Goodbye Dubai Too 2009 : Blue Collar Theory

A small group of female design students from the Maryland Institute College of Art and Pratt School of Design headed to Dubai to work with art and design students and faculty from Zayed University in Dubai. This is the second time that we have taken female design students to collaborate with Emirati students using art and design to address cultural misconceptions and promote understanding. The 21 day trip was divided into a cultural emersion that comprised of trips to museums, heritage site, and other culturally important locations. These trips were augmented with art, archeology, geography and ethnographic lectures followed by discussions on the relationships of surface pattern to tribe relationships and religion. The cultural emersion phase of the trip becomes the backbone of the project phase where each group (comprising of a mix between Emirati, Korean, US and Taiwanese countries) uses the languages of art and design to address the complex and important questions surrounding religious and cultural understanding.

Design educational delivery is fundamentally flawed because educators continue to deliver information and projects to the individual student to prepare them for a career in a profession that demands group skills. This continued individual approach to design education continues to graduate students who are linear thinkers, where they focus on the 'me' and the 'my' instead of thinking in terms of 'we' and 'us.'

Students in this DUBAI project are learning the value of cooperation, mediation as well as becoming global thinkers.

DUBAI 2009 Team
MICA Faculty:
Lisa D. Prichard
Bernard J Canniffe

Zayed University Faculty
Dr. Ronald Hawker
Josh Watts

Designers:
Maitha Huraiz Al Falasi
Meera Huraiz Al Felasi
Nicole Chen
Alia Abdulla Al Siri
Emily Ragle
Huda Al Jallaf
Khadijah Al Kaff
Sunny Oh
Fatima Saeed Saifan
Khawla Darwish
Zoe Norvel
Buthaina Ghanim
Maya Graffagna
Rawdha Abdulla Ali
Bora Park
Amal Mohammed Rashed
Ilene Lundy