The involvement of students in live and engagement projects outside the studio has gained traction in the last two decades within the art and architectural disciplines (Bishop 2012, Watt and Cottrell 2006, Live Projects no date). Yet much of this practice and its theorisation focus on students’ learning and curriculum innovation, with much less attention paid to the experience and impact on civil society through such collaborative projects. Based on the authors’ own architectural pedagogy, this paper critically reflects on the blurred boundaries between students and civil society, arguing for a need to acknowledge and chart the process of learning and sharing across all actors brought together through architectural pedagogies of engagement. Situated in the traditions of temporary urbanism, action research and urban design activism, the studio becomes a ‘field’ of material and social experimentation as well as methodological innovation where participants interpret (Rancière 2009) and draw from their embodied experience of making, sharing, learning, and projecting future imaginaries.

This paper frames the live project as a rich space for entanglement between students, educators and civil society. The argument is underpinned by principles of critical pedagogy (Freire 1970) and a claim for equality (Rancière 1991) as part of a dialogical process of learning. Situating the studio in the field creates the setting for a process of mutual learning where all participants (students, community, educators/ facilitators) become learners as part of a ‘community of practice’; individuals therefore contribute through their competence and knowledge of what they do and know (Wenger 1999). Ultimately, such engagement in the real world provides the frame not only for practising discipline-specific skills, but more importantly embeds students as members of civil society, thus promoting a sense of empowerment and shared citizenship for all actors engaged.

References

Bishop, C., 2012. Artificial hells: Participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. London: Verso Books.
Freire, P., 1970. Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Live Projects, School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, no date. Available at: http://www.liveprojects.org/ (Accessed 15 May 2021)
Watt, K. and Cottrell, D., 2006. Grounding the curriculum: learning from live projects in architectural education. International Journal of Learning, 13, pp.97-104.
Rancière, J., 1991. The ignorant schoolmaster. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Rancière, J., 2009. The Emancipated Spectator. London and New York: Verso
Wenger, E., 1999. Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.