Craft As Conduit: Connecting Community

Please note that all session times are in Eastern Daylight Time

Tanya Aguiñiga is a Los Angeles based artist/​designer/​craftsperson who was raised in Tijuana, Mexico. Her current work uses craft as a perfor­ma­tive
medium to gener­ate dialogues about iden­tity, culture and gender while creating community.

We will start with an inter­ac­tive real-time assign­ment, an ice-breaker that is craft and design based…which will lead us into discussing the unique oppor­tu­ni­ties that craft, mate­ri­als and design offer us that other disci­plines don’t. After this dive into what our own expe­ri­ences bring to the mean­ings of objects, I will discuss how furni­ture design has helped me in design­ing social-justice based projects and how craft has opened up new forms of build­ing bridges at the US/​Mexico Border. Each attendee will receive my Commu­nity Engage­ment Method­olo­gies Work­sheet to help them work out issues and solu­tions in their own public practice.