. The opening will take place on Wednesday, January 23rd from 5:30PM to 7:30PM at Haworth’s showroom located at 55 University Avenue. The exhibition will run from January 22nd to 27th.
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THE PLASTIC-FREE KITCHEN
An exhibition of work created through a collaboration between SKETCH Working Arts, Codesign, and students and faculty in OCAD University’s Participatory Design course
Funding from the Ontario Arts Council supported four SKETCH youth artists to participate in a 13-week program facilitated by Codesign, a social enterprise that connects design students with marginalized communities to collaborate on projects for mutual benefit. Through the fall of 2018, SKETCH artists developed their design thinking skills, learned to work with wood, identified market opportunities and constraints, and brainstormed their ideas until final prototypes were developed for the four designs shown in this exhibit. These design objects reflect the values set forth by the SKETCH artists as part of their shared vision for a plastic-free kitchen.
Students in the OCAD University Participatory Design course, taught by Assistant Professor Sarah Tranum, co-designed with SKETCH artists and staff members. This course offers students from any program the opportunity to engage in an intensive semester-long community-based participatory design project. The goal of this project was to develop an overall vision and platform that will support SKETCH youth to create, market, and sell their work as part of SKETCH’s broader mission to foster creative enterprise. The OCAD U students developed companion products to those developed by SKETCH artists. Student teams also co-designed a branding and packaging strategy, a mobile sales kiosk, and a Holiday Market way-finding system and customer engagement plan. Through the process, SKETCH artists and OCAD U students collaborated closely, exchanging ideas and supporting each other as the resulting work was developed.
This exhibition and the deliverables created through this dynamic participatory design process represent the first phase in a collaborative process to assist SKETCH engage more youth in sustainable creative enterprise activities. Based on the success of this pilot project, further funding is being sought to support the continuation of this initiative, which will provide more opportunities for learning and collaborating between SKETCH artists and OCAD University students.
Project Participants:
SKETCH Artists:
Brittland Derrain, Ashley King, Ailyn Malit, Daniel Xue
OCAD University Faculty:
Sarah Tranum
OCAD University Students:
Shaista Amjad, Sandra Beigi, Raphaelle Caroff, Elisabetta Costa
Narmeen Gorail, Rhece Holung, Yogaluxmi Jeyachchandiran,
Amoolia Kodukulla, Priscilla Lee, Saga Lindelöw, Shyine Makin,
Yusra Mukhtar, Annisha Ramlall, Fatima Riaz, Meaghan Robson,
My Vuong, Mingyue Wang, Yuxin Wang
SKETCH Facilitator:
Kerry Boileau
Codesign Facilitator:
Connie Chisholm
A special thank you to the following for their involvement and support of this project:
DesignTO Festival
Haworth
Codesign
OCAD University
Ontario Arts Council
One of a Kind
Red Bull
Andrew Reesor
SKETCH Working Arts