Assistant Professors Ellen Christensen and Saskia van Kampen will be presenting at the 2020 Community Built Association Conference: Fostering Human Connection
The CBA (Community Built Association) is a not-for-profit association of professionals who are involved in all aspects of the community built field. The organization was formed in 1989 to provide network for such professionals and to offer information, education and training to the general public. The 2020 conference will focus on how to foster human connection when working with communities. Assistant Professors Ellen Christensen and Saskia van Kampen will be presenting at this event on March 5–8.
Professor Christensen will be conducting a workshop entitled “Conversation Markers: Tactics for Listening" I which she asks how design can function as a tool of attention and care? It is a hands on conversational and making workshop that will explore the potential of design as a method of active listening and empathy. Conversational data will lead to experimental infographics in order to provoke self reflective discussion. By doing so, we will examine the potential of interpersonal engagement to create community in a time of increasing digital distraction.
Professor van Kampen will be discussing her ongoing research into grassroots methods of placemaking through creative. Citizens make change on a daily basis through creative-practices and these changes directly affect their neighborhoods and communities. While never losing site of the fact that inclusive placemaking must happen from the inside and work out—it must come from the people who live, work, and play in those places—some of our initial approaches retained aspects of colonial methodologies that impeded the participatory engagement we were looking to foster. This presentation will share some of the lessons learned throughout this ongoing project—as researchers we have evolved our process for data collection based on observations and participant behavior during forums, panels, and workshops.
Van Kampen will follow up this talk in a panel discussion entitled: Community-Based Public Art Chronicles: Biggest Bloopers & Greatest Successes which will ask the question—How can we continue to learn, improve, and grow from our own experiences and the experiences of others?