1. Place-based Design:
Ethnographic fieldwork and exhibit design
Jim Mathews
Robyn Acker
Molly Ward
Middleton Alternative Senior High (MASH)
Clark Street Community School (CSCS)
WCSS Conference
March 19, 2012

2. Anchor 1: Theme + Inquiry
What is everyday art and design?
Anchor 2: Design Challenge
Design an exhibit to teach young kids about every day art

3. Open-ended Exploration
What is every day art and design?

4. Open-ended Design Challenge

5. Working Definition
Tied to local culture
expresses local aesthetics, functions, practices, and meaning
Handmade, Personal expression
assembled, D.I.Y.
adapted Not mass-produced

6. Initial Inquiry + Framing
Working Definition
Initial Examples
Brainstorming / Discussion
Prior knowledge + Experiences

7. Introductory Fieldwork
Observations Interviews

8. Introductory Fieldwork / Scaffolding

9. Introductory Fieldwork / Scaffolding

10. Debriefing + Reflection

11. Pulling Ideas Together
Mapping
Categorizing

12. Refining Our Thinking

13. Students as co-designers
DRAFT 1
DRAFT 2

14. Multiple Neighborhoods
Rural
Suburban Urban

15. Developing a nuanced understanding

16. Emergent Learning + Curriculum
• Emergent questions, skills, concepts, interactions, networks
• Open-ended problem space and design challenges
• “Just-in-time” skills and concepts
• Spiral curriculum / Layering
• Draw from and build on student interests and questions

17. Emergent Learning + Curriculum

18. Initial Exhibit Ideas

19. Any questions before we move on?

20. Drilling Deeper - Ethnographic Fieldwork
What do we want to
learn more about?

21. Prep: Brainstorming Questions

24. Initial Ethnographic Fieldwork (Visit 1)

25. Back in the classroom: Reflection
• What did you enjoy most?
• What was most interesting?
• How does this place relate
to every day art?
• What new questions do
you have?

26. Back in the classroom: Pulling things together
What are some key themes?
What else do I need / want to know?

27. But because of the craftsmanship in building it, these
aren’t massed produced. These are made one at a
time by hand. This is made by a guy just up the
road. . . By the time it’s all done, because it takes a long
time to dry and everything, it takes Paul 3 weeks to
make one of those from the time he slits it and then
you have to dry the bamboo.
You have to clear your mind of everything and just
zero in on what you’re doing. You sort of lose track of
things. There’s been a lot of times when on the creek
here I’ve been fishing and I haven’t been more than 50
yards from the car and I fish for 4 or 5 hours. It’s not
always getting out there. It’s really immersing
yourself in what it is that you’re doing. I think that’s
the aesthetic of this.

28. Ethnographic Fieldwork - Round 2

29. Ethnographic Fieldwork - Drilling Deeper

30. Exhibit Design: Iteration / Prototype 1

31. Typical Day: Design Studio

32. Design Studio

33. Formal Critique 1

34. Re-Design: Iteration 2

35. Re-Design: Iteration 2

36. Formal Critique 2

37. Formal Critique 2

38. Presentation Oral Communication
Usertesting
Skills
Notetaking Interviewing
Cultural Iterative
Literacy Design
Critique Research
Video Mobile
Production Technologies
Project Management Collaboration Photography

39. Todd: . . . I have a very traditional approach to the
way that I build, which not many guitar makers these
days have, so that has allowed me to sort of keep
doing it in a tough economy.
Interviewer: Can you say what you mean by that?
What is your niche?
Todd: Well, I kind of play old music from the early
1900’s.
Interviewer: So old music is not from the 80’s?
Todd: No! From like the 1920’s and what not. So those
instruments were made in a very specific way and
most people they build according to technology. They
have advanced, but I’m trying to work according to
the traditions, the traditional ways and what not. So I
use traditional materials, traditional methods, etc.
And that has allowed me to keep busy through the
current economic downturn . . .

40. Place-based Design
Place-Based Democratic
Learning Education
Projects
Design-Based Learning

41. How did this differ from other classes?

42. What did you enjoy most about this project?

43. How could this class or project be improved?

45. Place-based Learning
Philosophy Curriculum
Primacy Content
of Knowledge
local Skill
Instruction / Methods

46. Place-based Design
Place-Based Democratic
Learning Education
Projects
Design-Based Learning

47. Place-based Learning
● Experiential - e.g., Field experiences, design
● Local/global - abstraction of concepts,
interdependence
● Democratic participation - student centered, civic
action, community partnerships
● Classroom-based experiences directly link to field
experiences and vice versa
● Inquiry-based, project-based, problem-based
● Design Oriented / Applied (process & product)
● Interdisciplinary
● Layering (e.g., content, disciplines, perspectives),
“spiral” curriculum
● Emergent questions, skills, concepts, interactions

48. Place-based Learning: Key Components
Students engaged in applying their knowledge
to solve “real problems” and answer authentic
inquiry questions

49. Place-based Learning: Key Components
Students collaborate with local citizens,
organizations, agencies, businesses, and
government to help make plans that shape the
future of their cultural and ecological systems

50. Place-based Learning: Key Components
Students play an active role in defining
and shaping projects

51. Place-based Learning: Key Components
* Interdisciplinary
* Students as producers of new knowledge vs.
consumers of knowledge
* Direct instruction situated within an
authentic context
* Emergent skills, concepts, and interactions

52. Place-based Learning: Key Components
• Experiential - e.g., Field Experiences, Applied
• Design/Action Oriented
• Local/global - abstraction of concepts, interdependence
• Democratic participation - student centered, civic action,
community partnerships
• Inquiry-based, project-based, problem-based
• Interdisciplinary
• Layering (e.g., content, disciplines, perspectives), “spiral”
curriculum
• Emergent questions, skills, concepts, interactions

53. Immersion

54. New role
for teachers

56. Lessons learned?

58. Neighborhood Game Design Project: Overview
* Investigate contested issues and places in
our community
* Students design their own media as a way
to teach others about these issues and
share their own perspectives
* Studio-based design pedagogy

60. Contested Places / Contested Spaces
“The identities of place are always unfixed, contested and multiple. And the
particularity of any place is, in these terms, constructed not by placing boundaries
around it and defining its identity through counter-position to the other which lies
beyond, but precisely (in part) through the specificity of the mix of links and
interconnections to that "beyond". Places viewed in this way are open and
porous. . . . All attempts to institute horizons, to establish boundaries, to secure the
identity of places, can in this sense therefore be seen to be attempts to stabilize the
meaning of particular envelopes of space-time. . . . such attempts . . . are constantly
the site of social contest, battles over the power to label space-time, to impose
the meaning to be attributed to a space, for however long or short a span of
time.” -- Massey 1994, 5
Massey, Doreen. (1994). Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.

61. Contested Places: “Meaning Sticks to Place”
Contested place suggests primary narrative elements: the events that flow from
people who have problems in a place; or in scientific contexts, the story of the give
and take of diverse natural elements in a place. Such a place has a history, limits,
potential, and multiple opportunities for exploration and meaning making.
The emotional dramas of contests hook students, as do nearby, hands-on, and context-
rich local places. Combined in a local game, a contested place is a natural focus for
instruction and learning. It at once provides coherent and rich subject matter,
intrinsic motivation, multiple entry points for inquiry, opportunities to develop
many fluencies, and structures for developing deep understanding of the world.
Meaning sticks to place, making it possible for students to easily comprehend what is
otherwise difficult.
The Local Games Lab - http://lgl.gameslearningsociety.org/

62. Neighborhood Game Design Project: Part One
Initial Simulation + Investigations
Email comes in... : “Hi, I am Mike
Davis the City Administrator...
...I need your help exploring contested
issues in our downtown. Do some
fieldwork and meet me back at City
Hall to report out...

65. Design Studio / Design-based Pedagogy
• Physical studio space
• Opening circles
• Design journals
• Design board
• Design task cards
• Distributed knowledge
• Dispersed community
• Authentic practices and designs
• Iterative design process
• Emergent curriculum

66. Place-based Learning
Every Day Art and Design