Dr. Milena Radzikowska

event

Design for Peace & Reconciliation Project

2019—

Colombia, a country on the North-Western corner of South America, has been facing certain critical challenges—after a 50-year civil war, many Colombians are left suffering the effects of living in a post-conflict zone and the consequences of the displacement of over 3 million persons, and the death of 220,000, with 4 out of the 5 deaths non-combatant civilians. Through the Design and Community Innovation Workshop (TaDIC), stakeholders are hoping to use design methods to imagine a better future for themselves, their communities, and their country.

In 2019, my colleagues and I had the immense privilege of joining the TaDIC team in Tumaco, Colombia, for three weeks of innovation and collaboration between local elders; community, business, and education leaders; students from across Colombia; volunteer participants; and UNAL organizers. Together, we worked to achieve shared outcomes—peace and well being for Colombia—through the design and execution of design prototypes. The physical, mental, and emotional proximity served as a metaphor for the larger process of reconciliation, with shared artifacts acting as tangible reminders that cooperation can result in mutual benefit.

Connecting Colombians & Canadians Events

Although 6400 km apart, Colombia and Canada share many concerns. We want our children to be healthy and loved. We want clean water and good food. We want to feel part of a community that is peaceful and safe. This month, Jill Mah (the project’s RA) and I are hosting a three-day exhibition, workshop series, and discussion panel at Mount Royal University—Design Thinking for Social Good—to explore issues common to communities in both countries, and showcase the inspiring work created by our Colombian partners.

Workshop 1: Make a bottle cutter, see examples of prototypes, and learn about how design was used for peace and reconciliation in Tumaco, Colombia.

Workshop 2: Use design thinking towards solving one of these local problems: waste reuse, industry diversification, or food security.

Workshop 3: Imagine your ideal future by thinking about the past.

The last workshop is followed by a short RECEPTION at 1pm outside of the immersion studio.

Please note that you can register for as many workshops as you’d like since each one will act independently of the others.

Materializing the Collection DH@Guelph 2020—postponed

with Dr. Shana MacDonald, Assistant Professor, Communication Arts, University of Waterloo.

Description: This course builds on the organizer’s growing interest in co-creating new forms of interface that leverage physicality and kinesthetic intelligence. Through the process of making, thinking, and remaking, we will explore the personal, social, and ethical consequences of turning people, environments, communities, or experiences into data, aggregating that data, then abstracting it graphically. Our primary area of concern in the course is with the potential of graphical data visualizations to further the dehumanization and decontextualization of the human experience. We are further concerned that certain individuals, communities, and environments are more vulnerable to what may occur within practices of computational translation and abstraction. This course proposes to explore these questions and themes through developing processes of thinking through data/making via different acts of materialization. Materialization (or to materialize) is defined as “to invest or become invested with a physical shape or form”. Materialization is a process of transmutation where the results are uncertain and in flux. Scaffolding the course via a series of experiments, participants will explore ways to shift textual or quantitative data into material builds that generate new qualitative data and allow participants to encounter embodied experiences of data in/as research. Our goal will be to guide our participants towards furthering their transmutations into sites of remediation by adding an additional layer of experience and knowledge production through public, digital repositories including social media. The course will operate via two interrelated parts:

PART 1—Materializing the Digital

Participants will be asked to select or work with pre-existing text and / or data collections. Working in small groups, they will devise, plan, and execute the simultaneous gathering and displaying of their collections, providing opportunities for:

  • Community (UofG) engagement with collection creation and interpretation;
  • Planning for the unexpected / unanticipated in design; and
  • Physical co-creation.
  • Physical Exhibition design from Born Digital content (Aynur share her experience)

PART 2—Digitally Augmenting the Material

Using either social media or Augmented Reality (AR), participants will explore the opportunities and consequences of adding a digital engagement aspect to their material builds. This will give participants a chance to think through the values and practices of translating data from digital to material and then how to re-materialize what has been translated back into digital public forms. This practice-based research approach will help outline how different forms of knowledge are produced at different sites of material/re-materialization.

Intended Audience: This course is intended for DH researchers at all stages of their career, including graduate researchers as well as those working with and actively developing data repositories and archives who are interested in the relationships between digital data and material practices. It will be especially of use for interdisciplinary scholars, research-creation and pratice-based researchers, and scholars with a commitment to feminist design, feminist media, and socially equitable DH practices. 

Interested?

REGISTER NOW!

Women Who Design: Frank Conversation on Our Industry & Gender

International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month are a visible opportunity to celebrate the impact that women make in every discipline of design. It is also a time to acknowledge and challenge the disparity between the genders when it comes to wages, senior roles and representation. While MRU’s Information Design program graduates a predominantly-female workforce (as do many other design programs across the country), senior positions in art and creative direction, interface and interaction design, design education, and marketing are still male-dominated.

On March 28, we hosted a panel discussion exploring the gendered territory of Calgary’s design landscape. Our panelists shared the challenges they’ve faced as women in design today—and how they overcame them.

Check out this piece by The Calgary Journal’s Lexi Freehill on the event.

Panelists:

  • Angel Aubichon, Entrepreneur at Indi City
  • Susan Casement, Senior Design Specialist at United Way of Calgary and Area
  • Cecilia Humphrey, Creative Director at Creative Capture
  • Diane Mitchnick, Senior Programmer Analyst at The City of Calgary
  • Michelle Priest, Senior Manager, Business Innovation at ATB Financial
  • Chelsea Watson, Senior User Experience Designer at Evans Hunt

Presented by Dr. Milena Radzikowska, MDes, Associate Professor of Information Design, and the School of Communication Studies at MRU.

Five female designers took part in a workplace equality 
panel at Mount Royal University. Photo by Lexi Freehill.