Ceramic Futures 2&3: Creating a learning environments to design the future.
Ceramic Futures is an online/offline workshop between leading European design and art schools where groups of students were working locally offline and communicating all the process online in the Wordpress or Google Plus community. It is promoted by Confindustria Ceramica for Cersaie Fair where all the final works of students were exhibited.
After becoming top student in the first edition of Ceramic Futures I just couldn’t leave the project and went on for the following two years in the tutor role =) I became a “tutor” (or better to call it facilitator) of the Politecnico di Milano students group (10–15 people each year) together with Marco Lampugnani (and also Alexandra Coutsoucos in CF2).
We developed all the methodology of this learning environment approach basing it partially on speculative design concepts, but mostly improvising and putting together new tools, like Design Approach Patterns. You can find all of it in the small publication we created after the second year of CF:
With this approach and flexible individual guidance for each student within CF learning environment, Politecnico students won Top of the Top nomination also for the 2nd and 3rd years of the workshop.
You can see winning students works following the links:
What else was special about Ceramic Futures process in Politecnico:
- in the school with no traditional ceramic workshops (but a 3d-printing ceramics though!) we approached ceramics as a medium to explore the future scenarios operating within more general design framework which is characteristic for the school;
- students of both architecture and design schools of all the levels were accepted, creating diverse group that learns from each other sharing the competences;
- in this system teacher works as facilitator stimulating peer-to-peer work and guiding the community through the learning path;
- we took it out of classroom environment, bringing people to work in different other spaces and situations: in the 2nd year it was in the open courtyard of Politecnico which rarely sees professors, but just groups of students, in the 3rd year we brought it outdoors completely to the islands of #nevicata14 —the public space designed by us, where we could experience the real implementation of design methods that we were teaching to students;
- changed environment and changed relation to the “tutor” helped to reach the level of integration into community and with project work which is much higher that normal school environment with the strict predefined roles causing alienated experiences;
- the best proof of integration is also that community that was built kept connections also long after the end of project with many students joining us in the working environment later and many keeping in touch and constantly updating and consulting us about their design careers developments.
What have I brought to CF:
In the second year I had a role of junior co-tutor, while in the third year had to upgrade to manage and lead the process still collaborating with Marco Lampugnani.
- reflections on experience of studying in 3 different countries and environments which helped a lot to see various strategies in approach to design education;
- vast knowledge of future trends as well as past stories in various fields from technology and science to arts and architecture (obviously design as well) providing references for research in various projects directions;
- ability to connect the dots and bring together elements from that vast database creating new interesting scenarios;
- passion to experimentation starting from the earliest stages of work to assist the concept development;
- all the previous industrial design expertise to guide through implementation of concepts in prototypes;
- transmedial storytelling skills (including social media) to follow through the efficient communication part;
- support to the general approach — integration in design education as a goal to achieve through various practices which I had chance to analyze thanks to contrasting past educational background.
What have I learned from my role:
- how different is approach to leading students from leading a design team as your focus is their growth and need to constantly balance the desired outcome with the individual capabilities of each person, also understanding their own goals and possible efforts.
- how teaching helps to discover and systematize your own knowledge which is normally stays present in an unconscious way even during project work, but is actualized when it’s necessary to transfer it, which leads to discoveries of new methods and tools that otherwise you use without noticing (for example: design patterns, rituals, future maps, etc, — all described in our brochure)
- After three editions of the same learning activity, it becomes obvious, how some patterns repeat — same findings occur in research, some concepts are discovering similar ideas, but at the same time everything is completely different and depends on the participants and their interpersonal dynamics, so learning environment has to be constructed specifically again and even of there was some clear methodology it has to be updated depending on new situations.
Discover more about Ceramic Futures through the full links collection:
