Creative Corners - Our Work - Temple University Joins Forces with Creative Corners for an Amazing Study Abroad Program

Temple University Joins Forces with Creative Corners for an Amazing Study Abroad Program

Temple University Joins Forces with Creative Corners for an Amazing Study Abroad Program March 3, 2010

This May and June The International Design Clinic, Temple University and Creative Corners are joining forces to run an incredible Study Abroad Program: The Humanitarian Design|Build with the Shoe-Shine Boys of La Paz...

The program has been designed for students with a background or interest in humanitarian art, architecture, and design; urban geography of informal development; Latin American studies; alternative education; improvisational fabrication; indigenous materials and experimental methods of construction; or the generation of sustainable urban settlements. Undergraduate credit available.

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

This six-week program of study will offer participating students the chance to use their unique creative talents to design and implement new educational initiatives with the Shoe-Shine Boys or "Lustrabotas" of La Paz, Bolivia. Many of the Lustrabotas must work every day instead of attending school, which often prevents them from gaining the knowledge and skills needed to pursue other vocations and creates a cycle of dependent labor that has historically linked them to their current vocation.

In response, the program will work with the Lustrabotas, as well as various local, non-profit agencies currently dedicated to their needs, to develop such projects as new pedagogical practices and curricula; street-based arts projects and programs; small-scale educational devices; deployable classrooms; mobile school platforms; and/or a permanent center of education. As this will naturally require a trans-disciplinary approach, the program welcomes insight from several areas of study, including, but not limited to: humanitarian art, architecture, and design; urban geography of informal development; Latin American studies; alternative educational practices and pedagogies; film and photography; business strategies, especially within informal settlements and contexts; improvisational fabrication techniques; indigenous materials and experimental methods of construction; and the generation of sustainable urban settlements.

During their time abroad, students in the program will work closely with students, residents and laborers of La Paz, as well as with volunteers from several local non-profits to create new, educational strategies that are rooted upon the specific needs, means, culture and traditions of the Lustrabotas. The resulting work will be neither a replication of existing local methods nor an imposition of foreign solutions. Rather, these projects will represent a synthesis of both traditions – a hybrid address that will allow our international partners to possess and evolve the given strategy in a meaningful way for years to come.

To find out more please go to http://www.temple.edu/studyabroad/programs/summer/bolivia/index.html