Since the brief involved cross-cultural collaboration with vulnerable people, I invited Adam Ramejkis (Intercultural Communication Trainer at UAL) to deliver two workshops (at The Lab E20, on 8th and 15th November 2023) on unconscious bias, positionality and ethical responsibility. Adam facilitated a session to talk about values (using Iniva‘s emotional learning cards), and a discussion on the ‘value of difference’, aimed at questioning dominant Western patriarchal values, and highlighting the importance to negotiate values within a group.
As captured in this Padlet, the workshops supported the students in challenging unconscious bias and stereotypes which are generally involved in intercultural communication, and highlighted the importance of being aware of the risk of cultural appropriation when designing with people from cultural minorities. The group discussions contributed to highlight how values can be individual but also shaped by surrounding groups (e.g. family, communities) and even national institutions. Finally, in creating slogan t-shirts, the project teams reflected on their individual and shared values, and conceptualised statement pieces as wearable manifestos, an artefact that tells a story (see Figure below).
See also:
‘Shifting the Centre: Anticolonial Ways of Seeing’ exhibition at Iniva.
The Values Project by the University of Western Australia.