Long before COVID, communities near and far have faced daunting economic and social challenges, while precarious individuals struggle with crises of social and familial care. StudioLab’s Critical Design Teams offer rapid-response Design Justice and Intergenerational Care.

This StudioLab course connects critical design teams with researchers, activists, and community stakeholders. Practicing methods of transmedia knowledge, design thinking, and performance activism, students collaborate on projects through the Cornell Law School and Cornell’s Small Farms Program, including:

• 4 Women on Death Row: Four US women face imminent execution: can transmedia knowledge help tell their stories and make the case for clemency to governors and parole boards?  

• Green Energy meets Golan Land Rights: The UN recently issued a resolution on Golan land rights: can we help prototype a campaign to publicize it and halt the construction of wind turbines on occupied land?

• Black Farmer Fund:  Soul Fire Farm made a Skillshare Video Series featuring Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other farmers of color: how to share the resources more widely and build community?

• Labor Ready: Desiring to run their own farms, many Latinx farmers face language, cultural, and financial barriers and also lack management skills: can we build collaborations with experienced White farmers? 

• Land Grab Universities: US public land-grant universities, including some traditionally Black institutions, were built on Indigenous lands: what are the entangling stakes of today’s “land grab” universities?

Konsulting with partners’ ongoing projects, teams will study and emulate practices developed by ACT-UP, Black Lives Matter, Guerrilla Girls, Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, and Stanford’s Design for Extreme Affordability program, presenting and sharing their collaborations via project site and other platforms. The course includes a series of public workshops by A.D. Carson (critical race rap), Chris Csíkszentmihályi (robots for protestors), Ricardo Dominguez (electronic activism), and Alainya Kavaloski (online activist games).

Part of a multi-year Civic Storytelling project to translate StudioLab into practices, policies, and infrastructures of different disciplines and institutions, the class and workshops are funded by the Society for the Humanities’ Mellon Rural Humanities Initiative, Engaged Cornell, and a Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellowship, with support from the Department of English and the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research. 

Transmedia knowledge includes essays, PechaKucha, info comics, videos, and museum exhibitions. Critical design teams will help students and teachers integrate transmedia knowledge into project-based learning that culminates in a public event. Teams will document and reflect on their work by creating transmedia themselves, while at the same time helping to develop resources and insights for making transmedia civic storytelling scaleable across New York State through BOCES and RSA. 

Design thinking, transmedia knowledge, and artist activism overlap and all focus on engaging multiple stakeholders. Our partners’ interests include issues of local and international land rights, rights of the incarcerated and dispossessed, economic development for minorities in New York State, and social justice. 

This course serves Cornell’s long-standing mission of public engagement, as embodied in Cornell Cooperative Extension, Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, Engaged Cornell, and the Mellon Rural Humanities Initiative. 

Course Process and Projects

Over the semester, Cornell students develop design, media, and community engagement skills through seminar, lab, studio, and field activities: conceptualizing projects, learning technical skills, creating media, and consulting with school students and educators. 

Critical design teams will work with their partners, using design thinking to share their knowledge of transmedia forms, to learn from them about project-based learning, and to reflect together to generate insights and recommendations regarding the viability and scaleability of civic storytelling. 

Teams will complete four projects, focusing on the theory and practice of design thinking, transmedia knowledge, and project-based learning while reporting on their work with partners. Over the semester, students will create essays, info comics, Pecha Kuchas, installations, and a website. 

Traditional and emerging scholarly media genres often seek to inform, enlighten, convince, persuade, and sometimes entertain and move readers. We will learn critical and creative skills for sharing research, consulting on community projects, and creating impact with different audiences, including specialists, community members, and the general public.

In reading for projects, students will write conceptual thumbnails of texts summarizing main arguments, defining critical concepts, and posing critical questions. 

Human-Centered Design

The spring 2020 Cornell English and Media Studies course, “Design Thinking, Media, and Community,” explored methods of human-centered design and transmedia knowledge in collaboration with high school English and Art classes in Ithaca and Dryden, New York. Project-based learning combines student-driven research, collaboration, and communication to address these issues. Our goal has been to use design thinking to support project-based learning through transmedia civic storytelling projects: real stories about real issues for real audiences.

Civic Storytelling

Civic Storytelling is a multi-year initiative supporting professional development of teachers, Black and Latinx farm laborers, creation of online resources, and innovative curricula that help students address issues such as health and well-being through video, info comics, and other transmedia genres. In collaboration with local schools and community organizations, this Fall 2020 course used design thinking to translate media and performance research into practices of project-based learning.

Community Engagement

ENGL 3741 serves Cornell’s long-standing mission of community engagement, as embodied in the Department of English, the Mellon Rural Humanities Initiative, Engaged Cornell, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and the Bronfrenbrenner Center for Translational Research.  You can find out more about the course and the Civic Storytelling project through the Engaged Showcase and this Cornell Chronicle story.

Kaplan Fellowship

In June 2020, the Cornell Public Service Center awarded the Civic Storytelling Project one of two Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellowships. Many thanks to the educators and students who made this project possible, as well as to the PSC and the Kaplan Family. Thanks also to the Office of Engagement Initiatives for an Engaged Opportunity Grant and long-term advice and guidance.

English 3741 Spring 2020

Professor: Jon McKenzie
Students: Nana Antwi, Vanessa Barragan, Megan Chang, Emily Chen, Marinna Chung, Anna Cummings, Jeremy Dingle, Marissa Gailitis, Sosna Gellaw, Lara Harvey, Emmanuel Herskovits, Aditya Jha, De’Vonte Parker, Natalie Slaiman, Gwen Stark, Jessica Strauss, Ellie Walsh, Zoe Watkins, Natalie Yeh, Benjamin Yeo