The Department of Visual Arts (DVA) at Stellenbosch University (SU), has implemented a community interaction based service learning module for first to third year Graphic Design students. The module forms part of the practical graphic design curriculum, and seeks to develop in students a critical social consciousness through the integrated process of practical production. In line with a service learning framework, the module is implemented through a partnership between the DVA and an education focussed NGO working at two township high schools. The University students form learning partnerships with the high school students, through which they explore relevant social issues, often underlined by deep cultural and material differences, and seek innovative ways of articulating and resolving these problems through the visual medium. The module creates a forum for an ongoing dialogue between the different life-worlds of the parties involved. This dialogue will hopefully result in ‘bottom-up’ institutional and social transformation.
The broad goal of institutional and social transformation that this project strives towards must be clarified in relation to a particular historical and social context. South African society is marked by deep levels of social and economic inequality. This inequality should be understood and analysed both as a global phenomenon, and one that has been entrenched by South Africa’s history of apartheid. The social infrastructure established during the apartheid era was informed by a logic of racial exclusion. Although there have been formal efforts to transform the country’s social structure (the national policies on Higher Educational transformation being most relevant to our project), the historical, cultural and racial divisions that underwrite South Africa’s socio-economic context need to be addressed and challenged at various levels. Both formally and informally, redress of the country’s past remains a pertinent issue particularly in the education sector. The hierarchies of power that have been written along racial lines, are echoed in a global context, in which the divisions between first and third world, between city and slum, reflect an ongoing history of oppression and dispossession. Recognition of these deepening levels of global inequality are reflected in the Millenium Development Goals. The project is premised on the hope that truly understanding institutionalised injustice can lead us to transform it. Here we take heed of Michel Foucault’s insight that the field of education is a critical site to analyse the workings of discursive power. As a result of its problematic history, which established SU as one of the ideological bastions of the apartheid system, as well as its problematic language policy, which serves to maintain its racially and culturally exclusive character, this issue needs to be challenged with urgency. The continued racial polarisation in South African society calls for urgent attention from all higher education institutions.
On a formal level, this project aims to develop relationships between the university (through sustained involvement between Design and high school students) and its surrounding communities, which, in the long term, would work towards facilitating the transformation of the Higher Education sector in South Africa. The interactions themselves provide a platform to explore issues of cultural difference, citizenship, collective identity and national memory. The project ties in with the general vision of the art department: “Through an integrated approach to teaching, research and community interaction, strive to inculcate in students self-reflection, commitment and respect for the diversity of South African culture”.
The Social Responsibility and Citizenship module forms a core component of first to third year students’ practical design education. It has been structured in line with principles of service learning. It is made up of four main components: themed discussions, community interaction, Action Learning and Action Research (ALAR) and reflections. The functioning and synthesis of these components will be discussed in relation to art / design as medium, with reference to examples.
The projects, which last between three and four weeks, begin with a series of readings and discussions. The first year students investigated issues such as stereotyping, collective memory, blackness and whiteness, power relations, gender, cultural diversity and helping behavior. The second year students read a series of lectures by Anthony Giddens, and explored themes of globalisation, risk, democracy, family and local knowledge. The third year students read exts relating to social justice/and social change, with a particular emphasis on racial oppression and exclusion, partly through Jonathan Jansen’s book “Knowledge in the Blood”. The discussions, facilitated by an external teacher, equip students with the conceptual tools to link their learning experiences with the relevant theory and philosophy - in this case action research, critical and grounded theory.
The content is created through the ‘community interaction’ dimension of the process. The department has partnered with a local NGO called Vision K, which runs a series of academic and extra-curricular programmes that aim to improve the possibility of high school students attending tertiary educational institutions. The interactive sessions, which usually happen over an afternoon, take place in Kayamandi- the oldest township next to the historical town of Stellenbosch. Although the outcome of the interaction is a practical design project, the open ended nature of the action research and action learning (AR& AL) with which the students are engaged creates a space within which sensitive and rarely articulated issues can come to the fore. A pertinent one is the practice of ‘community interaction’ (CI) itself. Research has revealed that mandatory CI implemented into a curriculum without a ‘knowledge producing’ or learning component easily dissipates into a thinly substantiated exercise in charity. The mutual production and exchange of knowledge that characterizes the interactions propels students to question rather than resume the stereotypical racialised power hierarchies.
The formation of a dialogue between the two sets of students from very different cultural and social contexts, is probably the most valuable outcome of the partnership on both sides. This particular level of exploration is possible because the kind of knowledge produced through the creative process does not have as standardized or instrumental a value as the kind produced through scientific practice. For this reason, the medium of art and design, through its critical reflection of and engagement with socio-political realities, is particularly suited to the preservation of indigenous knowledge and the exploration of complex human issues.
At this stage, the success of the project can not yet be measured in terms of its broader goals of institutional and social transformation. Rather, challenging the individual mindsets and perceptions of the students involved, from both ‘sides’, remains our current standard of assessment. Hence, the results of the project are most evident in the students’ reflections, written at various stages throughout the process. The reflections reveal the emergence of a critical social consciousness, articulated most strongly through an awareness of race and culture. Because this self-awareness is necessarily shared between the learning partners through the discussions and through the resolving of the practical design task, it does not dissapate into an exercise in self pity and navel gazing. As suggested earlier, in terms of a reciprocal and above all sustainable relation between learning partners, the formation of dialogue which crosses cultural and socio-economic boundaries, seems to be the most promising result of the practice. The project suggests that we can begin to cross the social and ideological barriers established by a history of apartheid and perpetuated in a globalised age of extreme individualism and full blown neo-liberalism.
The project addresses the students’ lack of experiential education about the socio-economic disparity that shapes our country, a topic which most disciplines skirt around. It transforms the existing curriculum to address pressing social issues and in this way it is socially relevant. It functions through a cooperative relationship between the lecturers, students, researchers, NGOs and the ‘community’ while simultaneously taking a critical view of the power hierarchies that these relations assume. It uses the medium of art and design to extend beyond the somewhat insular ‘design world’ and engage with sensitive issues around racial relations, political violence and cultural oppression.
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