LIB217
Social Artistry Through Co-creation
How can you apply creativity to a cause you believe in? In this context, what does collaboration offer? This class will foster open expression and deep engagement with the arts to explore human flourishing and Ikigai ("one’s reason for being or life-purpose"). Through art, we'll find and construct symbolic representations of concepts of social and personal change, to add meaning, and to provide opportunities for unique cross-cultural experiences. Working on your own inquiries, you’ll make sense of the potentially powerful effects of the arts on the momentum of social change—and how you can make a difference.
Note: This course involves active participation and group discussion, including significant student contribution to the course content.
A $50 discount will be applied automatically for adults 55+.
This course will be offered at Harbour Centre on Fridays, Feb 28–Apr 4, from 11:30 am – 1:20 pm.
Overview
Location: Vancouver
Duration: 6 weeks
Tuition: $180
Can be applied to:
Liberal Arts for 55+ Certificate
Upcoming Offerings
- Fri, Feb 28, 11:30 a.m. – 1:20 p.m. Pacific Time (class/lecture)
- Fri, Mar 7, 11:30 a.m. – 1:20 p.m. Pacific Time (class/lecture)
- Fri, Mar 14, 11:30 a.m. – 1:20 p.m. Pacific Time (class/lecture)
- Fri, Mar 21, 11:30 a.m. – 1:20 p.m. Pacific Time (class/lecture)
- Fri, Mar 28, 11:30 a.m. – 1:20 p.m. Pacific Time (class/lecture)
- Fri, Apr 4, 11:30 a.m. – 1:20 p.m. Pacific Time (class/lecture)
Course outline
- Week 1: Relationality
Using the classroom as a community of practice and experimenting with storytelling, we will nurture an intimate environment for growing creative partnerships to handle the dive into the unknown, including relational paradigms such as the Japanese concept Ikigai. - Week 2: Challenges, art, and social change
Welcoming everything that comes to us, including adversity and calamity, is challenging. We will focus on the powerful role art can play in enabling us to face the challenges in our lives, communities, ecologies, histories and cultures. - Week 3: Identity and art as inherently progressive
We will explore the special challenges of our sense of aging, including community contexts and needs, through storytelling and drawing self-portraits. We will examine the symbology around ancestry and heritage to enrich our perceptual and creative repertoires. - Week 4: Coming to our senses
The aesthetic experience involves the audience’s senses, emotions and intellect. For this experience to occur, all of our senses must work together. We will explore how our senses inform our understanding of the world. - Week 5: Simple rituals as thought and action
We will investigate the value of simple rituals that enhance the process of identity development, redefinition and self-transcendence. Learning and sharing that learning becomes especially important in late life and may be closely linked with identity. - Week 6: Integrating science and the arts in learning
We will gather around a table with paper, paint, scissors and glue to think about a social issue and represent it through collage. After creating collaborative collages, you will be aked to share your thought processes.
What you will learn
By the end of the course, you should be able to:
- Reflect on your experience and bring inner experience into consciousness
- Demonstrate co-creative and collaborative problem solving
- Describe arts-based strategies for discovering how to engage with communities
- Discuss your motivations and assumptions about the work and the communities you hope to engage
How you will learn
- Lectures
- Group work and projects facilitated by the instructor
- Reflective essay (applicable only to certificate students)
Learning Materials
No textbook is required. We will provide all course materials online.
Technical Requirements
Handouts and other course resources will be available on Canvas, SFU’s online learning system.
To access the resources, you should be comfortable with:
- Using everyday software such as browsers, email and social media
- Navigating a website by clicking on links and finding pages in a menu
- Downloading and opening PDF documents