Global Studio launches community-driven projects

By Krishna K. Shrestha and Anna Rubbo

Introduction

Global Studio is an educational program located at the University of Sydney (with Columbia University and University of Rome) since it began in 2005. It is a teaching and action research project where students, academics, and professionals from around the world come together to collaborate on community-driven projects. This ‘think and do tank’ concept grew out of the work of the United Nations Millennium Project Task Force on Improving the Lives of (100 million) Slum Dwellers (2002-04), one of ten task forces set up to recommend policies and strategies by which the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) could be implemented. Over the years, as Global Studio organized visits to slums in various cities and meetings with the poor and their representatives, the following question emerged: “‘How can professionals become more responsive to the creation of inclusive development that addresses poverty alleviation?” Global Studio is one response to that question.

Global Studio adopts a paradigm of engaged bottom-up multidisciplinary, multi-institutional and international education. Its approach focuses on development driven by participation of communities as equal partners. Informed by the Millennium Development Goals, Global Studio promotes participatory development, planning and design that benefits under-served populations. Since its inception in 2005, about 500 students, academics and professionals from over 30 countries and 66 universities have participated in Global Studio’s intensive programs which have included conferences and symposia and community-based projects. Participants have been drawn almost equally from the global north and south to five programs.

Global Studio holds that the poor people should be subjects not objects of development, planning and design, and that decision-making should rest with communities. A key skill is learning to listen so as to be able to assist communities in their own development. Global Studio works with local universities, government, NGOs and community groups and responds to community needs, helps build local capacity, provides access to the knowledge and tools of design and planning, and assists local income generating projects. An important focus has been the creation of an international network of citizen professionals. In


Krishna K. Shrestha and Anna Rubbo are members of the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning,
The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, AUSTRALIA
Contact: krishna.shrestha@sydney.edu.au
Contact: Anna.rubbo@sydney.edu.au

 

this way Global Studio supports MDG 8, ‘ develop a global partnership for development’. The project website (www.theglobalstudio.com) has been designed to serve a double purpose: it is community-friendly, provides news, and disseminates the community, academic and professional outputs: publications, research papers, films, festivals, projects, exhibitions.

Case Study: Diepsloot, Johannesburg

Commencing in 2007, Global Studio worked over a period of three years in Johannesburg in the downtown and in the townships of Alexandra and Diepsloot. In 2008 and 2009, work focused entirely on Diepsloot, a township of approximately 160,000 people where some 70% are under or unemployed. Diepsloot is on the northern edge of Johannesburg, 24 kilometres from the city centre. Global Studio subsequently developed working relationships with Diepsloot Local Government, the Community Development Office and local community groups.

Community dialogues and research identified major issues with respect to information and communications, housing, the environment, and
1. Diepsloot women learn to insulate their shacks.
2. Student-community collaboration to fix leaking drains
the importance of arts and culture - in the form of visual arts, music, dance and theatre. In a communication-poor township strategically located community chalkboards provided messaging centres, and a meeting place. With advice from local communities, students developed a method of insulating people’s corrugated iron shacks, and passed on the skills needed to do this (photo 1 ).

Drainage and sanitation provided major environmental challenges. Throughout the most densely settled ‘reception’ area there are prefabricated concrete toilets, built in pairs, with a water standpipe and semicircular drain attached to one wall. Leaking drains, an ongoing problem through blockages caused by food wastes, were solved with an inexpensive and ingenious double sieve system made out of plastic paint buckets. (photo 2)

Community discussions in 2008 had revealed the importance of the arts in Diepsloot, when over 200 people declared they were artists. Global Studio asked if they had considered forming a not for profit network, which would make them eligible for Department of Arts, Culture and Heritage funds. Global Studio assisted with the first ‘Diepsloot Arts in Action’ festival, and over the next year the DACN (Diepsloot Arts and Culture Network) gained NFP status. With these and other community development projects underway, and with community support, Global Studio began work on some design projects: a building to house the DACN (photo 3), proposals for open space development including play spaces for children, urban agriculture and recreational areas for adults; and a low –tech bridge that spanned the floodplain (photo 4).

Upcoming event: Global Studio South Asia 201

The next Global Studio will be in Bhopal, India, in January 2012. As India prepares to launch its Slum Free Cities policy (RAY), inclusive urbanisation is very much on the agenda and therefore the theme of the Global Studio. How to work effectively with the urban poor using participatory processes is a challenge for India. Building on lessons learned by Global Studio since 2005, this project will bring national and international students, academics, professionals and communities together to focus on reimagining inclusive urbanisation.

Global Studio South Asia will aim to demonstrate a people-centred approach to policy and practices by delivering:

a) knowledge about, and innovative approaches to, inclusive urbanisation;

b) skills in participatory planning, design and research in professionals and communities and

c) an edited book from the conference to inform policies and practices that helps the urban poor.

Together, they will add policy and practice value to Bhopal and wider communities.

Global Studio will seek to interact with urban professionals interested in and responsible for

 
inclusive policies and practices in India such as RAY, the Slum Free City policy, and the question of how best to engage people in the design and implementation of these policies. Partnering with MANIT University, and working with the City of Bhopal and NGOs, Global Studio Bhopal will involve Indian and international students, academics, professionals and local communities.

Global Studio South Asia consists of
1) an international conference,
2) a design and planning studio, and
3) a research project.
3. Design proposal for the Diepsloot Arts and Culture Network
4. Design for new bridge across floodplain with market and social spaces.


Through the conference, Global Studio will promote a critical engagement with key issues such as participatory urban practices and climate change, as well as international development, and lessons- past and present- that we can take from India for inclusive urbanisation around the world. Currently, 300 million people live in Indian cities. By mid-century, these numbers are estimated to rise to 800 million; rural to urban as well as environmental migration will play an increasingly important role in future urban narratives and the creative life of cities. Through a two-week intensive consisting of a ‘ hands-on’ design and planning studio, and the parallel research projects, these issues will be pursued at the local level in Bhopal. National and international student and professional participants will work with communities, local government and peak bodies to understand and address the needs and aspirations of communities experiencing poverty and environmental challenges in Bhopal.

Interested individuals are encouraged to check the project website www.theglobalstudio.com, or contact the authors

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