the middle of a process. We are redefining what it means to be a great designer. And these types of conversations are happening everywhere.
It’s part of the global zeitgeist.