31 October Knitting Circles

TENC vs SURFACE DESIGN

The teaching experience with the first year Surface Designers was deeply fulfilling. The strongest component and perhaps the most surprising was the social interaction and social development, this echo’s my experience with TENC. Until I stepped into public spaces I had no idea that TENC was about generating conversations and thus creating community.

For the students it was the same. They would come back to class after engaging with the public, visibly altered, excited, as though a light had gone on inside of them.

The wrestling within the groups, the challenging, confronting and supporting each other was another aspect of this dynamic. It bonded the groups and cemented the class as a whole. There were comments that only now at the end of the year have they got to know each other. They wished that a project like this had taken place earlier in the year.

This is the power of art, design, reaching out and defining spaces wherein we can interact and create.

The four groups presented to most of the Surface Design Department, and I have been invited to present to the rest of the faculty.