Collaging together-apart: building trust and hope in social innovation and design pedagogies

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores how relationships of care, trust and hope might be fostered in a social innovation design course at a South African university of technology. Rather than shy away from the challenges of our uncertain world, the paper proposes feminist pedagogical strategies that seek to nurture students’ capacity for trust and hope, rather than overwhelm and despair, through carefully curated collaborative-collage-making processes. By interweaving Bracha Ettinger’s theory of matrixial trans-subjectivity and Karen Barad’s agential realism, the generative role that arts-based practices offer social innovation design pedagogies is made explicit. The paper will show how collaborative artworking activated a co-affective encounter in which students and myself, rather than drowning in overwhelm, discovered new educational imaginaries and Hope-full renewals.